On Sunniside hill a lively breeze twirls wind turbine blades that dwarf terraced houses, once homes to miners’ families. Down in this sheltered valley, along the lane known locally as the Mile Lonnen, the still air is heavy with the fragrance of lilac, a hedgerow survivor from a long-lost garden. A century ago, downwind of what was then Emma pit at Pease’s West colliery, the prevailing odour here would have been a sulphurous whiff of coal and coke. Until 1800 this valley, on the western edge of the Durham coalfield, was home to a scattered farming community, mining small outcrops for domestic use. Then came deep mining, then the railways, hauling coal away to fuel heavy industry, until the pits closed in the 1960s. Opencast mining took the last of it, 30 years ago, returning the valley to arable and grazing agriculture. Now this is a recovering landscape of gentle undulations, copses, hedges and drystone walls, crisscrossed by footpaths. It has been our “local patch” these past 50 years, a three-mile circular walk from our front door. Not, perhaps, a spot where an artist might choose to set up an easel, but a canvas for nature to colour in between outlines sketched by old lanes and surviving trees and hedges. Today, the swallows are back, skimming across pastures as we walk uphill towards the site of the former White Lea colliery, with distant views of Weardale’s fells. There are alarm calls from a curlew defending its nest against crows and, from somewhere among thickets of gorse, tangled brambles, hawthorn and rowan, the rambling melody of blackcaps and scratchy songs of whitethroats. On our way we listen to a yellowhammer that forgets to add cheese to its “little‑bit-o’-bread-and-no …” song, and squint into the sun, in a vain search for a skylark. At the high point, Cold Knot, we turn downhill towards home: Crook, not even a name on a map 250 years ago, a town that owes its existence to coal. We follow the same paths that miners trod, on their way to labouring underground in damp, cramped tunnels, paths most likely made by farmers before them. The Industrial Revolution, turned full circle. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
Author: Phil Gates