Simonside is a heck of a good hill to climb on a sunny day. It would be awful in wet weather. However if you got trapped in a sudden mist, away from the path,you could take cover in one of the rock shelters and wait it out. I wouldn’t reccomend it though, as many clefts have only enough vegetation to hide them from view, not enough to stop you from disappearing. In all, not a place to go near dark on a rainy day, only go if it’s sunny, or if you’re very nimble. especially so if you intend to leave the path.
The path is needlessly wide, due to heavy erosion, but that does make it easy to follow, if a bit covered in the kind of loose stone that gives you a bad time no matter what the weather.
But once you get up to the top of the ridge, 360 deg views, madly eroded patterns on rocks, possible rock art, rock shelter type overhangs, cairns, even a pool at the bottom of The north side of Simonside proper.
The south side of Old Stell crag has a fantastically sheltered cranny with exellent views, but is toatally sheltered, ideal for a rest and a ponder.
Note of caution from a pleasantly unexpected encounter, there are adders, and they ain’t scared of humans or dogs.
Park at Lordenshaws car park for the easiest route, i.e that with the shallowest incline.
The following is from www.rothbury.co.uk section "Potts Chair". Can anyone throw any further light on it.
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Thompson's Rock on the lower slopes of the Beacon on Simonside is surely worth a visit.
Discovered(?) in 1987 by David Thompson, it has a ragged two to three inch diameter hole running through it of about one and a half metres in length. It is alleged that this hole is directly aligned with the midsummer sunset and in Paul Frodsham's excellent book "In the Valley of the Sacred Mountain" there is a picture of just this.
Whilst the hole is possibly natural, although this has not yet been proven, Crispian Oates who studied this area in great detail has suggested that a ritual centre linked with solar movements may have existed in this area. And why not?
Mr Oates states that : "The site consists of a rough circle of stones with the Central Holed Stone (CHS) in the middle. At the north side a stone appears to be missing but there is stone in the ground at the position of the gap."
And he also identified "a trial stone" with two holes that line up but do not connect, indicating how the the CHS may have been made."
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