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Sunday 1 February 2009

Alwinton to Wether Cairn











And so, following from the previous post, me and superdawg decided to test out the baking on a little trundlette up the Cheviots.

We started at Alwinton, mooched over to Clennel and walked up the valley of the River Alwin, which really should be called Alwindale but isn’t.

A shepherd greeted Bruno with a kind word and a pat whilst another shepherd had shepherded his family, all on various-sized ATVs for a jaunt up the track. Two little lads (one very little as it happens) were having a bit of trouble making their machines do as they were bid. All good, clean fun anyway.

After a bit of forest wandering (I notice quite a few old campfires, chopped trees, broken glass incidentally – not sure who’s responsible for this..) we emerged from the trees high up Allerhope Burn and plodded up the final 100 or so metres to the top.

On the way I noticed a fox cub which seems to have died whilst sheltering behind some Juncus. It looked a very pathetic sight. Nature can be so bloody miserable sometimes…

Anyway, our target for today – Wether Cairn at 563 metres was frozen solid. Even the snow was frozen too hard for the dog to stand up on and he was enjoying doing the cartoon-dog-running-away thing. I couldn’t stand up on it either, so I had to walk around some big patches. A few desultory snow showers were just adding a thin coating.

We returned across some nice, grassy and downhill moorland (cracking fellwalking) to Puncherton farm and by a permissive path along Puncherton Gill.

It were perishing cold all day. The A68 was “interesting” in parts due to the increasing snow squalls.

11 miles.

Wether Cairn ain’t the place to raise your kids
In fact its cold as hell
And there’s no-one there to raise them
If you did.

Hiker Man - Elton Ben 1971. (It doesn’t actually make much sense does it?)

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