Hob

What a weird site.

I first saw this set of earthworks (I’m not happy calling it a ‘fort’, ‘camp’ is also a bit iffy tbh...) almost 30 years ago, but then just in the distance as I was wandering about exploring the area around a small festival at one of the farms at the edge of the moor.

Since then I’ve looked at it in the distance a few times, and on aerial shots, it’s quite easily visible, and merits some seriously confident dashes on the OS map, so I knew the ramparts were fairly high.

But actually having a walk about in there for the first time, I was surprised by how small it is in footprint. There’s barely enough room for a house, though apparently there was one during a Romano-British re-occupation period of use. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it might have also been re-used more recently, mebbe during the border reiver years.

So the overall effect is quite impressive. Because the ramparts are 4m high in places, so it’s got an almost claustrophobic feel to it.

Oddly small ‘fort’. Lotsa Bronze age stuff nearby. Access isn’t too tricky if you go when the bracken is low. Bloody annoying round this neck of the woods if it’s high. Go have a look if you’re in the area.

Easy to find, relocated rock art. A 3-ton carved boulder found a few miles away at Birney Hill, Ponteland, in 2015.

The stone now rests on display, outdoors next to the Great North Museum (previously The Hancock Museum) on Claremont Road.

So after 11 years, I finally managed to get here to check out Moey’s find.

I took the long walk from the north end of the beach, passing the old lime kilns that are half fallen into the sea, so I would be able to have a gander at the other stretches of rock, and none of them had the rings. The rings themselves are on a fairly small patch of rocks, and looking at my photos, I’m not sure I found exactly the same ones as Moey, but it was definitely the same patch of rocks. Perhaps over the last decade, sand has shifted, or seaweed covered/uncovered some of the rings.

It’s got to be a fairly slim chance that these things inspired the creators of the CnRs in the area, as the seashore would have been a lot further out back then, but hey, if there are such rings here, maybe there were others which are now much further out.

That still doesn’t explain the ones to be found further afield, but I would like to think that the CnR carvers might have seen natural structures like these and incorporated them into the mythos of the rings.

The top of Cartington Hill boasts three bronze age cairns, in a line more or less north to south, couple of hundred metres apart.

The hill has very nice 360° views, with the border ridge to the west, Simonside very prominent to the south, The Cheviots to the north, and the edge of Rimside Moor to the east. The deeply worn (like 2-3 m deep) drove roads clearly visible up the little secluded (and 99% deserted) Debdon valley hint at very old routeways.

There are a whole boatload of prehistoric sites intervisible as a result of this, but the one that stuck out in my mind was the Five Kings over on Dues Hill to the south west. I’d always thought Dues Hill must have been given it’s name by the Vikings, as it has such a similarity to the Duergar, an allegedly Viking name for the sprites of Simonside. But seeing it leaping out of the murky horizon from Cartington Hill, I wondered it it was possibly of roman origin, as Dues Hill is very clearly twin-peaked.

Anyway, enough of the view. The southern cairn I just managed to yomp to, take a pic, post to TMA, then leg it back to Rothbury in time for tea, is not fantastically accessible, but is worth the fairly short hop through the waist deep heather. It’s been mucked about with over the years, and the sangar is just big enough to provide shelter, but hasn’t disturbed the kerb. It’s quite a size. EH’s listing says it’s 17.5m in diameter and 1.8m high. Sounds about right to me. It’s got an odd remnant of some modern activity in the form of a very weathered wooden stump with some very rusted thick steel cable afixed to it, just poking out from the bottom of the sangar.

Just south, halfway up the hill, are some lovely big expanses of flat eroded outcrops that screamed ‘We probably had cup and ring marks but if we did, they’ve wethered away!’ at me.

Next time, I shall return in better weather, and go see the middle cairn, which has an exposed cist, and the northern cairn, which is totally undisturbed but covered with heather.

I’ll say one thing for the folks who built this monument. They knew how to pick a spot in the landscape.

It’s not instantly noticeable when you’re at the site, but on my most recent visit, I’d decided to tromp off from the dreaded centre Parcs just at the top of Leacet Hill, and go to lightpaint Brougham castle a few miles away. As it turned out, the castle was locked up tight, so I decided to head back via Leacet. Now bearing in mind it was a full moon, there was some light, but it was still the middle of the night, and I had no map, and was wandering cross country. But it was dead easy to find the place. It made me wonder that part of the reason for placing it here was that if you know where it is, it’s fairly straightforward to find it again by reference to the various bits of the landscape around it.

There was still no sign of the ghostly apparition, so I made one by waving a torch at the stones.

The Cateran Hole is described as being very difficult to find. So how chuffed with myself was I to find it with no problem at all, straight there, in knee deep snow, without a gps? Very. The snow made descending a bit precarious, it’s enough of a drop that you’d damage yourself if you fell in.

It’s re-working in medieval times would presumably have destroyed any traces of prehistoric activity, but I was intrigued by the pile of largish (2-3ft across) boulders that are piled up about 10m to the SW of the entrance.

My plans to find the end of the cave went awry as the meltwater from the ridiculous amounts of snow meant that after about 20m, it would have required diving gear to keep going. So any hopes that there may be faint carvings to be found went unrealised.

I have to get back here in drier conditions and have a good mooch about.