Happy Wandering in the Cheviot Hills

It was in the Asda car park in Blyth during a brief respite from driving around trying to find Dawn’s new pad when I turned my attention to my nokia wotsit phone thing (apols for the technical talk here…). It was then that I rang Mrs Pieman who’d made a missed call and discovered that the Scottish-based sept of the knipe clan had increased by one little baby girl. So I was chuffed and even gruntled at this news and so was in a happy mood, though slightly distracted when I eventually located Dawn and we drove off through Northumberland to find the Breamish valley.

The target for today was a sub-dewey with just 23 metres of re-ascent called Great Standrop. But first, after wandering along the road for a bit, we turned off over tussocky moors to climb Cunyan Crags. Cunyan Crags is very nice and an ideal spot, we thought, for a summer solstice camp-out, specially since it seems to have an uninterrupted view of the East coast , which is, of course, where the sun usually comes up first thing in the morning.

Then , after passing over the soppy lump that is Dunmoor Hill (not the only soppy lump on this walk, by the way!) We splashed on through the boggy bits and climbed ever-so-slowly up Hedgehope Hill, stopping on the way for refreshments and for Lucky to roll about a bit in the grass. Dawn waited till me and the pooch bagged the actual top and then we pressed on down along an intermittent path for the bagging of Great Standrop.

Now Great Standrop punches well above it’s diminutive actual contours – there being just the two ten metre contours. In fact it sticks out like a huge great lump when seen from above, and, having two summits, has one more than most tops owning a similar number of contours. Finally, for those willing to risk life and limb, well, limb anyway, there’s a bit of scrambling to be had up one side. This is steep, grassy and just a bit desperate. There’s an easier way round the other side. It is, however defended by a necklace of boulders which have holes in between them.

But the top (both tops) are fine places to sit about, or, in the case of Luckythedog, to roll about in the grass again.

The descent was along an ATV track which eventually disappeared and then down to LInhope, a descent during which Lucky came within inches of a disastrous coming together with a large mature adder. Lucky is a good name for Lucky.

We returned along the road, which was quiet.

It was ten and a half miles in mainly warm sunshine, although there was a fierce wind on Hedgehope Hill. Nice day, good trip… 

Back at knipetowers a couple of hours later, I wet the bairn’s heid with Guinness Dublin porter….. or two…

That’s another one for Penyghent then.

Dawn’s version can be read on her blog here

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