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… .

Inspiration - A J Brown’s Moorland Tramping

I discovered a copy of Arthur J Brown’s 1931 walkers guide to the “West Yorkshire” moors in the banqueting hall at Knipe Towers, “Moorland Tramping.”  By “West Yorkshire”, by the way, this chap means, of course, the West Riding of Yorkshire – the county which once stretched from Doncaster to The Calf, and includes a great lump of the Forest of Bowland, too. So, there’s plenty of moors.
Mr Brown says that as the roads are getting very busy and quite dangerous due to the spread of the motor car, that walkers, or “trampers” are going to have to find somewhere a bit safer to walk – and he’s come up with the suggestion that the moors hold lots of tracks that go from one place to another and which make ideal routes away from all that nasty traffic.  Hmmmm…. I think he’s got something here….

And so, after going on about equipment for a bit, in which he decries the use of boots as being too heavy, he suggests saving up and paying a cobbler the princely sum of £3 to have some proper shoes made. He also suggests supervising the cobbler whilst he spends long candle-lit nights in his cobbling shop cobbling your shoes.  These shoes can be expected to last for years and years although they may have to be bailed out occasionally. If its snowing or raining very heavily, then some chunky boots may be allowed.
On rucksacks, he recommends the lightest available. Inside the pack should be a roast beef sandwich and an apple and a waterproof cape. Other essential things such as your guidebook, map, compass, volume of poetry, pipe, tobacco, matches and railway tickets, can be stored in the pockets of your tweed jacket. He does, however, have some reservations about maps and compasses because people who use them are “forever stopping en route to consult their instruments”, although he does concede that a person of a scientific mind may well derive some enjoyment from studying maps and, perhaps, taking an observation every hour or so…. (all good clean fun this, eh?)
On “ultra lightweight”, Mr Brown suggests staying in a pub overnight. Your accommodation should be your very last economy. Far too much lumber is carried by the youth of today.
You should also consider using a stout staff or pole. This should be a straight piece of ash. This can be used to persuade cattle or to test the depth of snowdrifts.

Mr Brown then goes on to describe some routes, and in doing this, I am immediately reminded of Alf Wainwright and his Pennine Journey, for one of the first routes to appear is a “Yorkshire Rivers” walk from Malham (Aire) to High Force (Tees)  The south bank of the river Tees is firmly in Yorkshire, as every true Yorkshireman will attest. This route can then be extended to Hadrian’s Wall if a longer holiday is required. Justaminnit…..  this was 1931 – just half a decade before Alf had the same idea….  I wonder if Alf had a copy of “Moorland Tramping”? Was it, I wonder, available in the public library in Blackburn?
No matter.
The there’s the “Three Peaks in One Day” route. Hello?
Two routes are suggested.
The first starts at the Hill Inn at Chapel le Dale and the tramper is recommended to climb Whernside first, returning to the Inn for breakfast. A walk over Ingleborough to the Crown at Horton in Ribblesdale follows where light refreshments may be taken before bagging Penyghent and returning to Horton for more refreshments and the train home.
Route two starts at the Sun Inn in Dent at 07:00
then the following timetable applies:
Whernside Pikes 08:10
Whernside 09:00 to 09:30
Hill in Chapel le Dale 10:30 to 10:45
Ingleborough 12:00 to 12:15
Crown Inn Horton in Riblesdale 14:00 to 15:00 (lunch)
Hull Pot 15:45
Penyghent 16:50
Hesleden Gill Bridge 17:15
Litton 18:15 to 18:45
Kilnsey 21:15
Presumably a night at the hotel at Kilnsey follows.
This is quite a timetable.
Anyway, the point is that I’m Inspired to have a go at these routes – Malham to High Force in a pretty straight line – and the Three Peaks from Dent to Wharfedale (probably go to Grassington) – though, one day may seem like a punishment, but Dent – Horton and Horton – Grassington may be more like fun – that is to say, two days.
So, this year, at some point, I’ll be doing some Moorland Tramping.

Flan Fuelled Cross Fell from Kirkland

I don’t know why I suddenly decided to climb Cross Fell. It must have been lurking in the undermind.

And so, armed with a cheese and onion flan (only Southerners and the genetically effeminate eat quiche), a fine banana a mince pie (we still  have lots) and some fair trade chocolate, the knipemobile screeched to a halt in a shower of flying pebbles in the turning circle of the unoccupied holiday cottage village of Kirkland, on the windy side of Cross Fell.

There’s a nice bridleway which goes to Garrigill from here and it is this that we slipped over and nearly cracked both wrists on, and, after being suitably punished by an attack from superdawg using his ice-crunching powers, we followed gingerly through a fierce but brief snowstorm towards Gregs Hut. Gregs Hut is named after a famous North-East pie retailer. The extra “G” was lost during the doomsday survey.

Historical fact #1

There’s no need to go as far as Gregs Hut, though, so we didn’t. Instead, just after tiptoeing over some well frozen but still somehow wobbly bogs, we turned off over the moor to the scree and snow slope that guards the equally frigid summit area.

 

Any thoughts of having a bit of a tarry in the summit shelter soon faded as the nithering wind discovered the chinks in the seventeen layers of thermal liberty bodices and merino stuff as I sat and scoffed the quiche..er.. flan.  Bruno helped, in view of the urgency of avoiding a slow but probably quite enjoyable death from hypothermia and we soon sloped off and slithered off down the Pennine Way to find bridleway number two, which took us pleasantly back down the hill.

We had a brief stop in some brief sunshine in a little shelter on the edge of a view of Eden, but we were soon off again.

Just before we got back to Kirkland, I did notice some ancient ploughing terraces, and, found later, that these were, in fact the “Hanging Walls of Mark Anthony” Bugger all to do with Mark, actually, and much more likely to be lychets – terraces on a hillside created by repeated ploughing.  These things are all over the Pennines, as it happens – some really good ones at Eggleston in Teesdale. They’re quite good for botany because the plants on the little scarps are different from those on the flats. Have a look next time you find rows of long, green platforms on a hillside.

Anyway, we did just under 9 miles and 2300 feet of up. 

Be a man, scoff some flan. Just a tip, there.

I’ve Been Got by Facebook

 

Some time ago, I seem to have somehow acquired a Facebook account. I don’t recollect how this happened, but it did. And then, for a long time, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, on the tail of an atlantic storm, a message arrived in my email saying that Philip Werner wanted to be my friend.

Philip may well have bought me a beer in Montrose last may, which does seem like a friendly thing to do, so, I thought – why not….?

The I looked on facebook and did nothing else much for a couple of weeks.

Then, a bit later, I edited my profile a bit and there were all these messages about people who knew Philip Werner – some of whom I knew – and, well, one thing lead to another, and suddenly, I’ve asked all these people to be my friend (I’m normally fairly shy… no, really…) and people who knew the people whom I asked, and there were messages and pictures – a nice one from Ron Reynolds for instance… and I need to get away to make the tea…… 

A message to anybody who has sent me a message or commented on a picture – I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Apologies if you don’t get a reply straight away, or you get a reply which doesn’t male sense. it won’t make sense because its for somebody else.

Tea time now, anyway….

The picture is irrelevant by the way – I just liked it…

 

Susanna's Still Alive. Apparently

An element of Madness, takes me back to Wentcliffe Drive and unfinished/unstarted Chemistry homework.

This is The Cardiacs. The Kinks/Ray Davies originated the song and the version is on Youtube and well worth a listen. But I like this too, for it's psychoticness.