A 10-day walking festival in the wilds of west Northumberland is set to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Pennine Way. The Haltwhistle Walking Festival was established in 2002 and is one of the country’s longest-running events of its type.
This year, it is centred around the 268-mile path along the spine of England. A celebratory three-day trek on the Pennine Way is the highlight of the festival, with walkers invited to the whole three days, or one out of three over the May Bank Holiday weekend.
Day one takes in the River North Tyne and remote farms between Bellingham and Housesteads, day two passes some of the best-preserved Hadrian’s Wall sites from Housesteads to Greenhead. The final stage links Greenhead to Haltwhistle.
Anne Palmer is a walk leader on the stretch from Bellingham to Housesteads. She told ChronicleLive: “This one in particular, it’s a pretty barren, empty part and I like that, I like remote places. I’ll be looking forward to show people the really, really remote places where you can’t see a house or anything.”
In total, there will be 26 walks, at least two a day, during the festival’s 10-day run from Saturday, April 26 until Monday, May 5 – most of which range from five to 12 miles. Highlights include “Rocks of the Roman Empire” with geologist and author Ian Banks, Mosses and Lichens at Allen Banks with mycologist Gordon Beakes, and a five-mile walk including the Devil’s Water in Hexham, which is followed by a village hall lunch provided by the Whitley Chapel Women’s Institute.
Catriona Mulligan, festival organiser, said: “Haltwhistle is in the most amazing location as a gateway to Northumberland National Park and Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage site, two international designations. Looking south, it’s a gateway to the North Pennines National Landscape.
“So the festival is very much in a special nationally and internationally designated landscape, I’m not sure if Haltwhistle realises how amazing a location it is!”
Former Northumberland National Park worker Catriona said that though the festival is most popular with visitors from the North East, they have had national and even international visitors. One man called Chicago George visited the festival for five consecutive years, and last year, three people travelled specially from Australia for the festival – who hold the record for travelling the furthest.
Bookings for the Haltwhistle Walking Festival open at 7am on Saturday, March 1. More information can be found here.
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View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/haltwhistle-walking-festival-northumberland-pennines-30946071
