VICAR'S LETTER

17 Sundon Road     
Streatley      

November, 2006      

Dear All 

I want this month to invite you to accompany me on a walk. It is the walk we took this summer based on, though not scrupulously adhering to, one of Britain's newer long-distance footpaths. The walk led us through some beautiful and varied scenery. It also reminded us at every stage how fragile is the world that we inhabit.

The walk started at Melrose on the Scottish borders. It began abruptly with a climb over the Eildon Hills, a climb that begins so steeply that a "helpful" local authority has installed a flight of 150 wooden steps to get you up the first slope. Once over the brow of the hill, however, the first main stage of the walk opens out below you. This is the stage that crosses the wide and fertile valley of the Tweed. It is a land apparently flowing with milk and honey - rich land, flourishing woods, broad rivers - but it was here that we had our fist intimation of the fragility of our world. It came when we reached the banks of the Tweed itself. As we sat eating a well-earned sandwich, we watched a Labrador cavorting in the river. It crossed from one side to the other, a distance at that point of some fifty yards. The startling thing, however, was that at no point in that entire crossing did the water reach up to its belly. The suspicions aroused by this sight were later confirmed by a worried local. The river was at the lowest level for the time of the year that any-one could remember. They all hoped it was just an unusually dry summer. They feared it could be one of the first major signs of a more permanent climate change.

Having crossed the Tweed valley, the path then moved on into proper country. It crossed the northern edge of the Cheviot Hills. This is my kind of country. These are the hills in which - albeit far to the south - I grew up. I love their old rounded shapes. I love their emptiness. And this time, there was a special treat - an aerobatic display by a pair of peregrine falcons. We first spotted them high up by the hill-top crags where they had their nest. We watched as they glided faster and faster down into the valley. Then came the masterstroke. With an imperceptible adjustment of their wings they used the momentum of their glide and the wind coming up from the valley to rise absolutely vertically, until, momentum spent, they broke out, just before they stalled, and drifted back to where they had started from. The peregrines spoke of the wild beauty of the place, but we also saw other creatures whose presence spoke a different message. The Cheviots are home to herds of wild goats and their presence is a reminder of what this place really is. It is a man-made desert. Once, these hills were covered with trees. Primitive man removed those trees. The fertile soil was washed away, till only rough grass and sedges would grow. Unable to decompose properly because of the lack of drainage, these built up into a layer of peat that is now eleven feet deep. The journey through the Cheviots was a reminder of the power of even primitive man to destroy his fragile world.

The final stage of the walk took us down from the hills and over the heatherclad Northumbrian moors to the sea. It brought us to where the Northumberland coast is at its best. It brought us to sandy beaches stretching for miles with not a soul on them. It brought us to great salt marshes ringing with the sound of plover, oyster-

catchers, and curlew. And finally, it brought us over the causeway to the island of Lindisfarne. At the moment the coastline in this part of the world is growing. We stayed at the head of a tidal inlet called Budle Bay, but it was very clear that in a few years it will be an inlet no longer. A sandbar is inexorably creeping across its mouth. At the same time, however, you could not but be aware that this is a landscape under threat. If global warming has the impact on sea levels that is currently being predicted this landscape will vanish under the sea and passengers on the east coast mainline, currently thundering across it en route to Edinburgh, will have to make the journey from Bamburgh to Berwick by boat.

Our walk reminded of the beauty of our world. It also reminded us of its fragility. And it did one thing more. The name of the walk was the St. Cuthbert's Way. It began at Melrose where Cuthbert trained as a monk. It passed by the abbey at Dryburgh. It ended on Holy Island at the abbey of Lindisfarne. And all along the way the route was marked by guideposts bearing a simple Northumbrian cross. The walk reminded us of the beauty of the earth. It reminded us of the fragility of the earth. It also reminded us that the earth is holy, to be reverenced and cared for as God's creation and his gift. 

All best wishes

Roger

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