A chill wind makes my face feel tight as I walk uphill to the long, narrow wood leading to Keenley. Once under the Scots pines, I look up at their swaying red trunks and dark needles against a deceptively blue sky. The wind is thrashing in the treetops, but down here it’s sheltered and calm.
A thin path wiggles up between glossy-leaved hollies and arching brambles. Underfoot, there’s a mass of debris from the winter storms: sticks, cones and large limbs. Emerging honeysuckle leaves scrawl over the decaying branches of previous gales, the rotting wood now supporting mosses, fungi and the unfurling fresh green of dog’s mercury.
The weather today is confusing. In the sunlit field outside are sheep fat with lamb, yet tiny snowflakes are falling gently like dust motes through the trees. They drift on to echoing white, as snowdrops, elegant singles or blowsy doubles, swoop up and down the undulating woodland floor. They have pushed up through chaotic nettle stalks, through twisting brown fallen leaves, between stones and ferns, in a massed dangle of clear white petals and sweet scent.
A large patch of moss shines vivid emerald where the light falls on it. This waved silk-moss, Plagiothecium undulatum, spreads over the acidic soil beneath the pines, its flattened spear-shaped stems forming rhythmic patterns like a shaggy rug.
Just above the wood stands Keenley Methodist chapel. It’s a simple stone building in a grass clearing, ringed by goblet-shaped yews and tall beeches. A narrow flagstone path leads to the brown painted door with a date of 1750 inset into the stone in lead. Above is a carved sign: “Wesleyan Chapel rebuilt 1874”.
This modest building is the oldest Methodist church still in use in the world. John Wesley travelled through the North Pennines in 1761 and preached here beneath a sycamore tree. As a result, many local miners and subsistence farmers embraced Methodism. The nearby Isaac’s Tea Trail – named after a 19th-century itinerant tea seller and philanthropist – follows the footpath that led me up here.
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