North Pennines Walking Festival–Around the Long Man

This walk got included in the North Pennines AONB walking festival by a fluke of timing – that is to say that it’s timing to coincide with the festival was ..er….. coincidental.

It doesn’t  matter, though and 17 people turned up at Bollihope and NO DOGS because there was a little bit of open access where yer pooches are technically banned and , as I found on the reccies, there was a lorra lorra cattle.

The route circumnavigates the Long Man – a hill on the Weardale/Teesdale watershed so named either because it has a big cairn on the top or because it’s profile is of a long ridge. The top can be easily accessed from the parking area at the summit of the Eggleston to Stanhope road, but this delight was not for us. We went around.


Me and Lucky did a reccy in cold, windy and sunny conditions about a week ago – doing about half of the route, and abandoning the attempt near the Elephant Trees due to four fields full of cows with no apparent avoidance tactics available. So I returned a few days later and did the cowful bits without Lucky my Cuddlebuddy (interesting concept by the way – check it out on Google – there ought to be more of this kind of thing…). None of the cows were any bother and neither were the two horses or the two friendly farm dogs, one of whom selected a cow pat in celebration of our meeting and presented to somebody in the farmhouse kitchen.
On the day it was cool on the tops and quite hot on the bottoms… not that..er…  that was a different blogpost…
Here’s a map. Its 11 miles and you’re supposed to try to follow the line of the “roman road” (not actually roman at all) “Five Peaks” mentioned on the map is actually called “Five Pikes” well dhuhh…