The Rivers and Streams of EnglandBradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
General
The Rivers and Streams of England
Bradley, A. G. (Arthur Granville)
England -- Description and travel; Rivers -- England
on either Tyne have failed to succumb at one time or another to its
fury. That at Hexham has seven arches, which will indicate the breadth
of the river. Even when parted just above, each branch forms a salmon
river of the first class as regards size, while the North Tyne is so in
the more literal sense. The South Tyne, rather the smaller, and though
always imposing and often beautiful the least so of the two, comes up
from the very south-east corner of the county.
Rising just over the Cumbrian border at Alston, tapping the gorges of
the wild, shapely, mountainous hills which girdle that racy and romantic
little market-town, the river brawls northward through a deep and
tortuous vale to Haltwhistle. Gathering _becks_ from the Cumbrian
fringes and further _burns_ as it descends--for the change from a
Scandinavian to a Saxon etymology is here well defined--the South Tyne
now turns sharply eastward, and runs along the foot of the ridge bearing
towards Hexham. Here too it meets the Carlisle and Newcastle railroad,
which follows its valley the whole way to the sea. Receiving the Allen
at the mouth of Allendale, the South Tyne becomes a fair-sized river,
and Haydon Bridge, which in the old raiding days was the only one on the
South Tyne, and was "chained" in periods of alarm, rests upon six
arches, through all of which the clear impetuous currents shoot even in
low water. It is a formidable thing for any one on tolerably intimate
terms not merely with their banks but with their traditions and
literature, to be confronted by the Tynes and but a few pages at
disposal. It is the Severn and the Wye over again--the Border atmosphere
surcharged with memories and traditions and many things beguiling to a
discursiveness that must be at all costs resisted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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