Justanotherdogwalk

We’re quite fortunate up here in Pieland to have a fine collection of shortish walks suitable for taking one’s pooch on for an afternoon of sniffing at things and chasing wabbits. The dog often enjoys himself too…

Today’s dogdawdle, for instance was a brief exploration of the upper bits of Stanhope Dene.

We parked the knipemobile in the County Council free car park at Park Head and wandered down the old railway incline as far as Heathery Burn (guess what plant grows here…) and thus into Stanhope Dene.

Here, Lucky took the opportunity to fall into the beck – right up to the ears, which remained dry, somehow , and, having a little panic afterwards. He fell into the Stanhope Dene salmon pool. This is a lovely spot, ideal for the scoffing of an egg and tomato butty whilst watching huge salmon jumping up the little waterfalls. This happens, or at least, starts to happen around the end of October/early November should anybody want to get up really close to a jumping fish.

Anyway, Lucky fell in. So, as the sun was hot in this sheltered spot, I ate my banana whilst Lucky luxuriated and dried out in the warm.

I would have gone to the Yorkshire dales, but realised this morning that it was the bank holiday weekend and the Yorkshire Dales aren’t very nice on bank holiday weekends – so I’ll go sometime next week.

Today’s walk finished with a little strollette on the CtoC route – another old railway line, leading back to Park Head.

I wouldn’t normally blog about a routine dog walk, but one of the pics of Lucky is worth sharing, I think….  He’s still doing well, but he seems to have developed a strange phobia about getting into the car. I’m trying to fix this with cheese at the moment – and telling him what a good lad he is for getting into the car.  I haven;t yet mentioned to him that he’s going to be driving the thing quite shortly.