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Sunday 14 February 2010

Nine Standards Rigg

nine standards rigg and low standard mongrel

This was yet another – even, yet another (!) walk in the series of walks bagging the Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot tops – even though most of this one is in Westmorland – or Cumbria, if you’re into the modern post 1974 stuff….

kirkby stephen

We parked freely by Kirkby Stephen Cattle Mart, pausing only briefly to do an enormous poo by Frank’s Bridge – which I had to clean up using a bliddy sandwhich bag. Why superdawg can’t do a poo in a less sensitive place, i can’t imagine. he was in the doghouse about this for the next twenty minutes. I sulked and consulted the map, bemoaning my now naked cheese and tomato butty.

tailbridge hill snowline coming up

We progressed alongside a pleasant beck and then uphill through pastures to Lockthwaithe which may not be a farm any more – and ever upwards into the hard snows of Tailbridge Hill for a lunch by the beck. And then, more foggily, ever upwards again, handrailing a small snowed-in beck to the top of White Mossy Hill, which was white but not very mossy. It was bloody bleak, truth be told, so we buggerred off in a generally Northwards direction to Nine Standards which has a load of big cairns, supposedly being all very old, but actually, none dating back more than ten years (they were all rebuilt – I saw it happen…)

nine standards frozen waterfall

nr summit white mossy hill

And then I had to navigate a bit to find the entrance off the moor to a lane, some 3 or 4 kilometres “Over There”. This didn’t go too well. I enjoyed walking on the hard snow, but drifted too far North and had to “adjust”, which was bloody hard work for half an hour over slippery tussocks. Incidentally, it did occur to me that “Slippery Tussocks” would have made a fine name for a very poor 1970’s pop group with long hair and sparkly stuff a la Slade. The drummer would now be working as a bus driver in Wolverhampton and the lead singer would be in prison in Tristan da Cunha for insulting the president.

nine standards rigg

But anyway, after a while, we got to the strategic gate with just 9 metres to spare. i thought this was close enough. Bruno demurred.

A short bit of road and lane took us to the old Tebay-Bishop Auckland railway line which is now a permissive path (what is the world coming to?) – which we followed for a bit to Hartley and thence back to Kirkby Stephen.

permissive path

The A66 was quiet. The knipemobile reached a speed of 105mph on the downhill Durham, side, and, whilst still being passed at even more speed by , frankly, lunatics, I got scared and slowed down a bit.

Bruno slept innocently in the back.

We did 12 miles and 1800 feet of ascent.

It were cold but quite grand. I’d do it again.

nine standards

5 comments:

John J said...

Tremendously atmospheric photographs Mike!

Ouslesti?

Mike Knipe said...

Cheers John - it were a bit atmospherical, to be fair.

Ouslesti - very poor French, that. Ou Est Lesti? Lesti est dans l'arbre sans pantalons. Parce q'il est un wazzock.

Unknown said...

Bfff! - qui est vous appelling un wazzock?

Il est a bit atmospheric ur in Timperley at the minute, -1degC of atmospherics.


ullys

Hmmm.

Mike Knipe said...

C'est plus chaude ici en Crook - 2 degrees celciplume.

Prenez la gauche!

John J said...

Whoops, the 'Bollin' was me signed in using the wrong account!

blesses!

JJ