Through The Post Doggly

Me and LTD went to the North Yorkshire Moors. Now, it seems that I don’t often got to the North Yorkshire Moors for two reasons: Firstly, I get lost in Middlesbrough on the way and secondly, the moors are a bit dull. In fact, they’re really really dull. The best bits are the dales in between the moors, but these are busy with motorbikes and thieves from Middlesbrough. But the moors are a bit  flat and shapeless and they go on and on and on….

But yesterday, we made an exception, the reason being that LTD had been looking at maps and had found a place called “Barker Ridge” and was determined to go and have a bark look to see what it was like. Coincidentally, I also found two little Tumps wot I’d never done which just happened to be in the same place.

So we went. It was a very nice day too – lots of sunshine. Not warm sunshine, really, but sunshine and this made a nice change from the wet and windy stuff we’ve been having since October and the bits of cold, grey, icy, nithering, shivering goose-pimply episodes in between the gales.

We went to Chop Gate, where there’s a village hall car park with a nice and cheap parking fee of just the one English pound (United Utilities take note that the Chop Gate car park was full and the verges were empty, which is the exact opposite of what happens in the Lake District. In fact, recently, we’ve found that despite the floods and the appeal for economic sympathy from the punters, the Lake District business community remains a greedy set of money-grubbing chancers who wont take single night B&B bookings and/or attempt to charge £150 for a couple of nights in a feckin hut with no heating, no water and no bed linen.)

 

I digress , rantingly.

So , we climbed up the steep hill through the dead bracken onto the moor top where we found a couple of old cairns, one of which was quite close to the summit of Noon Hill. Barker Ridge followed, where no barking was allowed and then on to Wath Hill, a bijoux greeen grassy hill with a view and some pregnant sheep, which we tiptoed through with a tight lead so as not to cause and bother.

We returned to the start by the tarmacced lanes, thus avoiding any further lambing fields, most of the sheep with green or orange bottoms being about to give birth and going in there with a dog being likely to cause apoplexy amongst shepherds and farmers and, possibly not be all that good for a podding ewe either.

We only did seven miles, but since I had to do a 13 mile reccy of a guided walk today, and still carrying the extra 4 kg of wobbly winter fat, I was reasonably happy with this. Must determine to lose a bit of wobbly fat before the cardiac nurse calls me in to tell me I’m too fat and should consider a Mediterranean diet for my annual review.

And we didn’t get lost in Middlesbrough on the way home.