The siren of the Tees

THE EARS fill with a roar that grows louder with every step, and the air's full of a spray that makes you wetter with every step. Nature is building up the drama with a drum roll: faster, louder, wetter as the moment of revelation draws nearer.

It is so like a theatre that a curtain of water droplets sweeps between the steep cliffs of the gorge.

Round the corner - drum roll louder still - and there - crash of cymbals - it is...

Thundering, plunging, roaring, raging, smoking, churning. High Force - the most impressive waterfall in Britain.

So impressive that it draws you to its head. Up the cliffsteps, over the rockpools, right to the very edge.

But it isn't content with your presence at a safe distance. It demands that you go that one step closer and that you peer down its full, magnificent drop into the pool that froths furiously at its foot. With a jump of the heart you imagine what it must be like to be dashed down there, spluttering in the suffocating veil of peaty water, your head cracking off the unbreakable rocks, your cries drowned out by the rush of the falls. And then at the bottom the deep silence of the cold, murky pool as eternal darkness envelopes you...

Just this week, the siren of the Tees lured another unwitting photographer to the very brink of disaster. He fell, but lived to tell with only a broken shoulder. Remarkable.

How the siren must be cursing.

The River Tees is born on Cross Fell in Cumbria - "Fiend's Fell", as it is known for its demons and high winds - but it is when it meets another spectacular natural phenomenon that the real drama begins. This is the Great Whin Sill, itself forged in fire.

About 280 million years ago, at the end of the Carboniferous period, molten magma was forced up from the Earth's core. It never reached the surface, but pushed its way between other strata of rocks before cooling gradually into tall, powerful, unerodable columns.

The word "whin" means hard or tough; "sill" is a layer of igneous rock. It is the Great Whin Sill because it stretches in an 80 mile arc from Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria right out into the North Sea at Bamburgh.

Over ages, the rocks above it have been eroded by water, wind and ice so that now, in places, the Great Whin Sill breaks through onto the Earth's surface. At Bamburgh, it has had a fairytale castle perched upon it; out to sea, Farne Island birds perch upon it.

Back in the west, the Great Whin Sill meets the mighty Tees at Cauldron Snout, a few miles above High Force. Some say that Cauldron Snout is the highest waterfall in the country because here the Tees drops some 200ft. But the Snout is a cataract, a 200-yard long series of mini-falls down which the Tees comes bubbling as if it were overflowing from a boiling cauldron - which is, apparently, how the cataract got its name.

The ghost of a Victorian farmgirl is said to drift across the bubbling, boiling waters, wailing piteously. She drowned herself in despair at the end of her affair with a leadminer.

Cauldron Snout is beside Cow Green Reservoir which was built in 1967-71 to provide for the new industries of Teesside. It holds back 40 million cubic metres of water - and it also holds back the Tees in spate.

Old timers tell of the famed Tees 'roll'. In pre-reservoir days, heavy rainfall on the fells came coursing downstream, causing the river to rise rapidly, a metre within minutes. As far down as Croft, on the outskirts of Darlington, they still talk of a 6ft high wall of water that, once or twice a year, came rolling down river to break on their ancient bridge.

It was this roll that led to the first chronicled fatality at High Force.

The great characteristic of the Force is the huge chunk of Whin Sill that juts out, dividing it into two. Usually, a torrent drops over the southern side and a trickle tumbles down the northern.

There is no proper record of the two uniting into one extraordinary fall. Indeed, the closest was probably in the great, great flood of 1869 when still visible above the raging torrent was a piece of rock "the size of a sheep" (because that's how they measure things in Teesdale).

So when the river was on a roll, the safest place to be was the uncoverable head of High Force. A summer roll trapped two men there on June 24, 1880.

"Whilst looking over the deep abyss of waters, the Tees suddenly rose from heavy thunder rains in the higher reaches, and before the tourists were aware they were surrounded," reported The Northern Echo. "They were unable to reach the riverbanks on either side, and commenced to wave their handkerchiefs to attract attention from inmates of the High Force Hotel."

Assistance came. Two gamekeepers threw them a rope. One tied it around his waist and was pulled to the safety of the Durham side.

"The rope was again thrown to the other," continued the Echo, "and in pulling him ashore, it broke, and the consequence was the unfortunate man was carried headlong with great force over the falls into the rocky bed below, and has not been seen or heard of."

He was Mr GH Stephenson of Gateshead, an accountant with Hawthorn's engineering firm in Newcastle. If he had stayed in the middle until the spate had subsided, he'd probably have been able to step to safety.

"The sad affair has cast quite a gloom over the neighbourhood," concluded the Echo, "and is the first accident of the kind that has ever occurred at these far-famed waterfalls."

This was dangerous territory for the paper to stray into - territory the paper again strayed into this week when reporting the miraculous escape of Alan Whittaker, 55. He tumbled while taking photographs on Saturday and broke only his shoulder.

"Eighty people before him are known to have died," we said.

In truth, there has probably been only a handful of deaths - perhaps four in the last 30 years. None more heart-breaking than in 1986 when a two-year-old boy and his 31-year-old father were swept over the top. The father, a farmer from near Northallerton, ended safely on a ledge 30ft down while the boy drowned.

On the whole, though, the siren of the Tees is curiously benign. For while there were three deaths between 1970 and 1990, there were five miraculous escapes. These included a 12-year-old from Norfolk who fell the full drop in 1987 and broke just his nose, and a Dutchman rejoicing in the name of Wilhelmus Schraven who, in 1974, fell 20ft onto a ledge and lost just the £90 holiday money in his wallet.

This week, we also strayed onto other territory as dangerous as the top of High Force when we claimed that the waterfall is "the highest in England". It's name suggests that it is - "force" comes from the old Norse "foss" meaning waterfall.

But at 70ft (21 metres) it is not as high as Hardraw Force in Wensleydale nor Scale Force in the Lake District which are both 100ft. For the record, the highest falls in Europe is Utigordsfoss in Norway (1,969ft) and the highest in the world is Angel Falls in Venezuela (2,648ft).

High Force's correct claim to fame is that more water pours over it than any other fall in the country. Over Stanley Falls in Africa flows 17,000 cubic metres every second, making it the most powerful in the world; over Dettifoss in Iceland flows 500 cubic metres a second, making it the most powerful in Europe. And over High Force flows 300 cubic metres per second.

It is, then, officially the greatest waterfall in the country - and it certainly looks that way when you peer down from its head. Although we really wouldn't recommend you do, no matter how alluring the siren of the Tees sounds.

Published: 24/09/2005