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| Looking towards Rothbury from Simonside in Northumberland on this excellent family walk |
Simonside walk in Northumberland overview:
Simonside walk distance: 4.5 miles (7.3km)
Simonside walk time: 2-3 hours with stops
Difficulty: Easy-moderate
This Simonside walk is a cracking walk for all the family and has a bit of everything; woodland, a variety of great views and quirky rock formations. Its fairly easy going all teh way really with just a bit of an uphill section up to the Simonside summit, but this proved no difficulty for our gang aged from 4 to 70!
Simonside & Dove crag walk map route:
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| I recommend doing the walk in an anti-clockwise direction heading to the 430m summit of Simonside first and then onto Dove crag and back into the woodland |
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| As you can see the car park itself is pretty high up so it’s not much uphill walking for the great views you encounter |
Photos of what to expect on this Simonside walk:
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| The official Forestry car park (free to park) marks the start of this walk and there is ample space for a lot of cars |
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| As you can see there was quite a gang of us in this walk – which included kids aged, 4,5, 8 and a 1 year-old who got carried all the way! Alright for some eh! The kids done really well to finish it with no real problems for them, we just made sure we had quite a few stops and I guess our walk was slower than most. |
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| The first section of the walk is in a nice woodland and sheltered out any wind |
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| The views open out a bit as the woodland clears and we can see the summit of Simonside just in the centre of the photo. This is the point to get off the main path and explore Little Church rock if you wish – just turn 90 degrees left and it’s about 100m up. |
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| Little Church rock enroute to Simonside, just retrace your steps to get back on the main path after visiting it |
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| Looking north towards the village of Thropton – we’ll later be heading to a pub in this village |
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| The summit of Simonside beckons – we’ll stop just near that big rock to the right for a spot of lunch. As we had never walked to Simonside before – we did initially think we’d walk to this very point and see how the kids feel and if they are up to continuing or whether we should turnaround and head back the way we came. But it was quicker than we thought to get to this point and this uphill section (the main uphill you will do) looked very achievable – so we continued the walk 🙂 |
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| The steps make it easier going up this section and it wasn’t too difficult |
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| Cracking views at the top looking towards Rothbury |
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| The kids made it and are buzzing 🙂 |
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| You get some superb views all along the edge up here |
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| The unique weathered rock of Simonside |
