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.

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.

Blackie and The Naxie – Howden le Wear

And so, with a nagging dawg, we drag ourselves out from a Yuleish stupor of roast beef, red wine and various liquors and stumble off through the snow to Howden le Wear.

The purpose, apart from exercising superdawg’s latent powers of bouncing around in the snow, was to have a look at the prosaically-named Walk 1 in a small collection of leaflet walks produced by the Council. The remit is to have a look at the route descriptions and the paths.

This one is just two and a half miles long, has one bit of a pull up a hill, and a selection of refreshment stops – just the kind of walk you might want to do in an evening, in fact. If you’re not fully refreshed after doing this walk, then you’r enot trying very hard.

The walk description is quite good, and has lots of local information such as the  long-gone whereabouts of railway stations, coal mines, brick works and that kind of thing. The Naxie and Blackie are, in fact, the names of the local pastures. Hill 60, pictured here, is the spoil heap from a long-defunct coal adit, named Hill 60 by soldiers returning from The Great War for Civilisation (aka WW1)

There’s a lot packed into the walk, in fact, and its all the better for it.  I enjoyed it, and so did superdawg. there’s no problems with the paths – they’re all well used by locals by the evidence of lots of footprints in the snow.

The walk is two and a half miles – I did six, cos I walked there and back.
Two more Howden le Wear walks to do…