Snowday - Its grim ooop North

This post is in the key of E with standard blues changes.

Well I woke up dis mornin

An ma woman dun left me.

Ashley, she's visitin her dad in Halifax

I was intending to have a walk somewhere hilly today, but I woke up dis mornin (see above) and there was piles of snow everywhere. The lads who live next door had failed to get to work due to the road being too slippery (it goes up a big hill, or "bank" as they call hills in Crook)

The A66 and A68 were closed and a lorry had blocked the A1. Not weather for driving anywhere, so me and superdawg, and his sidekick, Robin (aka Tammy) went for a walk up the Deerness Valley Walk.

The Deerness Valley walk starts (or finishes?) in Crook and goes over the hill to the..er... Deerness valley, which it follows to the outskirts of Durham. From there other walks go to Lanchester and to Bishop Auckland. The Lanchester walk links up with the Derwent Valley walk, which can be followed to Gateshead, or if you follow it the other way, it goes to Weardale.

These are all old railway lines. The Deerness valley route is heavily wooded due to being planted for pit props which were never used. Its all quite beautiful.

We just got to the top of the hill where it we met the hill fog and a snow plough. Very deep snow which was heavy, wet stuff and quite hard work.

Its an ill wind, though - as they say - the local schoolkids were rolling snowballs, sledging and chucking snow at each other instead of being at school. As this is the type of snowfall we used to have when I were a lad, and which we haven't had for a few years now, I consider this to be good education anyway. they'll now be able to say to their kids (when they get some kids) - "When I were a lad, it used to snow up ter t' rooftops...."

Its freezing now, so the snow conditions on the hills this weekend might be quite good......