Walking on Wolsingham North Moor

As part of my defence against my recent diagnosis of incompetent sugar metabolisation, the treatment of which was “Try not to be so fat”, I joined a Durham County Council walk advertised as hard and Long and 9.5 miles.
We gathered at the cafe at Bradley Burn  - I’m not exactly sure how many walkers, but I did hear that there may have been at least 38, including Jenny the leader and the three stewards.

We splodged and slithered up through pastures to the edge, where an Very Mucky track took us to the site of the arrest of the Blessed John  Ducket in 1643, after which he got quite cut up at Tyburn in as an unpleasant a way as you could imagine. Glossing over this disturbing thought, and being thankful that as a civilisation, we have definitely moved on a bit, we passed beneath rainbows and into the hissing teeth of a violent and stinging squall up on to the heights of North Moor. Here we paused for our refreshments – in my case, some filter coffee, a beef spread and onion butty, an orange, a mince pie (we have several left over) and a slithery bit of cheese I found which appears to have survived the camping trip with Dawn the other day. Not sure exactly how that happened.

Afterwards, there was more mud to be enjoyed but the weather was just windy and not so squally along the contouring path to Baal Hill. I’ll be doing guided walks along here shortly and in the summer…. lovely views by the way.
We passed through Wolsingham and plodded along the less muddy path beside the Wear back to Bradley Burn where all the cars remained in  tact but the cafe was closed. But as this was only three miles West of Knipe Towers, the Pieland kettle was not too far distant…..
I measured the walk as 9.7 miles. Thats OK. We like 9.7 miles. Y’see , there’s no need to be fat and wobbly. Just take a Durham County Council guided walk through clinging mud and slutch whilst being batterred (like a fish) by howling maelstroms and all your Christmas calories will be gone. And you get good views and a bit of a chat.