It’s 10:40pm.

Outside, the only light on the street is from the moon reflecting its light off the clouds. The occasional car drives past. After six years of living here I’ve gotten used to them gliding across the tarmac. The birds are tweeting in the trees and I can’t get used to it. Yes that’s right, 10:42pm, and the birds aren’t asleep. And do you know why?

Because they are home! 

They have nests to maintain. Mouths to feed. Worms to forage. Water to source. Sunlight to chase. 

When they migrate you can imagine a more peaceful night. Food on tap. No responsibilities. Just away. No cares. 

And here I am doing just that. I’m home. It’s bedtime. Mr W is infuriatingly fast to fall asleep and I’m sitting up reading. Reading a book that has no real value, but gives me enough escapism to deaden my mind to sleep. Except it doesn’t work, I’m thinking about washing and work, food shopping and chores, gardening and social calendars. Cats. Birthdays. Trips. 

Trips. Trips. Trips. 

Where I find a plethora of other lists of things to do. 

Hiking. Wild swimming. Exploring. Seeking. Finding. Napping. Snacking. Living. 

I’ll put my hand up for the first time, hey let’s put both up, and shout… ahem…

I was wrong! I was so wrong in fact I’m going to make triple-y sure I was wrong. 

So, as bad as it sounds, my total number of trips in the UK for 32 years amounted to family trips to the Norfolk Broads and a long weekend in both Cornwall and Somerset. Ta-da! Ignore day trips to London, it’s 34 miles away, just doesn’t count in my book. 

Lockdown forced us to rethink flying, and other than our rebooked trip to Italy in Sept 2020, we stayed in the UK. We managed a long weekend in Edinburgh and Northumberland and then… we… returned to Northumberland for 3 days just one month later. 

Now these dots… you see… right there are put there for dramatic effect. For you see ladies and gentiles, I do not return to a place unless it has captured a piece of my whole actual being. 

There are few places that have done so, not being funny, once I’ve decided I’m going somewhere I GO ALL OUT, I’m seeing everything it has to offer, who knows if I’ll be able to go back? Why would I want to take the risk? So when Mr W and I decided to return to Northumberland one month after our first visit I was shaken. (And we’re going back in June 2022. Oops) 

You know what this amazing place did? It shocked me. First it’s in the UK, yep, and there’s me never bothering with home travel because, well I need a plane to call it a holiday. Unless I’m going up in the air, I’m still home, I’m in England, I don’t wanna be where I was born and bred! I wanna be right over there! Across the water, over mountain passes, tray table up, no peanuts. 

Second, I don’t hike, I don’t scramble, I don’t wander. But you will have caught me scramble down a rocky waterfall on my arse, dirty, soaked through and smiling. Laughing. Happy.

Not a shop in sight. No selfie stick welding tourists. Not even a car park destination. Just a field and a slight path trodden into a boggy hill. 

And I tell you this, I’ve never felt more awake to the possibilities. 

Northumberland has wonders even the locals don’t know about. Take Crammel Linn for example. A colossal cascade of water over a dark deep pool of water. The noise is enormous and an assault of the ears. But let’s not start there. Let’s start with finding this place. There are no signs, our B&B lady had never heard of it and its starting point is on MOD (ministry of defence, I’m sure you knew that but I didn’t up until 3 years ago, eep) land. Great start!

We find ourselves driving through winding lanes and across a beautiful bridge and then onto seemingly nowhere. I find the sign for MOD land and know it’s somewhere close. The only hint that we are in the right place is an old wooden sign pointing down a sloping field. We don our hiking boots, I would live in these bad boys if they didn’t scream MUUUUUD, and we take the first steps into the boggy wetland that is the path. There’s the odd plank of wood submerged in the watery, mossy ground, and I pray we aren’t in the wrong place. It is windy, no, that’s the wrong word, an invisible wrestler is pushing me back to the car and for good measure he has a misting spray levelled at my face. It is blindingly ferocious weather and yet we trudge on. We will see this waterfall. We will endeavour. And then, my arse falls out. We’ve reached what can only be described as the rockiest steep drop off I’ve ever seen. It’s an open field, the fence is at the bottom of the slope ahead and it’s wet. The rocks jutting out are threatening to gouge my legs apart and the fence has barbed wire. Mr W goes first and he leads me down. After several hundred ‘I can’t do’ moments we reach the fence. It takes me another 10 minutes to climb over the stile, which, I shit you not shook like a defecating dog and being on a slope was vastly different heights on either side. I’m 5ft5 and yet standing on that stile looking down I was an uncomfortable 7ft5! Did I mention there was barbed wire running along the top too? Honestly you couldn’t make this up. So, off the stile, onto a single foot track running beside the fence and a steep slope leading into an abyss of bramble and bushes. Lovely. But what is that I hear? Through the wind, I hear a cataclysmic sound of falling water. Before we can see the waterfall it’s just a hop, skip and a fracture down an even dodgier zig zag of a slope mounted with loose soil, large slippery rocks and nothing to hold onto. My god, what a journey! 

And then there it was. One of nature’s gifts to the world. A crash of water against water. A huge monolith of stone at the mercy of the rushing river. Once my legs retained their blood flow, we sat down and raided the trusty backpack for supplies. I couldn’t tell you what we ate, but it was likely crisps, water and some kind of sugar sent from heaven to keep my body from crumpling. 

As we sat there, the weather changed and the glorious Northumberland sun shone for us. A robin danced in the shadows and I was swept away by the solitude of the moment. 

I wasn’t thinking of washing or work, food shopping or chores, gardening or social calendars. I wasn’t thinking of much, my mind for the first time since before the pandemic had found peace. It turns out to drown out the noise of your daily life, you just need to find a louder noise. The wind, the rain and the waterfall. My daily life never really stood a chance. We sat until our bodies warmed slightly in the sun and then said our goodbyes. It was a special moment; our first UK waterfall! 

I listen now to the birds in the trees, and realise we aren’t so different. When it’s time to switch our minds off, we just need a new environment, a crazy adventure and somewhere else to call home. Even if it’s just for an hour in the lap of a waterfall. 

Photo taken by me at Crammel Linn, Northumberland. 

Please find other photos on Instragam @frameworktravel