Review of 2025

Chris Woodley-Stewart, Director

It’s been another interesting, and at times challenging, year in the North Pennines National Landscape team, and in the nature, landscape and heritage world more widely.

For us, highlights include:

• Securing a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant as part of its new Landscape Connections programme – we’re currently working with partners on a programme that will greatly improve farm advice for nature across the area
• Supporting projects through our Farming in Protected Landscapes grant scheme, funded by Defra
• Launching our new long-distance trail, The Roof of England Walk, with great national press coverage for the area
• Restoring many hectares of peatland, and generating significant private finance for nature through this work
• Holding our North Pennines NatureFest and Stargazing festivals
• Increasing our work with volunteers
• Working with hundreds of school children to help them discover more about the area’s nature and heritage and especially its geology
• Creating the new North Pennines Young Archaeology Club
• Hosting the Pennine Way at 60 exhibition as part of its journey along the iconic national trail
• Working with local community groups across the area, e.g. as part of the Eden Rivers Trust-led ‘Access to Eden’ programme
• Holding the hugely successful Nenthead 200 event which we co-curated with the local community
• Further developing big projects around the historic environment, nature and access
• Launching the draft Management Plan for consultation
• Adding to our North Pennines Outdoor Mobility Network with new Trampers and a new location

From a personal perspective, and picking one occasion, I especially enjoyed the event we held with Northern Heartlands, at Raby Castle, the culmination of our joint project Creatively Connected, part of our long-running, NLHF-funded programme ‘Tees Swale – naturally connected’. Northern Heartlands and a group of innovative artists worked with local farmers and communities to explore new ways of looking at landscape. You can hear a poem inspired by the day here.

There are some challenges ahead. The future for some of the central pillars of conservation – the mitigation hierarchy and the precautionary principle, are being threatened like never before. There is a still a pressing need to properly support and reward the farming community for nature-friendly farming. If we, as a society, want to change the social contract we have with farmers, they need the tools to do the job.

Locally, there are two huge wind farms being planned for our moorlands in the south of the National Landscape, Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects which we believe would be in total conflict with the policies which protected this landscape, and the neighbouring Yorkshire Dales National Park. There has to be a way to address climate change, with the right technology in the right place – and this surely isn’t it.

Despite the challenges, there are so many reasons why the North Pennines is still a wonderful place and it’s a privilege to live and work here. In the coming year, I hope you can get out and enjoy the landscape to the full and that inspires you as it inspires the National Landscape team.