High Cup Nick
Is High Cup the Grand Canyon of England? Chiz Dakin sets out to explore and finds a classic valley topped by a high and wild moorland plateau.
Incised into the high moorland of the North Pennines is a huge cleft in the landscape. It's as if a meteorite has gouged a deep furrow, threaded at its base with a shiny string of water and ringed by steep ,grassy slopes topped with dark, sharp-edged cliffs. This is High Cup, with High Cup Nick at the valley head.
The high, edge-top cliffs are part of the Whin Sill – a huge layer of igneous rock which rose up from the earth’s interior some 295 million years ago across the North Pennines. It didn’t reach the surface, however, instead cooling as a layer of rock between limestone, sandstone and shale underground, and has since become exposed to the landscape through erosion of the overlying layers.
More recently, geologically-speaking, the ice age arrived, causing glacial scouring of the valley’s bottom and sides – and the plateau above – followed by an uplifting of the land as the glaciers melted.
This route heads into the valley, climbs the steep valley sides then leaves the crowds behind as it heads out along little-trod Backstone Edge – high and wild moorland where you may not see another person but may well encounter the local Helm Wind!