Christmas in Rothbury

Chloe is a delight when she is allowed to run around and play, always happy and waving.  But we should have waited until she has had her fill of playing before we tried to pick her up for a photo!

We were very lucky with the weather this year.   It is usually grey and raining, cold and often covered in snow.   This year Rothbury was milder than we have ever known it, and we even had quite a few sunny days.  Not often we see shadows on our walking photos at this time of year in England.

There are three lovely walks from Rothbury.   The longer one is to Simonside, with its views down on the village and Cragside behind.

The whole walk is about nine miles.  It starts with a pleasant river walk, a (usually) muddy section over fields and lanes, a steep climb up Simonside and a long descent over moorland back to Rothbury.

The second walk is on “our side” of the valley up and over Cragside.   This one is about seven miles and starts with a steep climb behind Stuart’s house.   The first part is over more muddy fields and a long climb through a wooded section, again very muddy.   

But we finally emerge on the top of Cragside where we have a long circular walk of about two miles with wonderful and ever changing views of the Coquet valley below and the Cheviots in the distance.   Here the paths are quite good, but again muddy with large water obstacles.   We keep a pair of walking boots in Rothbury, but at this time of year we really should invest in a couple of pairs of wellington boots.

As we reached the half way point of our walk we saw this rainbow, despite the lack of rain.   However within ten minutes the sun had been replaced with a heavy sleet /snow fall.   We were soaking by the time we arrived home, and had to abandon our usual after walk drink in Rothbury in favour of a hot bath.

The third walk is along the river Coquet.   This is an all weather walk and very popular all year around with both the locals and day visitors.  You can see that on New Years Eve the car park was full as always.  It is about one mile in length, but can be extended another mile on unofficial tracks through the fields and along the river to Thropton.   We use this walk a lot in all weather.

Another very enjoyable Christmas and New Year with the grandchildren.   All the more enjoyable as we could get in a few decent walks due to the mild and sunny weather.