Hudeshope King’s Walk and Stuff

 

I’ll be fairly brief with this one – this is not the first time this walk has appeared on the Pieblog.

Its the seven mile (actually nearer six) which goes up one side of the Hudeshope valley and down the other; a Durham County Council walk wot me and superdawg reccied in slowly thawing snow a few days ago and which six people, plus Jane the steward turned up to do on Sunday.

I made one new discovery (there’s always something) – which was the Middleton-in-Teesdale stocks which are opposite Brunswick house and now have a sundial on the top. The stocks would have been used to punish fairly minor offences such as drunkeness, wife beating with a hefty stick,  looking at Lord Barnard In A Funny Way and starving a dog.  Miscreants would in theory at least be at the mercy of ridicule, buit in practise may well have been wise and forward-looking enough to appreciate that any rufty-tufty imprisoned in the stocks would be out in a day or so and might hold a grudge. Those that didn’t actually die of exposure on a frosty night, that is.

The County walk was held in almost warm sunshine, with a few remaining snow runnels on the fells to add a bit of interest and with a small flock of newly arrived lapwings to announce that spring is probably not too far away.

Unfortunately, there are no pics of the County walk as I forgot to put a memory card in the camera and the USB port is broken so unless I faff about emailing the two pics I did take and then doing whatever’s needed to put them on the blog belatedly… there wont be any. Just accept it, folks, no pics this time.

I took pics of the reccy, though, and there’s a map for anybody who wants to follow the route.

Its a nice little walk. But I’m not doing it again for a while!