There may be trouble ahead……

New wire across a stile on footpath 20

 

Oh dear oh dear oh dear….  what have we here? ( I like to sound like a traffic warden every now and then…) A blocked path. A path barricaded off with barbed wire. Tsk Tsk. I couldn’t get across. I wouldn’t allow Superdawg to even try, remembering the damage done to Mr Sloman’s hand back when we  did some Peebles to Moffat walking - and not wanting any similar brutality to Bruno’s naughty parts. So we diverted.

Bruno expresses his feelings at a derelict stile on footpath 25

 

This is Footpath number 20 in the parish of Crook and Willington and today was my adopt-a-path walk around Crook, the purpose of which is to discover things just like this. There will be bother.  I’ll have another look at this in a few weeks to see if anything has happened. There’s always a chance that a local dog walker will discover that he’s left wire clippers in his pocket…  In the meantime, I’ve told the rights of way peeps at the council. I expect they’ll have a word. These things can get a bit routine if nobody does anything naughty. So, I’m chuffed in a smug petty-official kind of way. It would be more than my jobs worth to let it pass, had I not been a volunteer, that is….

Our new open cast coal mine

 

It was a really nice day for this type of thing today, though, and I expect that the farmer was just about to reinstate the stile anyway… (koff)

Yes, there were blue skies a frozen crust on the muddy bits and a thin, slicing kind of wind blowing off the Pennines, which seem to have suddenly turned white. This is good, because I have to do a Reccy at the top of Weardale this week and a play in the white stuff would be nice.

A squall with snowflakes on the lens.

 

There’s some other stiles falling to bits. Same as last time, but a bit more so. Two stiles have received some TLC by the look of them and, towards the end of the walk, there was a brief but lively snow shower.

The walk is about 5 miles and links 3 footpaths and 4 bridleways in a circular walk. The bridleways are always open due to use by local racing stables  kids on bikes and dog walkers. The paths all have stiles which have been made from mining timbers dating to the 1960’s and , mostly, they’re not in good condition. many of the paths have been open casted in the past – some are currently being dug up again. And they put one back in the wrong place……. dhuhh….