Bollihope Wet Dogs Club

Various circumstances lead to this short doggy walk at Bollihope in Weardale starring Molly, Pip, Superdawg and Rachel and Matt.

It was driech (one of the reasons). In fact it drizzled for pretty much all of the walk. We parked at the normally popular pickernicking spot at Bollihope, just left of Frosterley. In summer, there’s often an ice cream van stationed here. Just a tip there for anybody who is fond of a 99 planning a Weardale walk.

And we followed the line of an old tramway down by Bollihope Burn, through the old quarry with the cowboy pass, past White Kirkley and the limekilns and down to Harehope Quarry where the carved seat was and the lump of Frosterley Marble. The marble is exactly the stuff that can be seen in Durham cathedral. Its not really marble, but cooked limestone. Its very near the Slitt Vein which runs from here to Cowshill and goes through Slitt Wood at Westgate – a poplier place for this blog.

I had a brief poke into Harehope Gill Lead Mine and found the water too deep for the wellies. The apparently loose entrance arch stood up to a bit of violence to see if it would fall down on me, and it seems reasonably safe just now.

Apparently, the mine produced 1165 tons of lead ore from the Slitt vein between 1816 and 1888 and the miners’ privy is part of the archaeology. 72 years of miner poo, eh? Its probably just as well that they shovelled it away.  The there was another three years  of privy visits later on and then it the mine produced fluorspar for a while. How busy the privy was  is not recorded.

We returned whence we came. Just under 4 miles. Bruno did a few more as there were no sheep till we got to White Kirkley, so he had a bit of a bounce around.

Then I couldn’t get the wellies off as they were full of water. Its the suction, y’know. One day they’ll stick permanently.

This is an interesting and easy walk with lots of geology and industrial archaeology to gawp at.

We all got fairly damp, specially those with the extra legs.

Path 49 Revisited.

After lunch, seeing as the day was fine and warm with yer actual blue skies,  me and superdawg decided that since it was now February (pinch punch..), it was finally time to do our new adopt-a-path route.

And so, finding our warm gloves and lead, we headed off up the hill to find FP167 – a pleasant and well used path between two hedges.

We went on to FP49 (which is the one that started it all off in the first place) – FP51 (missing footpath sign.) Come to think of it, missing bus stop sign too. the timetable was there. But not the sign. A driver out before the gritter, most likely…

FP56 was next – an ancient path with a section of hollow way at the top. FP176, through the pastures and a muddy cropped field to Annapoorna.

FP108 another pasture and another mudfest – but this one has, in the past, been fertilised with night soil. Its full of ashes, pottery and bits of glass. Homelands Hospital , now closed, is nearby. Homelands was once the main hospital for Crook and Willington, pre-NHS days… I wonder if this is the source of the night soil?

Anyway – onwards to FP106, up to the golf course, and FP34 from the golf course, along the edge overlooking Crook where we were greeted by a gang of small ponies. FP106 and fP34 need some waymarking in the golf course grounds….

Then down the steep hill to join the Deerness valley Walk that takes us back to town.

I’ll do this again in July. Its a good walk – just under 7 miles and 650 feet of uphill.

I have to report all of this stuff to the County Council on line. Its a clunky system. I’ll do it later.

Can you spot the Ordnance Survey error on the map?

Deepdale and The Butter Stone

 

In view of the idiotic price of petrol, and the fact that I got up a bit late, I decided to have a local walk. Bruno mentioned that we’d never been to the Butter Stone and, drooling at the prospect of a rock fabricated entirely from Kerrygold, he was quite assertive about it.

So, we allowed enough petrol for the forty mile trip to Barnard Castle and back.

And so, after parking neatly on the main street, we wandered down to the River and used the gas pipe bridge to get across – and soon we were in the frosty-yet-somehow-still-muddy wildwood of Deepdale. The hills around had a general cover of new snow, which must have fallen last night and the breeze blowing over the snowfields was searching.

The wild wind wanders around the old wintery wood

Wondering whether it would waken the weather

Winding it’s windy fingers round the old wald world.

Yes folks, it was perishing.

Woodland paths are always filthy at this time of year, and the path through Deepdale is a fine example of filthyness. It wanders up and down the sides, just like the wild wind, in fact.

But – I did notice that there was a lot more bird song in the woods today. Outside the woodland, in the pastures and meadows, there is no apparent life at all.

At one point it traverses a short tilted shelf  overlooking a vegetated crag where the path is slippery with slutch and where a slip would have dire consequences. Bruno was strictly on the lead here. If I fell, he was coming with me.

At another point, there are six stone plinths which are the foundations for the Bishop Auckland – Tebay railway which crossed the gorge at this point. The trackbed of the viaduct was about 50 metres above this point.

Later, the path escapes to the long Eastern Pennine slope where there are small crags with overhangs and dry bracken – ideal for scoffing a chicken and bacon butty out of the nithering breeze.

Even later, we wandered across the edge of Battle Hill firing range and over easy moors to the Butter Stone, disappointingly (for superdawg), not made of butter at all.

The Butter Stone, so local legend has it, used to be the place where  the villagers of Cotherstone, undergoing a self-imposed lockdown during the plague, would leave dairy products for trade. And these would be swapped for whatever they would have needed. I suspect that this would at least contain salt, since villages in those days would be pretty much self-sufficient.

I also suspect that the stone had a deeper significance and an older function, because its not very big, to be frank, and it would have had top have had to be well known in plague times. There was, in fact, a small votive offering in a little depression in the stone. A penny. Not much of an offering. I added a  5p. Again, not much, but a wish or a blessing (or a curse) escaped me at the time. I expect you’d have to circle it three times clockwise for a blessing and widdershins for a curse. Or something.

We passed down through Lartington Hall parkland which at one time was a walled pleasure garden and at another, belonged to a 10th Century Danish aristocrat who gave it to the Bishop of Durham. It has some very fine old trees…

As I returned to Barnard Castle, it went dark.

We did 11 miles and about 1000 feet of uphill

The snatch of poetry , by the way, is an English translation of an old poem – I can’t remember whether its Old English or whether somebody just made it up and said it was Old English… .

Lillies, Lead and Shiny Things

Finally, the last reccy for the Durham County Council summer guided walks programme. This one starts at Baybridge Pickernick place, which sits squarely on the Northumberland side of the River Derwent and , yet, is just, but only just in County Durham. The river moved, see?

This is a short walk and, in view of the mild weather (Nine of yer Queen’s degrees Celsius), and the shortness of the occasion, I went lightweight. My pack weight was nil. Lets forget the 10kg of wobbly fat around the gut, the pack weight was nil. There was no pack.

And I was wearing the cruben fibre thong as a base layer. Not quite sure what to do with the guy ropes…..

The walk follows great lumps of my Blanchland adopt-a-path route, but without the diversion up the hill to Townfield, and with the addition of a short excursion up Footpath 17 in Hunstanworth parish. This is a new, recently diverted/created path and, thus, has new stiles and waymarks. It goes through a spruce plantation, some of who’s trees are a bit friendly. I expect they’ll respond to a pair of secateurs just before the walk.

So, I hear you ask…..  why the daft title….   wellllll… the lillies are bluebells which are abundant in may and June in the woods hereabouts. there’s loads of them, and the walk will be in June so that we can see them and go “ooooh - bluebells” They’re not very impressive just now, but they’re in all of the woodland pictures on this blogpost.

The Lead is the Derwent Lead Mine complex, long defunct, but which still has culverts, spoil heaps, adits, shafts and the old steam-powered water pumping station.

The shiny things are the jewels to be found in the spoil heaps – mainly flourspar, but some other crystals, too.

We did the walk in just under two and a half hours – but with no stops. We did have time for some fun in the snow, and some more fun with a squeaky toy which seems to have appeared out of a thawed snowdrift. Bruno, of course, is a connoisseur of squeaky toys. It got a bit annoying after a while.

All good stuff, though – a nice, short walk of just under five miles and 680 feet of uphill…

Today, I also got a nice letter from Penrith saying I owe the local judiciary sixty quid for driving at 51 mph at Brough on my way to Windermere the other day. Dhuhhh.. Still, on the bright side, they’ve given me three points, so I must have been driving fairly well or something….  I can spend the three points on a speed awareness course, apparently, instead. I’ll probably do that. I thought I was going faster than that…..

Incidentally, if anybody wants their squeaky toy back, send me an email and I’ll make the appropriate arrangements. Bruno is looking after it for the time being. Its in safe paws…

Howden le Wear Walks Trilogy - Walk 4

Bruno was having a barking morning – mainly at anybody who dared to walk past the house – or blackbirds – or anything, really. So after careful scoffing of a bacon butty, I suggested that as it was such a nice day, we could go out and finish the fourth walk in the Howden le Wear trilogy. You know the one I mean. The bonus walk. Anyway, it mended him from the barking, in favour of standing whining by the drawer containing his lead.

And so we did the walk. It was, indeed, a lovely, sunny day, and the temperature was reaching a scorching 3 degrees C. That’s plus 3 degrees.  Unfortunately, the overnight snowstorm that had turned to a gentle drizzle had hit the ground which has been well below freezing since November. The result was a skating rink.

To avoid the pirouettes and la-di-da’s involving close contact with the ground, I found that by leaning back and mentioning that there were “wabbits” further along, I could get Bruno to pull in as straight a line as possible and thus, avoid much in the way of effort at self-propulsion. This was fine till he cocked his leg when I overtook him and unbalanced him so that a little yellow fountain was produced. This curved through the air in a graceful arc and produced a beautiful rainbow. Obviously.

Soon, we were in Howden le Wear and doing Walk 4. This goes through lots of fields, some of which have been mined for coal, initially in bell pits, then in proper pits with black-faced miners and stuff, and then in huuuuuuuge open cast holes with tonka toys at the bottom. They put all the countryside back again, but not necessarily in the correct order. Its very smooth in parts.

We crossed an old tubway from an old coal mine. The old tub being played by me, post Christmas and, thanks, I’ve now completed my quest to rid the house of fine whiskies and tins of beer. This is just for anybody who was worrying about how I was coping with all that liquid.

The stiles were all, generally OK. One was a bit wobbly and another had some hawthorn which was a bit over-familiar with my jacket. It needs some government cut-backs.

The walk description is mainly OK, although there’s a few things that could be improved, I suppose.

And it was outrageously muddy around Field House farm. Luckily, at the moment, the mud is frozen solid. It’ll soon thaw out, though, and anybody fond of their wellies should note that they’re likely to lose one or both to the morass.

What it really needs is six girls in bikinis acting out The Battle of Marston Moor with handbags.

The walk is three miles and links up with the other three walks. Me and superdawg did six. Cos we’re brill, innit?

Its a good walk. 

And that about wraps it up for the Howden le Wear walks.

New Ice Age. Roddymoor Destroyed by Glacier

This is not strictly true, although it may be just a bit early.
Today’s walk has appeared in the Pie Blog on severalteen occasions previously. It is the January adopt-a-path walk checking out various paths and bridleways on the North side of Crook. This is the side with the hill – just about a thousand feet high, in fact. I’ll do the walk again in July.

We (me and superdawg) discovered two decrepit stiles and a missing “public footpath” sign, which has probably been borrowed by Pikeys for it’s aluminium. I will report on all this, including the paths which didn’t have any problems, in  a couple of days. There’s nobody in at County Hall anyway.

We also met “Bud” a nice little dog and his more scary friend “Fluffy”, a twelve stone crossbred rottweiler  who arrived at speed with raised hackles and a threatening growl and stuck his nose up Bruno’s bum. This is ill-advised for many reasons, I have to say.
We also discovered that after all the snow has melted, it leaves behind a lot of litter and dog poo.
There’s a lovely wind factory on the tops. One day , children, everywhere will look like this

We met some chickens, some sheep and a young lad walking his puppy. (This is not a euphamism by the way, he really was walking a puppy) and some horses and chickens.
We also discovered, in the graveyard at Billy Row, a small grave with fresh Christmas toys and flowers and so on. What was a bit surprising, and very touching, was that the occupant of the grave died in 1940. That’s seventy years.
How many of us will be remembered by a family for seventy years?

And that was it. 5 Miles and 650 feet. No pubs were open. And it was cold and grey.  Its a start, though, eh?

Beechburn and Enginemans Terrace – Howden le Wear

This is walk 3 of the series. I said there were three walks. I’d forgotten about the bonus walk, so there’ll be another one.
This walk follows a section of the little valley of Beechburn Beck. (Beechburn and Bitchburn seem to be interchangeable here) This little valley is very pleasant. The walk returns to Howden on an old road which runs parallel to an old railway line. There is the remnants of Victoria – a hamlet built for miners, railway workers and brickmakers. Engineman’s Terrace is substantially the remains – plus a few cottages and farms.

There was one bit of confusion where the path stops at a farm complex. The farmer, who was playing on his tractor, said that I could go anywhere I liked. He pointed out a variety of possible routes. He said it didn’t bother him where I went. He said that some people went that way whilst others preferred to go this way (indicating). I thanked him, Bruno wagged his tail and we chose a route, emerging on the path at the other side of the farm, somehow.

Some of the rest of the route needs a bit of TLC – duff stiles, tied up gates – that sort of thing, but , generally, its OK. Its very nice, in fact.
The walk is three miles, and, due to it’s shape, and a bit of exploration along a permissive path in some woodland, I did 7.
Bruno did a bit more.
That’s it for walking for 2010, although there could be one New Years Eve/Happy New year posting……  probably in the morning.

Howden le Wear Walk 2

The second out of three short Howden le Wear walks.  Attentive readers will remember that there are three walks around Howden that are published in a County Council set of leaflets concerning short walks around Howden le Wear. And I’m checking them out for the Rights of Way peeps at the Council as part of my Lone Rangering activities along with my trusty dawg, Bruno the superdawg aka Tonto.

And so, we eventually dragged ourselves away form the fire and into the slippery and misty thaw and, once again, we slithered off down the bridle road to Howden.

Walk 2 coincides with the Crook Around the Compass South walk for a time, and also uses the bridle road.

Its quite a nice walk and passes an interesting mine tip (only interesting for those who find such things interesting, obviously…). This particular tip is fairly small but what appears to be the fishplate sticking out of the black shale of the heap indicates an underground railway, which probably means an extensive mine. There’s nothing much to show on the surface, apart from the heap – just a few large stones with some embedded iron work and, of course, the public footpaths which lead to it and form most of our walk today.

No mine, no paths, I suspect.

Very foggy today, although a weak bit of sunshine told me that not too far up the hill there was probably a very nice temperature inversion, warm sun, cloud sea, blue skies.

The walk is just two miles starting and finishing at Howden le Wear Community centre. I did four, cos I walked there from Knipe Towers, along the bridle road, in fact.

One more Howden walk to do.