shewhomust | Easing the spring

Spring comes later, hesitantly here in the north. I should be used to this. On Saturday (either the day before or two days before the equinox, depending on how you count) we were walking along the Weardale Way: we'd packed a picnic, but were still quite surprised to find ourselves wearing jumpers but no waterproofs, quite warm enough, maybe even a little too warm, in the sunshine (and not quite warm enough in the shade, but nothing that walking briskly didn't solve).

We set off from Escomb, after spending longer than we'd expected to nosing around the Saxon church, following the Weardale Way through the fields above the river, past Paradise (it seems to be an angling centre, but I may be missing something) and down to the Wear near Whitton Park. The sunshine felt springlike, and for the first time this year we were seeing lambs in the fields, but the trees were still bare, and though there was greenery springing underfoot (wild garlic leaves spiking up everywhere, and a few touches of acid green from the wood sorrel) not much in the way of spring flowers. The pussy willow in the hedges was a promise of spring, not the thing itself.

There was some coltsfoot, rather trampled, at the tricky point in the path by the river, where the concrete embankment gives out abruptly, and you have to clamber down and across some mossy boulders, and some lingering snowdrops immediately after, on the banks of the side stream. Further up the sidestream there were great drifts of snowdrops, which were lovely, but the last of the winter flowers, not the first of spring. It wasn't until we'd passed Witton Castle and were climbing up towards the railway that I saw, on a sheltered bank, a scattering of celandine - and then, among the yellow stars, a sprinkling of white violets (and more of the violets further along the railway).

We ate our picnic at Low Barns Nature Reserve: like so much of County Durham, it's a post-industrial site, wetland formed from the flooding of disused gravel pits next to the Wear (though it also includes a patch of lowland which is the old course of the river, which shifted after the flood of 1771). There's a pleasant loop through the reserve, through reed beds where I took lots of photos, trying to capture what it was about the blond gold of the reeds and the light of the sky reflected in the still the water that pleased me so very much.

From here there was a long haul back along the road, which was hard on the feet and the knees. But there were things to see along the way: a flock of geese grazing peacefully in a field (more wildfowl than we'd seen in our entire circuit of the nature reserve); an impressive railway viaduct, where we passed under the line at the same time as we crossed a bridge over the Wear - and this brought us back to Paradise.

This time we took the riverside path, on a high embankment between the river and the wetlands, and brought us out by the gravel pits we had seen on our way out. Just short of Escomb we sat on a block of stone by the water and drank the last of our coffee while we watched the coot, and the low sun on the reeds. And so, revived, back to our starting point.

Bonus spring poem.