Читать книгу The Reivers Way - Paddy Dillon - Страница 7

PREFACE

Large herds of dairy and beef cattle are reared in the broad and sprawling Northumberland countryside

I never met the late James Roberts, author of Cicerone’s original guide to the Reivers Way, but if I had I’m sure I would have recognised a kindred spirit. Roberts’ enthusiasm for Northumberland spanned many years, and his guidebook to the Reivers Way was penned while walking the route on his honeymoon in September 1992. Ten years earlier he had acquired a simple, stapled booklet covering the route, written by Harold Osmond Wade, itself dating from 1977. This small guide was pieced together from articles written by Wade for the Newcastle Chronicle, in which he serialised a trip he made piecemeal around the Reivers Way during the summer of 1975.

Wade was an authority on the Northumberland countryside, but he wouldn’t have written about the Reivers Way without being inspired by Ken Coulson. As for Coulson, he entered a competition called ‘To the Hills’, run by Radio Newcastle, winning it with his idea for the route we now know as the Reivers Way. The Reivers Way is therefore essentially a creation of the 1970s.

While writing my own guidebook to the route for Cicerone, reflecting the designation of large areas of ‘access land’ in 2000 among other changes over the past 10 years, I have enjoyed revisiting many of my own favourite parts of Northumberland, walking the Reivers Way in summer and winter. I hope walkers will, as I do, remember as they follow the route Coulson, Wade and Roberts, who first encouraged others to explore and appreciate the wild countryside and fascinating heritage of Northumberland.

Paddy Dillon

Food, drink, accommodation and other facilities are available in towns and villages along the Reivers Way