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… .

Best of Teesdale Walk

Best of Teesdale is the title of the third walk wot I’m doing for the Durham County Council Summer Guided Walks programme. Today was the day for going and doing the first reccy.
A glimpse through one of the arrow slits at Knipe Towers revealed a covering of lovely fresh powder snow. This is great for the walking but really crap for the driving. And so it proved. It took me ages to get to Bowlees Peckernick Place just a bit up the Dale from Middleton. I drove veeeerrry veeerrry slowly and didn’t crash into anything at all.

But here we have an empty car park, full of soft, fresh snow and there are blue skies and the robins are having wobblers in the hedges – and so we embark on our journey – down through the lambing field to the wobbly bridge. The wobbly bridge is, of course, Wynch Bridge, the oldest pedestrian suspension bridge in the entire universe and a replacement for an earlier one that tipped a shift of leadminers into the foaming Tees twenty feet below.

The Tees was foaming a bit today, in fact, and it also had the added interest of a small iceberg. Strangely odd, yet , at the same time, oddly strange..

We progressed. Up The Pennine Way, past the stone sheep that Bruno had barked at as a pup, on past Low Force and through the juniper forest to High Force and on, yet further on past the roadstone quarries and up through some more junipers to the iron age settlement site, the remains of which nowadays consist of a tin-roofed railway truck.
Then  it go really cold. The wind was blowing a hoolie around Bruno’s lugoils (ears) and so, we closed all our pit zips, pulled down our hats and peed in our gloves (I lied about the last one by the way) – and stumbled off into the teeth of a howling gale which occasionally plastered us with spindrift.

We teetered up the old neve and , frankly, blisters of blue ice and the wind made us slide back down again. Time passed. Energy was invested. heads down, we lurched forwards. In fact we lurched into a beautiful blue snowdrift. This was beautiful to look at but impossible to cross. I mean impossible. We did try. Eventually, we (me) decided to use the bypass, which , together with the blinding spindrift lead us into white oblivion. I couldn’t find the bloody path again.

After some time and more expended calories (I’m so glad I drank all that Christmas beer) – I found a cairn and this lead us slithering and falling back down to the lovely River Tees.

A stony path with holes in it and some very large slabs of ice, presumably from the river, but piled up at the sides, took us past the pencil mine (you’d have to come on the walk to find out about the pencil mine) and , eventually to Forest in Teesdale, where we lunched eventually and crossed the river on a lovely bridge.

An easy but very icy path took us to Moking Hurth caves. It seems that the snow has been stripped off the fields on the North side of the Tees, leaving a landscape encased in hard ice. Behind the walls there are some snowdrifts, but they’re not huge…..?
An old route of mixed roadway and tracks brought us back, exhausted, to Bowlees.
This is a walk which should appear on the DCC programme in August. Hopefully, most of the snow will have melted by then.
I noticed that Bruno was walking quite stiffly when he got out of the car, and maybe he was squeaking with some pain. I’ll be keeping an eye on him but I think it was just the tough conditions, and powder snow sometimes burns his pads a bit.
We did 13 miles and 1700 feet of climbing. Phew.

Pennine Journey Teesdale to Weardale

Y’see, I just couldn’t resist it.  I got Maggie to drop me off in Middleton in Teesdale and I wandered up the Pennine Way up past Low Force and High Force and as far as Hanging Shaw, just by Forest in Teesdale First School just as playtime ended.
The Pennine Way here is specially flowery at the moment. And the haymeadows are just starting to be cut, so if you go there after reading this, there won’t be much left in the meadows, but the hedgerows and bits of woodland are really good.


I walked along with a Dutch chap for a while and we parted just after Cronkley Farm.
I haven’t yet ordered the official guidebook, so the next part of my route was a bit of a guess. the idea is to get onto the path that runs over the flank of Fendrith Hill to the top of the pass at Swinhope Head. I avoided a couple of fields containing energetic beef and made my way through meadows to Ettersgill where it started raining and I joined the path.

The route over to Swinhope Head is might well be tricky in hill fog (which was starting to drop as I made my way) and I used my compass to get the right directions.

The first landmark is a “shooting hut”, which turns out to be just a ruin, but is easily found just below the 550 metre contour. A path leads off uphill but this turns out eventually to go too far uphill but a gently descending route across the moor brings the low profile of Grey Folds into view. I thought it was a good idea to go there. But first, there’s the small matter of the crossing of Longmere Sike, a deep shaley slot which was a bit slippery….  But anyway, after ejecting the sheep sheltering in the fold, so I could scoff a choccy bar in peace,  more hillfog and misty grey stuff brought a power line into view and it was then a simple matter of following these as they go very close to the cattle grid at the top of the pass. It was a bit of a relief to get on the road here.
My advice for anybody struggling with the navigation here is to fight your way North-east to the road. Another option would be to follow the power line uphill, though you’d eventually get so close to the road that it’d be too tempting…..

The rest of the walk to Westgate follows this road, although there’s a shortcut through deep and damp Juncus (rushes) to Weardale Ski Club’s parking area which cuts out the zig-zags. It gets a bit dull after that, although forward views into Weardale improve with the descent.
I camped on the little campsite by the ford.

A neo-air takes 28 manly puffs to inflate it properly. I was just inserting manly puff number eight when I heard my name called. I peeked out and there was Charlie, inviting me for tea. We had lamb chops (very nice, Charlie) and then visited the Hare and Hounds for the darts team practise night. I got back to the tent fairly late……..  It had stopped raining.
Its about 15 miles and 2000 feet.

More of this shortly…

Teesdale – Monks Moor with a new lead

Readers will no doubt be relieved to hear that Bruno’s recent MOT at the Vet’s in Bishop Auckland resulted in no treatment or advice beyond the usual flea and worm treatment. He proved that his bowels were in perfect working order by delivering an enormous steaming pile in the waiting room (he was just trying to embarrass me) and I had to inform the Vet that he weighed 21.5 kg. At least, thats what he weighed when he came in. he was significantly lighter on the way out.

So we bought a new lead and determined to have a bit of a walk to try it out, which is what we did today.

I drove to Middleton in Teesdale – round about 20 miles or so from here, which ensured an early start. The walk was also a bit of TGO Challenge distance training, which is why it was a bit long….

We progressed up to Snaisgill by road, for speed, you understand – and up on to Monk’s Moor. A bit of Monk’s Moor, incidentally has a little isthmus of access land, attached to a much bigger lump of access land, which is only access land in September. The sign which says so, says so in a very roundabout civil-service type of way, but thats what it means. seems a bit pointless to me….. specially as it has a public footpath running through it which is, of course, open all the time. The rare ground nesting birds will be just as disturbed as ever, I would have thought. Whats the point of having access land thats only access land for one month each year, though? Eh?

Anyway, we sploshed on over the moor. Bruno was pleased to see a bit of snow behind the wall, which he stamped in then ate, then a bigger patch a bit higher up which was too big to eat. The ground is now soggy but still frozen in patches. But spring was springing. I heard a couple of curlew and a bunch of golden plover and some larks – and one, just the one meadow pipit. But despite the sun, the wind was still nithering and quite a bit “refreshing”.

We dropped down to Great Eggleshope Beck mineworkings and then used a trespass path (for the dog who wasn’t allowed off the ROW) to get to the mines dam and then to Little Eggleshope beck for access to the Sharnberry glacial overflow which leads into Hamsterley Forest. [Incidentally, I notice that in this part of Teesdale, there are “becks”, whereas over the hill in Weardale, we have “burns”. It would seem that the Yorkshire Danes dindn’t really get as far as Weardale…]

Once in Hamsterley Forest, there were frogs – many frogs having a bit of a party in various ponds. very noisy, they were. I took a video. Its not specially good, but if I got any closer, they stopped what they were doing.

We lunched in a suntrap in the forest. Bruno ate some sticks.

I had a chicken and pickle sandwich.

We batterred our way up the hill back out of the forest and on to Eggleston Common – an expanse of grouse moor – and along a bridleway on which pack horse trains used to carry lead ore for smelting at Copley. In fact, we passed the saddle house – a small stone hut once used for storing spare saddles for the packhorses.

Our walk then took us along the Teesdale Way, which runs in a green and pleasant kind of way alongside the River Tees back to Middleton. Its a popular walk. There was plenty of company here. My advice, if you do this walk, is to empty your bladder on Eggleston Common as there’ll be nowhere to do it in private down here.

Then it started raining, so we went home.

The total distance today was just over 16 miles and with a surprising total of 2750 feet of climbing uphill (some of which was a bit of a pain, to be honest…)

That’ll do for now. More miles in April.

Incidentally - The video is below the map - that is to say underneath it. I mean if you scroll down, you can look at the video. Its not very good. Its got frogs.

Teesdale – Moking Hurth and High Force

My plan for today – up until last night anyway , was to go and bag Penyghent and Plover Hill as part of the Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot tops thing.

The weather forecast was a bit borderline for the Dales, specially late in the day, and I didn’t have any change for the pay and display, and I could have a lie-in if I went somewhere closer to home…… so I went to Teesdale. In particular, I went to the Gibsons cave visitor centre care park, which is free.

I determined to go and have a look at a little crag on the North side of Teesdale which has some caves – and then come back to the start using the Pennine Way.

It was sublime. In fact it was very sublime. Gwan – ask me how sublime it was. It was, sublime. That is to say, it wasn’t beautiful, not in the usual twee sort of romantic green kind of beautiful. No it wasn’t that. There was lots of snow on the ground for a start. And then the sky was grey and white and heavy and, and the high moors were bright white, and maybe there was a bit of hillfog. So there wasn’t actually a boundary between the hills and the sky. The hills became the sky and the sky became the hills. There were flakes of snow and no horizon. There were deep drifts and frozen gates, impossible to open. It was bleak and tough and unyielding. It was, in fact, The Pennines. I really like it when its like this.

So, after leaving the easy lanes, we blundered into the white desert and there was hard work, for a time. And swearing.

Bruno plunged through a soft new drift into a beck and struggled dogfully out again. There was limping for a while.

We lunched (I lunched, Bruno dribbled) on the limestone crag at High Hurth Edge. This is a fine suntrap in summer. Today there was a little shelter from the sneaking wind and a fine , if monotone view. There’s some caves in the crag – Moking Hurth, 1000 feet Grade II, and a pothole – Moking Hurth Pot, 35 feet deep, 800 feet long and Grade II. Must have a look down here sometime… there is mud and crawling to be done….

We descended by easy tracks to Forest in Teesdale school and crossed the river to join the Pennine Way.

The Pennine Way, for some reason, was icy, and quite slippery till I reached the bottom of the snowline, somewhere just upstream from High Force. There were a few people rambling on through the juniper woods.

The juniper woods are quite remarkable. The trees are ancient and mainly sterile, so every year, as many juniper berries as possible are collected by Natural England and given to a nursery. Any germinations are shared between NE and the nursery – and quite a bit of new plantings have been done. Its a great place. It smells of gin. There are fierce suntraps in summer and its a favoured place for adders.

We passed High Force and came to Low Force where we found – a pair of trainers. Just removed and left, by all appearances. I wonder if anybody is missing? Low Force would be a bad place for a dip on such a day. High Force would be more efficient if ending it all was the aim. You might survive Low Force.

It started snowing heavily. We left via the wobbly Wynch Bridge

Its a good walk, this. Quite easy to do. 9 Miles and 1200 feet. Which isn’t much…

Incidentally – I saw some signs of spring today – a flock of about 30 lapwings by Cronkley – and by High Force, a flock of about 50 lapwings heading West. Coming back from their hols at Redcar, no doubt. That’s a sign of spring that is…..

Restoring Barnard Castle’s Riverside Paths

A couple of weeks ago I got recruited as a volunteer by Durham County Council’s Outdoor peeps (not the official name!) to take part in a project aimed at restoring Barnard castle’s riverside paths network. (I’ve been a voluntary countryside ranger for the County Council a few years now…)

These are very popular paths for locals and visitors and their dogs and are an important resource for a bit of quiet wandering around in a nice bit of woodland next to the River Tees.

Today’s work was opening part of one of the paths out because it had become overgrown with quite a bit of scrub – lots of elder and hawthorn and brambles and raspberries, so there was a full day of pruning and sawing and dragging bits of shrubbery around.

Most locals who were passing with their doggies seemed to think it was all a really good idea but one chap enquired as to the whereabouts of his favourite elderberry tree…. (doh!)

I think there were eight or nine of us plus the County Tree Officer and an off-duty countryside ranger with a chain saw.

Well be back in a couple of weeks to do a bit of gardening and there’s some woodland to thin out.

This is quite good exercise and uses muscles other than walking ones( I’ve been sawing all day!) and a bit of positive feedback from the Barnard Castilians and the fact that you can instantly see the difference – makes it all very satisfying. (And, of course, with being a volunteer, you get treated nicely in case you don’t come back! – Its not like having a job.)

If anybody wants any logs or firewood by the way, there’s piles of it by the River Tees at Barney.

Hayberries - The Family Periglacial Moraine

I was supposed to do a bit more of Hadrians Wall today, but the weather forecast had weather warnings for Cumbria and I would now be entering the Western part of the wall. I just didn’t fancy getting wet yet again. So I was quite pleased, really, when, at about half ten or so, on my third coffee, it started raining on Crook.

Later, whilst suffering from Bloggers Finger, I decided to take the dogs for a run around Hamsterley Forest. (The dogs do the running, I just watch…) I put two one pound coins in my pocket, loaded the doggies into the new knipemobile with the clean seat covers and no dog sick down between the seats and set off for Hamsterley.

There was a lad on checkpoint Charlie at the entrance. He was in his little checkpoint hut. He had the look of somebody who had come to work this morning full of hope for yet another interesting and useful day cutting down trees and having interesting chats about yesterday’s defeat of Man United by the Turf Moor lads, only to be told that he was working the toll booth today. He’d been there since half eight. It was now Three o’clock. Nothing had happened all day. His brain had atrophied. His very soul had gone for a fly around the moors somewhere. He was no longer in. Once he'd scoffed his egg and tomato sandwich at half nine this morning, the most interesting things about the day had been the clouds scudding past and a large spindly spider in the corner of the window. Over there. During the afternoon, it had trained him to sit, lie down and beg. Tommorrow, it was going to expand the repertoir to stay, fetch and squash (flies)

“I only have two pounds” says me.

“Dribble”

“And it says that the toll is three pounds”

“Hmf. Nyer do pah!”

“I’ll just go, then shall I?” I could see he was struggling to overcome some kind of neurological dormancy. If only I could speak spider.

“Nyer. Shert. Collum. Arrsh”

Bruno growled darkly.

I headed for Mickleton where we could all have a romp on the Teesdale railway path and eat blackberries – and there’s some wild apples. But, we were distracted on the way just by the longest living set of temporary traffic lights in the world, now permanently concreted in…. to Hayberries.

Hayberries is a Durham County Council nature reserve and I’d never been. So we went.

It seems to be some kind of peri-glacial heap of sand and gravel of the kind you would find just around Eggleston. Some mof it has been quarried, and some is grass, and other bits are woodland. And there’s a pond. And lots of wild flowers and thrushes and blackbirds and butterflies. And sticks to chew up.

Bruno had a good leap around and Tammy sort of poddled in a geriatric sort of way.

Hadrian’s wall tomorrow and some speliological stuff after that.

If you’re in Teesdale with nowt much to do – have a look at Hayberries on the Eggleston to Mickleton Road. Its fab! That’s Hayberries. For all your doggy-running-about-daft needs. Hayberries, the family nature reserve. Hayberries, its fucking great, man.

Teesdale Way

I decided at a fairly last minute to join this walk, which was aprt of Durham County Council's extensive guided walks programme and lead by a chap called Bill Gallon (pictured) Bill is Chairman of the Pennine Way Association and a strong promoter of the enjoyment the natural things that surround us. Bill now has a website at http://www.billswalks.co.uk/ This site was a birthday present to him from his son and, is, I must say, a cracking read. I quote from it's introductory passages "This website was created for his 69th birthday by his two sons and his new grandson, Will, who is looking forward to his Grandad taking him on these walks" and "Bill Gallon has lived his whole life in Gateshead and is a passionate advocate for the wildlife and enviroment around his home town and the North East of England"

Its not entirely finished yet, but have a look. The messages to grandad to do some more work here and there just add to the site's charm, I think. It will be a great resource for anybody about to embark on any County Durham/North pennine and general North of England walking.

On to the walk - There were forty of us altogether - many of whom I knew and some I didn't. The aim was to follow the Teesdale Way East from Middleton in Teesdale - that's downstream - as far as Cotherstone and then walk back on the North (Yorkshire) side of the Tees back to Middleton.

We walked along the riverside and then through pastures to Eggleston, more pastures to the outer suburbs of Cotherstone (!), back through Romaldkirk and along a disused railway back to Middleton. The three villages, Eggleston, Cotherstone and Romaldkirk are all medieval villages and have retained all kinds of ancient features, not least the fact that they generally have village greens (Romaldkirk has three) - two parallel streets and long enclosures or "tofts" - one for each property sticking out for hundreds of yards around an inner perimeter, then bigger "town" fields outside that - and then the moors. Romaldkirk has village stocks, two pubs and a plague pit and Eggleston has a pub, ancient pigstyes and some strip lychets, or cultivation terraces.... and so on.

There's also the tale of "Gracie" who, in order to escape the plague, which devastated Romaldkirk to such an extent that there was nobody left to record the names of the dead, left the village with her cattle and built a new farm on the edge of the moor. Here, she survived the plague, but traded butter by remote control - leaving supplies on a stone to be collected, and money being left on the stone in payment.

Eventually, the plague passed and she judged it safe to return to her cottage.

Which burnt down and killed her.

Gracie's farm is still there, however.

The countryside is lush and green, but the summer is showing some signs of age and near Eggkeston an area around the beck has recently been ripped and smeared with boulders and debris up by a recent flash flood - probably the same heavy rain that cut off bonny Crook from its surroundings recently. Quite difficult to get across this bit.....

A pleasant ramble on a warm summer day - 13 miles and, maybe, 600 feet of climbing.

Walk today, for tommorrow it will rain.

Have a look at Bill's website.

Incidentally, there's a scarecrow competition going on in Teesdale just now. Pic shows Michael Jackson waiting for the milk lorry.