Take a sunrise walk
Winter is the best time of year to greet the rising sun anywhere. But there’s nowhere better to savour a dawn walk than Northumberland’s Simonside Hills.
It’s a thrill to greet the rising sun on any walk – but especially this one.
CHILD OF MORNING, rosy-fingered Dawn.’ That Homer bloke (the Greek one, not the Simpson) puts it beautifully, don’t you think?
Dawn was the ancient goddess of sunrise – she who turned night into day. Even now mythology has made way for science, this daily spectacle enthrals us still. But for much of the year in Britain, it’s a stirring sight only early birds enjoy, made all the more wondrous by the dawn chorus in late spring. Not so in winter. Listen up late risers, this is your chance. Pack a headtorch, a warm layer and a flask of coffee.
Up at 7 and out before 8, you can be on a hill or by the coast in time to see the sun breach the eastern horizon. The further north you are, the later it arrives: on the winter solstice, the sun rises 50 minutes later on Shetland than in does in Cornwall. Daybreak hits England’s northernmost county sometime in between (around 8:30), where the Simonside Hills are first to greet the sun. Ranged above Coquetdale and the town of Rothbury, this peat-capped ridge of sandstone forms an eastern limb of Northumberland National Park.
Barely half an hour from the road up a flagstone path, you can take a pew inside the circular shelter on Spy Law Beacon and watch the show unfold. 30 feet across and possibly 3000 years old, it’s believed to be a Bronze Age burial cairn, later hollowed out by medieval vandals who made it into a fire beacon to warn of Scottish raids. This morning could be the millionth sunrise to light up these ancient stones. Glazed with frost, they begin to sparkle as the first wisps of daylight creep over the land.
20 miles to the east, the North Sea turns from inky black to brilliant gold, catching tiny ships and wind farms in silhouette. Like the embers in an ash heap, a distant bank of low cloud glows scarlet, then amber, setting the whole sky aflame. Five minutes pass, but it feels like an hour before an intense white orb surfaces into the still, silent air, as it has done every morning for billions of years.
For the next hour or more, the hills are yours, as daylight floods into every fold and crevice. Continuing west with the sun, wind-sculpted crags erupt from peat at the summit of Simonside. It’s here malevolent dwarfs known as the ‘Duergar’ were said to hide among the rocks as morning broke, having spent the night leading unwary travellers astray.
Treading down into the dale and back through the earthworks of Lordenshaws Hillfort, you’ll come upon the mysterious cup and ring rock carvings left by our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors. No one can know for sure, but it’s tempting to imagine they also came here for the mesmerising sunrises.
WALK HERE: Turn to Walk 21 for 7-mile dawn dash over the Simonside Hills.