Swimming with the dog on the Tyne
Googling ‘wild swimming Northumberland’ conjured up a promising-looking place called Featherstone Castle.
Checking the OS map on my phone, it also seemed like a decent spot for a stroll because I could walk up the west side of the river, cross a footbridge and return on the east side.
The map also showed ‘Sewage Farm (disused)’ – that’s all right, then – and, more mysteriously, ‘Campsite (disused)’.
What was a disused campsite? An apocalyptic scene of fraying pole-and-ridge tents and ivy-covered caravans, abandoned since the ’60s? I had to find out.
It had been grey all day as I travelled north, but the forecast implausibly predicted glorious sunshine by the time I reached Hadrian’s Wall.
The forecasting gods were correct. The clouds parted west of Newcastle and another heart-wrenchingly beautiful May day sprang forth. Orange tip butterflies bounced along the verges, hawthorns were pillowy with blossom and the mellow, descending notes of willow warblers filled the air.
I parked in an informal lay-by close to the River South Tyne and crossed to the west bank. The footpath rounded a mine- water-treatment scheme, preventing old mine water from polluting the river, and crossed a series of pungent, sheepy pastures. Twin lambs craned their necks beneath their mum, tails wagging with delight.
The river was broad, braided and interesting, winding beside boggy alder woods adorned with the white flowers of greater stitchwort and delicate creamy spikes of ramsons. A flowering bird cherry hummed, a city of a million insects; alders and ash trees were still pushing forth their first tender leaves.
I entered a little wood via the most picturesque old pedestrian gate, silvered by lichen and made from timbers that had not been straightened but curved and wobbled. Above it, another hawthorn flowered madly.
It was just as the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote: ‘A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience.’
My rapture lessened slightly when I encountered two putrid dead rabbits, but then I heard the noise I had been waiting for – SPLASH! The unmistakable sound of a joyous wild swimmer leaping from riverbank to water.
I pressed forward, only to discover the belly-flopper was a black Lab chasing a stick down the South Tyne.
By the time I crossed the footbridge, admiring the weir with its customary ‘Swimmers Will Deservedly Die for the Idiotic Risks They Take’ notices, the Lab had scampered on and I had a sandy river beach to myself.
I was soon swimming in a dark channel beyond my depth, little fish leaping around me and a grey wagtail bobbing on a rock. The brown-green water was sweet and deliciously cool.
I was reluctant to leave the river, but pulled on my clothes and wandered off along the east bank to the old campsite.
Featherstone Castle is a castellated stone mansion set back from the river in old parkland. I took a tarmac track splintering down the river cliff, passing a gatepost and an old plaque. This marked the entrance to POW Camp 18, where thousands of German officers were held from 1945 to 1948.
The sign commemorated army interpreter Captain Herbert Sulzbach, a German Jew who fled to England in the 1930s, for ‘dedicating himself to making this camp a seedbed of British- German reconciliation’.
I paused and pondered the Nazi officers, camped here beside this magnificent river, coming to terms with their lives’ taking an unexpected meander. The relics of this fascinating place were unkempt brick buildings with black, glassless windows, no doors and flat roofs, used periodically since as sheds for sheep and old farm machinery.
A pair of noisy oystercatchers circled and cried out, the gorse and broom flung yellow scent to the breeze and I followed the river upstream, back to the car.
Park at Diamond Oak Bridge (What3Words usage.pipe.cherished) or at Lambley Viaduct car park. Take footpath north up west side of the river; cross river at Featherstone footbridge and south down the east bank for a 90-minute ramble
