ONE of the things I love about this area is that it never fails to throw up unexpected fascinations.

Last weekend we were trudging around Piercebridge in the mist and the murk. We took the footpath up from the bridge, through the stately gateposts and into the Cliffe estate.

Beneath the shagpile-depth carpet of leaves there was a stone path edge, and as we entered the field the path took on the feel of an old trod - a straight, cart-width, grassy road cut deep into the field by the passage of time. I don't know if it is really old, or just a driveway dug out a century or two ago by the owners of Cliffe Hall.

At the peak of the field, a lone oaktree guards Betty Watson's Hill. It is a grassed-over pile of large stones that is the remains of a tumulus. It looks a bit bashed, and I gather that it was excavated in 1904 - nothing was found; grave-robbers had been in before.

It was only on the way back from our walk that I discovered that I had missed a second tumulus in the same field behind Cliffe Cricket Club: Howe Hill, it is apparently called. It still has its complete, rounded shape, with no stones visible on its surface. Seven or so slender trees grow out of it - the field around is lined by mediaeval plough marks, but they must have understood and respected the hill and ploughed around it.

I'm not sure we today are aware of the presence of the two tumuli - there's a third on the opposite Durham bank of the Tees at Carlbury. I've asked a couple of Piercebridgians about them, and they couldn't answer my most burning question: who was Betty Watson?

Can I find out before Wednesday's Echo Memories?