Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/93

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NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM.
75

name of Cheviot especially belongs, is most easily reached from the town by following the high-road up the Wooler Water to Langlee-ford, by way of Earl, a distance of 5 miles. The high ridge is about a mile long, the western end, round what is called the Dunsdale Cairn, a peaty swamp, the slightly higher eastern cairn drier. The Wooler Water rises on the back of this ridge in a depression which runs south of the ridge over into Henhole. Two miles above Langlee-ford there is a small waterfall called Hartside Linn, above which the ravine is bare and monotonous. The highest points of Cheviot and Hedgehope are not more than 2 miles apart, and the steepness of the ravine which separates them may be best understood from the fact that the Langlee-ford farm-house, which is nearly in a direct line between the two peaks, is 1600 feet in level below the one, and nearly 1900 feet below the other. But there is very little crag upon the sides of this ravine, and very soon after leaving the house in climbing upwards we pass out into open moory ground, leaving all trees and enclosures behind. We could only see thirty-five plants upon the hill at an elevation of upwards of 2000 feet, and of these we have already given a list. The Langlee-ford farm-house is 400 feet above Wooler, 750 feet above sea-level. For 3 miles below it the stream runs down a fine ravine, from which the hills rise sharply to a height of from 1500 feet to 1000 feet above it on both sides, the lower part of their sides being somewhat wooded, the trees being principally birch, oak, rowan, and hawthorn, and the flat one continuous alder-grove. Over the ridge on the east of the stream the level declines directly towards Roddam and Ilderton. The hill just above Langlee-ford is crowned by a craggy crest (Langlee Crags), and the flanks of this lower part of the ravine are frequently covered with loose rocks. These faces of hill, or rather the heaps of loose porphyritic boulders that cover them, are characteristic of the district. From the south-west side of this glen it is several miles across to the series of rounded bell-shaped "tors" that form the southern flank of the range above Yevering and Akeld, and the intervening space is filled up by a heathery plateau, which is considerably lower in level than the tors which girdle it. Right through