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Clare
Clare

Day 3: Harbottle

When we came to Northumberland for the first May bank holiday earlier this year, we did a really nice walk near a village called Harbottle. We enjoyed it so much that we decided that it was worth repeating on this trip to Northumberland too :)

The walk starts from a Forestry Commission car park just outside Harbottle. Harbottle is just under 40 miles from where we're staying in Hexham, so we had a drive of about an hour to reach the car park. I thought it might be busy being a bank holiday, but when we arrived there were only a handful of other cars in the car park. There had been quite a lot of other people walking in the Simonside hills yesterday; this seemed deserted in comparison.

It was good to park without any problems anyway and we set off along the trail, following a sign uphill towards the Drake Stone.

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This is one of those walks where you get most of the uphill out of the way straight away. The path led us quite steeply uphill through a forest, then out into an open area of moorland.

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Before too long we had a view up to the large stone we were walking towards.

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The Drake Stone sits on a hill above Harbottle and is said by local legend to have supernatural healing powers. 

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The path to get to the top was a bit steep and rocky in places, although not as steep and rocky as the Simonside walk had been yesterday.

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The views across the surrounding countryside were lovely when we turned around.

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Soon we had made it to the top :)

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This was the enormous Drake Stone. It was so large it was actually quite hard to fit it all in a photo!

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The views from the top were great, even though it wasn't the sunniest of days.

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Once we'd finished admiring them, the next part of the path led us around the Drake Stone and down the other side of the hill.

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We were walking towards Harbottle Lake.

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The path was a bit steep again in places, but I was better prepared for Northumberland this time around and had remembered my walking pole :) 

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The walk instructions had warned that the area around the lake could be boggy.

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It didn't seem too bad today, but we did find some boggy bits as we climbed up through the nearby forest on the next section of the walk.

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The path through the woods was lovely.

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Though there were a few steep bits here too.

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This bit was definitely a lot easier with a pole :D 

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Once we came out of the forest, the path levelled off into a nice flat track.

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I loved the views of the heather here...

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...and also the views of the patchwork fields.

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I loved walking past all these cows slightly less :D

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Soon we were back down to the level of the road, which we crossed. We then followed another path alongside a river and through fields.

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From here we had a view back up towards the Drake Stone on the hill above us.

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Soon we were back in the village of Harbottle, not far from where we'd left the car. When we came here last time, we had a drink in the beer garden of a pub here which is also home to a pizzeria. Today we had come back planning to eat and we weren't disappointed! We split a meat pizza and a bolognese pizza between us; the bolognese in particular was amazing :) 

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It was a great end to what has been another fun walk in Northumberland :) 




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