Wolsingham Wayfarers Walk to High Hurth Edge Forest-in-Teesdale

This was another Walkleader Replacement Service, the proper leader being indisposed just now – an 8 mile walk from Bowlees to Forest in Teesdale. I made the route up and it was, kind-of, figure-eight shaped where the middle bit of the figure eight didn’t quite meet up. I tried to make it interesting by including some light speleology.

Me and LTD did a reccy last week in nice, warm sunshine, with lambs gambolling in the pastures, curlews and lapwings hurtling about everywhere and no cows in the fields. This is important because cows can be specially excitable when they’ve just been let out of the sheds and LTD barks at cows. This is not a good indicator and puts the willies right up me I can tell you.

In the end, I worked out that the route was 8.5 miles.  Participating Wolsingham Wayfarers, of which there were seven declared that is was 9.5. It was probably somewhere in between.

We had a bit of woodland walking, some fairly blank moorland, some pastures and a little crag (High Hurth Edge) which has some small caves in it, previously visited on Durham County Council walks. The caves are explorable with a little care and one seems to be occupied by animals, possibly rabbits, maybe a fox, and there was some kind of raptor nesting on the crag last week, who didn’t seem to be there on Sunday. LTD was really very interested in the occupied hole and snuffled, whined and wagged his tail at whatever was in there.

High Hurth Edge is a cracking lunch spot by the way – it has a fine view of the wilds of Upper Teesdale as far as the Cross Fell hills and, when the sun eventually does shine, it can get quite warm and there is a temptation to allow oneself to doze-off in such circumstances. I doubt if whatever is living in the cave is dangerous, and a snooze, therefore, should be quite safe.

We returned to Bowlees via more lamb-occupied pastures and a bit more moorland. Still no cows out, although there were hopefull glances grom a small herd in a shed. I expect they’ll be out as soon as the grass starts to grow a bit more. It was quite cold on Sunday, so the grass is still being a bit reluctant.

After-walk jinkies in the form of tea and scones were had in the cafe at Bowlees.

There’s a map below. (Not to be used for navigation or wrapping chips)

Wolsingham Wayfarers Walks are free to attend and their website is here- click this link and have a look