Deepdale Reccy – Saturday Afternoon Special

Over the next several months, I’ve got some short Saturday afternoon walks planned for the Durham County Council guided walks programme, each one with the title “Saturday Afternoon Special” and each one starting in or near a well-known County Durham town centre for a four or five mile trundle somewhere nice.   The purpose of these walks is entirely and simply to have a walk; to play truant from other traditional Saturday afternoon activities such as shopping and..er… shopping.

The first of these is at Barnard Castle next Saturday afternoon (spooky, that , eh?) starting outside the Post office at 1:00 o’clock and today was the day for doing the reccy.

I took Bruno along, although I’m not allowed to take him on the actual walk.

Today’s route was basically a couple of miles of autumn woodland through Deepdale to Cat Castle and back via Raygill riding centre. Its about five miles.

Its usually pretty muddy with a special kind of extra-skitey Barnard Castle clart on the steep bits which normally means hanging on to trees. But today, it wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t find any hazards, apart from a little bit of exposure over some steep ground and some potentially scary beef cattle. I met the farmer who told me that they might investigate the strange dog (I don’t think he’s all that strange, really….) and the fact that I had a rucksack on might convince them that I’d come to feed them – and that if things got scary, to let the dog go. In the end, they showed a bit of interest but they weren’t really that bothered.

Deepdale is a very popular dog-walking place for  Barnard Castilians – they can run about daft and there’s no stock, although there’s probably deer to chase. Its very nice, but some places in the upper parts are a bit precipitous – just a tip there for anybody concerned about hanging over huge drops off bendy saplings……