NORTH TYNE - KIELDER TO TYNE SOURCE
The Tyne has its beginning as a mere dampening of the earth. Its presence is manifested simply by a spongy feel to the soil underfoot but, within yards, it puts out a moist gleam in the sunlight and a little further it has formed a pool, the size of a clenchd fist.
The Birth Of The Tyne, series in The Evening Chronicle by Eric Forster. July 1982
Moving beyond Kielder the landscape feels increasingly remote with moors gradually replacing pastures and forest to the west. The old railway ran through this country and two old bridges along the trackbed stand as evidence. Footbridges in the Kielder area were often just tree trunks placed across a narrow section of river with grass sods on top, without which the sheep would not cross.
The now fairly sluggish river is finally crossed just once more by the main road at Deadwater with its railway station converted into a house, and the old line immediately crosses the border into Scotland, the road running slightly north takes a little longer to leave England. The frontier once extended much farther south into these North Tyne lands and even long after it was fixed in 1237 at its present position, the Border Reivers raided and plundered for many years so that living in these regions once meant a constant fear of thieves and even murder. Meanwhile the River Tyne continues north to where the Deadwater Burn joins it from the region of Peel Fell. The actual source of the Tyne is disputed with some putting it at Deadwater with the Deadwater Burn a mere tributary, while others place it further north on the fell, but in any case it starts its journey to the sea amid the peat and grasses near the watershed where Scottish rivers flow west to the Irish Sea but the Tyne remains in Northumberland and England and flows eventually into the North Sea.
- Campsite Bridge - date not known
- Ravenshill Footbridge - date not known
- Forestry Bridge - date not known
- Kerseycleugh Bridge - 1834
- Railway Bridge 1 - 1862
- Railway Bridge 2 - 1862
- Deadwater Bridge - 1967
