WHen the 12th Earl Strathmore, a 19th century nimby who made a fortune from coal, refused trains to cross his property. Gibside estateThe North Eastern Railway chose an alternative route via four viaducts, and a cutting. The line was eventually closed in 1962. Derwent Walk Country ParkIt is loved by runners, ramblers and dog walkers as well as cyclists, horse riders, birdwatchers, and horse riders.
The view from the Nine Arches viaduct’s parapet, which spans the River Derwents Gorge, is breathtaking: a vibrant pointillist canvas of trees, painted with bursting leaves buds; an earthbound chance to see woodland from my perspective, as well as the red kite that flew over my head this morning.
The long cutting begins at the west end of the viaduct. Its wooded banks are brimming with primroses, golden Saxifrage, wood anemones, and violets. I found a hidden treasure among them. Horsetail roughDutch rush, or Dutch rush is a living fossil, whose antecedents thrived within the Carboniferous period… 300m years ago, well before flowers evolved.
It’s a thicket with hollow corrugated stems and green leaves that is as thin as a pencil, but it’s not leafy or flowery. They are covered in tiny polygonal tiles with tiny spore cones that separate and release microscopically fine wind-borne spores. This is one of evolution’s most minimalist efforts, but it tells a great story.
Horsetail stems are high in silica, so they fossilize well. Fragments Ancestors of giant rough horsetailsThese were once as tall as our forest trees. They used to trundle past us in railway wagons that were embedded in the millions upon millions of tons of coal they transported between Durham coalfields and colliers moored in staithes on Tyne.
Gibside Hall, the Strathmore’s stately home, has been transformed into a romantic ruin after the Nine Arches viaduct opened. Now it is in the care and control of the National Trust. Hidden beneath the forests, lakes, and cowslip-filled meadows are coal-based industries that once populated this rewilded valley. The rough horsetail, a living testimony to the tropical landscape of giant horsetails, still exists. The climate is being affected by carbon dioxide that is released from the burning of these disinterred ancestral remains.