AUG ^ 1905 



A RAMBLE UP BURNHOPE. 95 



A RAMBLE UP BURNHOPE* 



By the Rev. W. J. Wingate. 



Since boyhood all the works of nature have given me the 

 greatest delight, and my country rambles generally consist 

 of a constant series of stoppages, to pick up and examine 

 the curious and beautiful objects which present themselves 

 almost at every step. Though master of no special class or 

 family, I am usually most on the look out for Two-winged 

 Flies. But when I planned a ramble up Burnhope the order 

 was rather rocks, mosses, flies, than flies, mosses, rocks ; for 

 its object was to examine a very interesting spot, where, in 

 the geological map, a small red mark shows the presence of 

 whinstone, among signs of great displacement of the strata. 



Burnhope is the more southerly of the two great glens, 

 which unite at Wearhead to form Weardale, Killhope being 

 the more northerly ; and their respective burns, uniting in a 

 circular pool a few yards above the bridge at Wearhead, form 

 the commencement of the river Wear. 



It was a bright sunny morning early in August, and as I 

 left the station at Wearhead my spirits rose at the prospect of 

 a glorious day among the hills. All the way up in the train 

 I had been noting various points of geological interest, 

 the first appearance of the Great Limestone a little below 

 Frosterly, the extensive quarries in the same lime at 

 Stanhope, the whinstone quarry in the Little Whin Sill 

 just beyond, and other features observed in former rambles. 

 And now, after rising some 700 feet, I found myself 

 geologically far below where I had started. The train had 

 been travelling over the upturned edges of the lower Carboni- 

 ferous formations, and going down as it went up, so that as I 

 stood on Wearhead Bridge I was on the Six-fathom or Brig- 

 end Hazle, that is, the thick bed of sandstone below the 

 Three-yard Limestone, the fifth downward in the well marked 

 limes of Weardale. 



* The Hancock Prize Essay for 1902. 



