Salter's Gate

There, in that lost corner of the ordnance survey. Drive through the vanity — two pubs and a garage — of Satley, then right, cross the A68 past down-at-heel farms and a quarry, you can't miss it, a 'T' instead of a 'plus' where the road meets a wall. If it's a usual day there'll be freezing wind, and you'll stumble climbing the stile (a ladder, really) as you pull your hat down and zip up your jacket. Out on the moor, thin air may be strong enough to knock you over, but if you head into it downhill, you can shelter in the wide, cindery trench of an old leadmine-to-Consett railway. You may have to share it with a crowd of dirty supercilious-looking ewes, who will baaa and cut jerkily away after posting you blank stares from their foreign eyes. One winter we came across five steaming, icicle-hung cows. But in summer, when the heather's full of nests, you'll hear curlews following you, raking your memory, maybe, with their cries; or, right under you nose, a grouse will whirr up surprised, like a poet startled by a line when it comes to her sideways. No protection is offered by trees — Hawthorn the English call May, a few struggling birches. But of wagtails and yellowhammers, plenty, and peewits who never say peewit, more a minor,go'way, go'way. Who was he, Salter? Why was this his gate? A pedlars' way, they carried salt to meat. The place gives tang to survival, its unstoppable view, a reservoir, ruins of the lead mines, new forestry pushing from the right, the curlew.