Yet Another Teesdale Trundle

This is the penultimate reccy for the summertime Durham County Council walks programme. This one is just a bit of simple fellwalking. I also wanted to have a look at a bit of path that me and Louise missed a few weeks back when it went dark.

And so, bright and early this morning, with Superdawg all revved up and me full of porridge, we hurtled off to Middleton in Teesdale, abandoned the knipemobile in the working mens club car park and took to the high road that goes to Newbiggin. This is a cracking easy bit of walking with a fine view of Teesdale and a small betusked pig, who either wanted our company, it being a bit lonely up there, or, more likely a tasty snack. Bruno barked at him. He didn’t seem too bothered. We pressed on.

We did the bit of missed path – just as well we didn’t try this in the dark, as it happens, followed by pleasant riverbanks to a footbridge and a path through sheep pastures to the outer suburbs of Holwick.

A bit later and we were enjoying the brief drama of Holwick scar and then the wide-open spaces of Crosthwaite Common. Agoraphobics would not enjoy Crosthwaite Common. I couldn’t help noticing that today there were curlew, snipe and golden plover calling. Spring must be just turning the corner at the end of our road. We need to put the kettle on for when it gets home. Get the biscuit tin out and turn up the gas fire…  And the other noticeable bird, jinking around making squeaky toy noises were the lapwings. This is lapwing central. I determined to use the “movie” function on the digital camera to capture their antics. I got the camera out, selected “movie” – and they’d all gone. I put the camera away and they all came back. camera out – no lapwings. Camera in – lapwings. Eventually I got a poor and windy shot of two red grouse escaping and a panoramic shot of the fellside which was noticeably absent of small brown dogs. Bruno had gone hunting.

After a short period  that sinking feeling, he returned, apparently without having killed anything, despite the apparent access to large supplies of wabbits.  He always returns. He has a phobia about being left behind. We continued. 

At lunchtime, we enjoyed the plush comfort if a luncheon hut. (see pic)  This bijoux palace provides excellent shelter from the nithering wind which appears to have forgotten that it was supposed to be a nice, early spring day. The sunshine of the early morning had been replaced by a grey glaur; the hillfog creeping down the hillsides and there was drizzle on the wind. brrrrrrrr….

Later, we joined the Pennine Way back past Kirkcarrion to Middleton. I had another go at creeping up on some lapwings with my camera on “movie”. They buggerred off again. I ate an orange. Bruno snoozed briefly.

More later, I rediscovered Dawn’s chocolaty care package in the glovebox and whilst Bruno enjoyed a rodeo chew, I grazed on orange and pink chocolate drops on the drive home. Pink? What’s she trying to say? Eh?

The walk was ten and a half miles. Its quite a nice walk, really. I must try a different strategy for the lapwings. I’m determined to have a video of them.

 

Dawn Launched on Isaac’s Tea Trail Followed by Frog Frolics

Me and superdawg collected Dawn from the railway station this morning in temperatures roughly twenty degrees celsius warmer than our last trip.

I took her to Allendale and walked a couple or three miles with her Southwards on Isaac’s Tea Trail – she’ll be following Isaac around Nenthead and Alston and back to Allendale over the next few days.

I left her considering a discreet (ish) camping spot somewhere near Sinderhope and wandered back over Stobb Cross to finish a walk of about seven miles. I’ll be back to Allendale to collect Dawn after the weekend.

In the meantime, I came across a sure sign of the imminence of spring – a bit of flooded bridleway bubbling with the unbridled lust of many frogs. No, I mean many, many  naughty frogs. They were at it like frogs, in fact. They stopped when I got close and pretended not to be there, but as I turned away, the combined sigh, bubble and splash of furtling frog-kind  re-establishing corporal contact filled the air. The dirty buggers.

In the other meantime, Dawn had left a bag of goodies in the car – mainly and substantially lots of chocolate drops of varying flavours, some of which were scoffed on the drive home – at least till I remembered my appointment with the wieght management nurse tomorrow… dhuhh….   Bruno was specially pleased with his rodeo chew sticks.

In yet another meantime, I expect that Dawn was having a much warmer night than the last time we were out. It was still 11C in tropical Allendale as I drove South (then East…)

 

Warning: Bad Language Alert!

Yes?! What were you expecting??

Routine stuff – Rookhope Burn, Simonside Hills, Annapurna…. (Annapurna?)

Another fun filled weekend here at Knipe Towers…..

Friday was the day for the guided walk at Rookhope – the route that nearly did for me on tilted ice (tiled over a drop into a beck) last week. twenty one people turned up, including the stewards Richard Hartley and Kathy Angel.

We all had a perishing cold walk accompanied by a persistent and nithering breeze from somewhere really cold. But all the ice had melted, so we just had a little bit of mud. The big victory was that nobody slithered off into the beck. I enjoyed it. It was , maybe a bit harder than I’d advertised it, though, so whilst I’ll try to keep it in the programme (if there is another programme…) – I’ll say that it’s a medium hard. A hard medium, by the way, is one who slaps you for not being quiet during the seance.

Anyway, I think it went reasonably well.

Saturday was for climbing Annapoorna. The diary reads thus:  Saturday – Got up. Ate porridge. Did shopping. Climbed Annapoorna. Had tea. Watched TV. Usual stuff, really.      Annapoorna, I should add, is the name of a house up a hill just outside Crook. I have a short guided walk passing there next weekend. This was the reccy. It was cold again, but this time, it was sunny most of the time, but then it snowed; huuuuge lumps of snow with rainbows….  Very pretty. I’m not sure why a house in County Durham should be named after an Indian goddess, but it is. Fair dooze, I suppose… beats Dun Roamin or Jackandannie

Sunday (today, as it happens) was the day for the Simonside Hills. I’d suggested this venue to Yvonne for a walk with Mick (the peeps we met in the Cheviots) and this had reminded me that I’d not been there for ages and that I should go back and have a lovely walk…  So I did.

It was cold. (Bit of a theme developing here) Actually, it started at minus 2 with a fresh breeze off some maritime glacier somewhere, but accompanied by beautiful blue skies.  The path up to the top from Lordenshaws has been heavily engineered sisnce I was last here and it looks like the Pennine Way now, with lots of Lancashire mill slabs, pretty much all the way to the top. But it’s a fine ridge, with sandstone outcrops, easy walking and an extensive view from the coast to the Cheviots to the Pennines. I could make out Cross fell and the Dun fells quite clearly.

After Simonside, we continued to Tosson Hill where the view is just as big and the trig sits inside a cosy sun-trap of a lunch-time  shelter.

After that its a bit soggier till the forest, which is just dull, and then St Oswald’s Way back to the start. This started off badly with fallen trees and an ugly area of brash, then more forest tracks and a muddy slart for a while. Once out of the woods, though, it all becomes much better and the walk from Spylaw scout hut is a sheer delight of easy walking and big Northumbrian skies

The totals for the weekend were 26 miles (Simonside was 12) and 2300 feet of up, one egg butty and one lancashire cheese butty, two banana, one mars bar, and one of those crispy ginger flapjack things. Bruno’s lunches included one undefined partially consumed sandwich found in the heather, six lumps of ice, an attempt to catch a grouse (failed) and a piece of cheese butty whilst I was distracted by a jogger’s lovely bottom.

Quite a good weekend, really…

Pieblog Milestone and Adopt-a-path stuff

When I looked at the pieblog stats this morning, I managed to catch it as it had just counted 100,000 page views. I was quite chuffed with this, so I celebrated with two cups of coffee and some beta blockers and aspirin.  ‘Course, if you were to look at the stats in Blogger, there’d be a lot more than 100, 000 but many of these page views are Russian spam pageviews, so that source is unreliable – and the stats on statcounter don’t include RSS feeds and other things, so, really, I have no idea how many page views the blog has had. But seeing 100,000 is like watching all the zeroes come up on your car mileometer, just before you knock down the lollipop lady and all those children…

After this I did my adopt-a-path thing on Path 49 in the parish of Crook and Willington . This tour is seven miles and includes path 51 (No sign at the place it leaves the public road),  Path 167 (muddy) Path 56 (OK) Path 176 (waymark pointing the wrong way) , path 108 (OK) Path 106(OK) and path 34 (waymarker post fallen over). I’ve told the council, obviously; I mean, otherwise, what’s the point, really…?

After this we celebrated with more coffee and a snooze. Superdawg came too…

Rookhope Reccy and Pennine Way Bowes Loop

Due to some pretty ‘orrible weather midweek, during which the world iced over, a bit of a traffic jam of “things to do” has built up. I have relieved some of the pressure by having a rangering weekend.

Rangering Thing Number One was the reccy for a low level walk at Rookhope which will take place next Friday. This was a nine mile walk from Rookhope Arch to eastgate and back on either side of Rookhope Burn Its all very nice and pleasant. usually it’s all very nice and pleasant. On saturday it was as slippery as a Government Health spokesman. I very nearly ended up in the beck at one point, although Superdawg showed off by running backwards and forwards over the bit of tilted ice that was defeating me. I climbed up through a fallen birch tree. No dignity was preserved. This walk was actually inspired by the chap with one leg whom we’d met in the Cheviots the other day. he’d done the walk , or something very similar and pointed me at some footpath problems he’d come across. A thaw is currently in progress, so, probably the tilted ice with a ten-foot plunge into a rocky beck issue may have resolved itself by next Friday.

Rangering Thing Number Two was a reccy for the summer programme where we do the Pennine Way section through County Durham. This time it was the turn of the Bowes Alternative, also known as The Bowes Loop. You’d have thought this wouldn’t need a reccy. Not so. A key path has been diverted. Its an improvement. But its a change.

The village hall car park was occupied by lots of walkers putting boots on as I arrived. A few puzzled “I don’t recognise this bloke” looks were shot in my direction, but I did recognise one or two people from County Council walks. It turned out that Crook Ramblers were starting from Bowes Village Hall car park, as were two parties from Barnard Castle, a chap who thought he was in Brough, and me.

First of all, we wandered up the Pennine Way towards Tan Hill. We got dislocated twice. But eventually, we found the key junction and headed North over to Baldersdale.

If anybody is heading up the main Pennine Way route and it’s duff weather, note that there’s a new shooting box by the bridge over Deepdale beck and one side is left open as a walkers’ shelter. Its fairly small and there’s no fireplace, but its quite snug and there’s chairs and a paperback book to read.

And from Baldersdale, we headed back on the loop over by Goldsborough, Levy Pool and the Ex-Chemical warfare base just North of Bowes. It seems that there’s currently a project in prgress to assess the polution from the site. Its a very big site and a map on a post shows “burned areas”, areas affected by mustard gas, areas polluted with arsenic and, a bit sinister – a graveyard.  There’s sheep grazing on it , though, and there seems to be a fine population of rabbits. One flew past me and said “hello” as it happens.

In the Wainwright guide, written in the mid 1960’s, Levy Pool is a ruin. Today, it’s a group of beautifully restored cottages, complete with traditional ling thatching. Levy Pool is also reputed to be the site of a roman dam which fed a leat which in turn fed the Roman fort at Lavatris, aka Bowes. Lvatris appears in the unreleased Carry On Up The Wall starring Bernard Breslaw as Koppitoffius, the British rebel Prince, Sid James as the scheming Roman Prophylaxis salesman Stickituppius and Kenneth Connor as the effete Commander at Fort Lavatris ,  Herpes Simples  who’s ultimately unsuccessful attempts to fend off the attentions of Queen Cartimandua (Hattie Jacques) are..er…. ultimately..er…  koff…unsuccessful…..

Me and the dawg did 24 miles altogether. All very misty and Pennine…