Beadnell Bay

Sunday 7 February 2010

After another fine breakfast and much washing up, brushing things and packing, I left the OTHC Mounthooley meet for a visit to the Northumberland Coast, arriving, after some disorientation, caused by inattention to the map, at Beadnell Bay, where I paid for just one hour’s parking and trotted off for a walk on the beach.

Its a fine beach, even on a grey day like today. It is, in fact, enormous and flat and backed by dunes and, today at least, was only lightly populated by dog walkers and their dogs (Bruno would have loved this….(sniff…).

I walked southwards as far as Newton Links and returned on a less interesting route on a public footpath behind the dunes for coffee and cake.

Must do more on the Northumberland coast, cos it’s fab….

I did about four miles and no ascent to speak of. Some of the walk was below sea level as the tide was out. I love walking on the beach. Its a great place to get yer hair ruffled by a mischievous breeze…..

Maybe the walk back through the Newton Links reserve would be better in summer when there’s some birds and flowers to spot…..

And that was the Over The Hill Club Mounthooley Meet. Wot fun!

I now have the job of writing the report of the meet for the club magazine. I wonder if they realise what they’ve let themselves in for in allowing me to do this task?

The meet was enjoyable, even through the slight nausea of Tracy the cardiac Nurse’s latest prescription of calcium antangoniser or something tablets, what also give me a headache. I expect I’ll get use to them She did say that if I failed to take them my blood pressure would get so bad that one day my eyes would explode and ruin my OS map. Which isn’t what you want, really as they are quite expensive.

Anyway, nice to see a few old friends up in the Cheviots….

Bizzle Burn and The Cheviot

Saturday 6 February 2010.

Following a light breakfast, rustled up by a team of OTHC members, there seemed to be various plans afoot to bag this or that marilyn, or even both this and that Marilyn, to he Schil or The Cheviot and, being the grumpy old bugerigar that I am, I decided that as I’d never been up The Cheviot by the Bizzle Burn route, that’s what I’d do today.

And that’s what I did. The morning could best be described as “driech” and hill fog seemed to be at a fairly low level.

I wandered down the valley and turned up a side dale to Dunsdale, an isolated farmstead which now provides income to the estate as a holiday home.

At Dunsdale I began the long climb up by Bizzle Burn, a deep vee-shaped craggy gash, mainly hidden in the dense fog.

As I climbed, I started coming across a dusting of fresh snow, and this became a general cover after a while. There were also steep banks of hard snow which needed a step or two kicked here and there, and, ever higher, there was a deep, hard snow covered by about half a foot of fresh stuff. This made for heavy work and the fog and the snow made for a blank white and grey world with hardly any reference points.

Then I saw the sun – just emerging through the mist. I worked out that if I headed just a bit to the left of the sun, I should be pretty much on target for the summit trig point, provided I did it fairly quickly (bearing in mind that the sun doesn’t stay very still….)

So this is what I did. The mist remained thick with just this little yellow beacon shining through. I came to the fence that runs over the top. The fence had just the top inch of each fencepost sticking out of the snow. I guessed the direction of the trig and found it half a minute later. So that worked well. I heard voices.

Then, suddenly, there was no mist and instead, there was warm sunshine and people, a couple, appeared. We enthused about the conditions for a bit and they were replaced by another couple and a dog.

I started on the return trip – following the first couple’s footprints as far as Cairn Hill, where they were lunching, then I followed some more footprints along the Pennine Way to West Cairn Hill, where I met a large party of Over the Hill Clubbers coming the other way. We exchanged friendly greetings and I followed their tracks down to Auchope Cairn and a little way down the steep hill below it.

A short hop down the head of the Colledge Valley, past the bottom of the Hen Hole gorge – which seemed to have a bit of avalanche debris in it – back to Mounthooley for hot tea, a warm by the fire and a snooze.

Various posses of OTHC members cooked and served dinner and yet more damage was done to supplies of loopy juice, although several members were seen to be dozing off. There were early nights. A very few got to bed around 3:00 am. There was, apparently, less snoring. I suspect this may be that the culprit wasn’t in bed for very long.

The walk was 9 miles and 2500 feet of uphill and, it has to be said, probably much easier in the deep, hard snow than it’s normal outrageously boggy state.

The Bell(s) The Bell(s)

Friday 5 February – Leaving superdawg distraught and yapping at the front door, I drove off North, laughing manically at the cruelty of it all (mwhahahaha) and duly arrive, a couple of hours later extremely close to the Scottish Border at the foot of the Colledge Valley where I parked the magic bus and went off to bag the delectable little HuMP called – The Bell. Even the locals seem not to have heard of The Bell – but it’s there, sticking up in a bell- like manner for about 400 feet and covered in gorse and hawthorn scrub.

I met a goat with a limp on the path at the bottom – and we had a brief stand-off till the goat headed uphill to eat some gorse. (Prickly stuff to be eating I would have thought, but there you are – there’s no accounting either for taste or for MPs expenses.)

And so, by the advanced navigational technique of walking uphill, I soon arrived at the summit – in this case a slab of very old and partially frozen cow muck – but a vetenary sample with a fine view of a misty and slighty drippy Colledge Valley. (It was raining a bit)

I returned to the car and drove the four or five miles or whatever it is, passing the “No vehicles without a permit” sign and the “No vehicles beyond this point “ sign and the “ Wassermarra wi you, like, bernnny lad? Can yer nert read the signs, like?** " sign – till I got to Mounthooley YHA Bunkhouse, which on detailed investigation held several members of the Over the Hill club and a small and venerable dog called Beadle.

The night was passed in carousing and several bottles of whisky, wine and beer received very serious damage to their contents.

Apparently, the dormitory was the scene of violent snoring overnight, although, I must admit that I heard nothing. But there were dark hints as to the culprit in the morning.

Bruno, apparently, slept on the sofa back in Durham.

There will be more of this particular rice pudding of a tale shortly.

Just let me get some more coffee…….

** This is what a Northumbrian accent sounds like… – the “R’s” should sound a bit French, if you can manage that.

The walk up The Bell was about 4 miles and 500 feet of climbing

South Tyne Trail

Maggie did take me to Tynehead and dumped me in the middle of nowhere. There’s gratitude for all that washing up. I was forced to walk….

So I wandered up the road from my dumping-spot on Tynehead Fell just as far as the source of the River South Tyne. Here there is a kind of statue thingy. It has a hole in it and you’re supposed to look through the hole and see the part where the first spring of water squirts out. You can cheat and look round the side. It’s a good idea to have a little drink as the water is pure and clean and not at all what you might expect from the River Tyne.

And so, I began at 20+ mile downhill walk. The section to Garrigill is, in my opinion, the very best part of this walk, with waterfalls and minerals and fine retrospective views. But we’ve done it all before in this blog…. And so, repetitively, and with the first spring lambs dozing in the warm sunshine (despute the snow on the hill and the icicles and so on…) I arrived at Garrigill.

I called in at the village hall here because the local ladies were having a tea room day and were selling tea and teasted toe cakes and some rather exciting spicy soup.

Meanwhile, outside, the local sproglings were amusing themselves by almost bursting in to the “café” with shouts and squeals, and then running away. I’m not sure if they were aware of just how little notice anybody was taking.

Also taking place outside was a dramatic showdown between two of Garrigill’s tom cats. They were swearing at each other and looking unconcerned at the same time – and moving ever-so-slowly…..

I was going to drink beer in Alston, but the hour was late and I pressed on and found a nice, discreetish campsite with a good water supply quite nearby and settled in for whisky, cream of chicken soup, whisky, lancashire hotpot, whisky, chocolate sponge pud and whisky. I had a settled night following an extra small libation or nightcap.....

In the morning a shepherd was doing his rounds close by and a woodpecker was pecking some wood. Nice.

I lazed for a while, had me bacon and beanz and toddled off northwardsly.

I have to say that the Northern half of the South Tyne trail itself is a bit dull, it being an ex-railway line and all that. There is the viaduct at Lambley which is impressive and possibly the reason why the line went bust, and there’s the Wallace Arms which sells all kinds of delicious real beer. Apart from that, the interest lays off-route. There’s the new lambs of course, but also there’s always the river – growing at each turn and quickly becoming a proper big river, and there’s fortified farmhouses, peles and castles (this is proper Border country which was lawless for quite a while) and lapwings , curlews, oyster catchers, snipe and all kinds of small and occasionally colourful small birds.

Then, with a final viaduct over the Tyne at Haltwhistle, its all over. Tea and more soup at the Pillar Box café (has a pillar box outside) then the train back to Durham and bus to sunny Crook.

I’d wanted to do this route since having my cardiac thing a couple of years ago. It was to be a test. I climbed Penyghent and Cosh Knott instead. This time, I did it just cos I had a couple of spare days…

Northumberland - Devils Water and Carriers Way

My get-yourself-fit-for-the-TGO-Challenge plan (see how it takes over your life?) calls for a walk of a minimum distance of 12 miles in January (14 in February) and so - me and superdingo found ourselves in the enormous and free car park at Blanchland for this little toddle on to the Northumberland Moors.

Blanchland Moor is a pretty flat and heathery sort of place and has bridleways suitable for a good old blast along at high speed - or in my case, fairly moderate speed.

In brightening and windy weather, me and Bruno fair blasted along over the moor to Slaley Forest where, in a small and sheltered copse of Scots Pine and Gorse, I almost fell asleep in the cosyness of it all....

Down to the Devil's Water - no idea why its called this - its a fairly small beck in a beautiful wooded and almost wild setting - just the place to camp out, in fact.

And then it was back over the moor again via the Carriers Way. The Carriers Way is an old packhorse route blazed for the purpose of carrying bings of lead from London lead Company's mines in Allendale to the coast - before there were things like trains. So its an old route, and it shows it in places as it cuts a deep groove through the landscape and contours easily along the scarp of the moor. Fab bit of fell walking, that.

The odd thing about this moor, though, is the unusual use of scarecrows. These are very realistic from a distance, mainly due to the shredded polythene arms which sway purposefully in the wind. The giveaway is that they never actually go anywhere. there's dozens of the things, though, placed on scarp edges and hilltops and in lines like grouse beaters. It seems like a good idea if it works - keeping the raptors and corbies away from the grouse eggs and chicks in a non-lethal sort of way.

We did just about 12 miles, finished almost in daylight and were in time for the two meals for £8 happy hour at the pub at Billy Row.

And - I finished my TGO Challenge food plan. The most I'll have to carry is five breakfasts from the start (probably quite a lot of porridge) - and two evening meals (its complicated, but thats how it works out). After that, its pretty easy. I'll need to shop in Ft Augustus, Newtonmore and Braemar. I'm only staying overnight in atown in Newtonmore - probably camp - and there's a transport cafe there for dinner and brekkies...

I'm not staying in Ft Augustus or Braemar - but just scoffing, shopping and passing through to wild camps or bothies further on. I will be overnighting at Tomdoun, but not in a bed - far too overpriced for me. I'll stick me tent up somewhere after the night's celebrations of whatever it is we might consider worth celebrating.