Reasons To Rough It

Few things can beat a day on the grouse moor amid the majestic beauty of the Pennines and Richard Negus falls under their spell

The light changes on the A68 as you leave West Auckland behind. The colours of the moor reflect off the clouds. Proper hills appear, insects splatter your windscreen and the villages hunker down as if in preparation for a fight with winter to come.

The scenery is dramatic. The north Pennines do not have the bucolic beauty of the Yorkshire Dales; they are more masculine and earthy. As the lanes twist and curl, the first flashes of heather can be glimpsed if you are bold enough to take your eyes off these roller coasters that pass for roads.

Then as if a practical joker silversmith has been at work, the gleaming Derwent Reservoir presents itself. Reflections of the verdant low ground and muted moors shimmer on its surface. The westerly banks are covered with countless greylags appearing as if an unseasonal snow squall has occurred.

In a layby tucked up against the reservoir’s eastern shore, I met up with my friend Dave. He stood leaning on his Polaris Ranger — a quad bike on steroids. As is normal in my friendship with this knowledgeable, no-nonsense gamekeeper, we spent the next five minutes being extremely rude to one another.

We covered important topics such as Rachel Riley, the inadequacies of people who had served in the Army and his revulsion of all things that don’t originate from his native Yorkshire. He shoehorned me into the little Polaris and I was treated to a preview tour of some of the moor.

Being a moorland virgin, I bombarded Dave with questions at every turn. When I queried why there was a fenced offarea in between where the grassland stopped and heather started, I learned that this was regenerating back to moor, as it had previously been non-native firs.