Right...thats it, I'm off

There will now be yet another short hiatus or at least a gap or, maybe a pause.

I'm off to Wales for a week.

Actually, to be more precise, I'm off to Brecon to make close acquaintance with Fan y Big and Lord Hereford's Knob.

I just don't care.

There's nothing you can say. Its over.

I'm off.

Sorry.

Back in a week.

Black Chew Head and Black Hill

Today, with superdawg loaded in the back, I squirted the knipemobile down the M1 to Crowden and met up with Tony Bennett and his girlfriend Christine for the bagging of Black Chew Head, the highest point in Oldham and a Dewey – and a walk up Black Hill and back via Westend Moss.
Tony did the TGO Challenge this year with his pal Steve and I first met them lounging with bottles of beer in a hostel in Newtonmore.
The TGO Challenge has a habit of increasing the number and quality of my hillwalking partners and so it appears that its happened again. I do like to walk with lots of different people. Cos they’re all different, innit?
Anyway, we followed the Pennine Way Northwards up to Laddow Rocks, where a number of rock climbers were setting themselves up for a rock climb. I wrote about my experiences of Laddow on Doodlecat a while back, in my trip report of my 2006 Pennine Way walk. For anybody with time on their hands its at http://www.doodlecat.com/mikeknipepw/index.html
From laddow, we crossed a little bit of rough moor to find the top, or at least some of the tops of Black Chew Head. Its one of those places where you stand on one spot and decide that it’s a bit higher over there. When you’re over there, it looks higher where you’ve just come from, or somewhere else. Or both. So we passed over them all.
Thence, back on the Pennine Way up to the summit patio of Black Hill. Black Hill gets greener and less black every year. What caused this? When I was alive, there was no grass at all. Not a blade. It was all sloppy sucking slutch. Not any more.
We pontificated a bit about this and then headed back to Crowden over Westend Moss and Hey Edge.
The eta van on the road to Barnsley had knocked off.
Back up the M1. Its 117 miles from our house to Crowden but takes a bit less than 2 hours to drive. I must get down here more often.

We did 11 miles and 1600 or so feet of ascent.

Some More Ash Gill Duckings

As it was a hot day today, I scuttled off to Nenthead and me and Brian had another fun-packed descent of Ash Gill, starting just below the big waterfall, in shorts and tee-shorts and by a series of short scrambles, swims, slides, swims, jumps, swims and walks, we arrived at the junction with the River Tyne. The water levels in Ash Gill were extra high and peaty-brown as a result of a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. But the water was tolerably warm if a bit fierce on some of the slides.
At the Tyne, we turned left – that’s upstream. Not a vast amount of water in the river here, and it soon became obvious that something or someone had died in it in a kind of, stinky carcase-rotting timescale. So we abandoned the dark but warm and silky water for a short bit of lead mine level. Unfortunately, lack of headlights limited exploration to about a hundred metres or so. Inside there was plenty of lovely mud, and some knee-deep and very icy water. I noticed the when I came out into the wall of heat at the entrance, that I steamed for a while.
A 200 foot climb back up the lush July hillside brought us back to the car to get changed and to repair to the Miners Arms in Nenthead for a brief episode of light boozing.
This is great fun by the way and, providing you can swim twenty feet or so, is not really very risky at all. It would be interesting in winter, and it would be interesting to treat the place like an open cave and, maybe do a few little abseils into one or two of the deep pools. A flash flood, however, would be a right bugger, so a trip in conditions like yesterday afternoon’s thunderstorm, which knocked out some local phones by the way, would perhaps be pushing it a bit.
Not many pics as the cameras were inside a waterproof box most of the time.
Upper South Tynedale is looking gaspingly beautiful just now by the way – lush and green and flowery.

Adopt-a-Path Stuff at Crook

As its now July, its time, once again to do my twice yearly wander around half-a-dozen footpaths and bridleways just to the North of Crook. I do this as a volunteer for Durham County Council and the purpose is to make a report to the Council about any path blockages or whatever so that these rights of way stay open for people to use and enjoy.
In the end, its quite a nice little trundle of just about five miles.
I didn’t find too much this time – just one decrepit stile (pictured) , and another that would be difficult to find if you didn’t know it was there due to deep grass and nettles. This happened to this footpath last year and, eventually, it got strimmed. If its just a minor bit of overgrowth, I clear it myself – but this was too much for that.
Bruno came along for the walk, although I’m not sure he was too happy with the heat.
Actually, once on top of our local hill, there was a nice breeze and at the furthest away part of the circle, there’s a beautiful meadow of poor grass but lots of flowers.
I met a few people – one rebuilding a wall at Billy Row Church, a couple of old chaps gossiping outside some cottages and a lady sitting in her garden enjoying the sun and the view (she’s got a view which goes as far as Teeside).
And there was lots of bird song today – including a chiff-chaff (could be a migrant as this one was actually going chaff-chiffs) – lots of skylarks, and a flock of about twenty homing pigeons with squeaky wings circling a cree above Stanley Crook
I’ll be back to this route just after Christmas.
One pic shows Bruno and his tongue. I had to pour a bottle of water down his throat just after this!

yet more stuff about the Howgill Fells

Yes folks, its that time of the month when we like to plug yet another instalment of the on-going and apparently never-ending story of that very small group of hills stuck onto the side of the Yorkshire dales - the very lovely, grassy hump-like blobs - the Howgill Fells.

Readers of this epic rice-pudding...er..sago...er...saga will be relieved to know that their ordeal is almost over and that they've been very brave and that they've done very well so far. Only one more episode to go.

First, read the interlude here http://www.doodlecat.com/howgills/interlude.html

Then press the little "next" button at the bottom of the page. Thats the one on Doodlecat. there isn;t a "next" button on this page, so don't go looking for it.

Unusually for this blog, there'll be another posting along very shortly.