Tunstall Signs say “Look, Just Pack It In Will Yer?”

Stile? Call That a Stile?  This is a Stile….

I have loads of these pre-reccy walks to do for the Durham County Council guided walks summer programme. There’s a couple at Wolsingham which go to Tunstall and, whilst I was pretty sure that this one was all right, I went and did it today anyway. Bruno came too.

The pools on Waskerley Beck.

This one starts at Demesne Mill picnic place,, which my sprogs know as “Wolsingham Pools” and which the Ordnance Survey has as “Waskerley Beck” Coz there iz pools innit? We swam here sometimes and floated on things at other times. It was usually quite refreshing. The main pool is quite deep but the waterfall above it seems smaller somehow. I have seen local kids wandering past here carrying some very large and dead salmon wrapped in their jumpers. They swim up here in the autumn. The little waterfall would be a really good place to watch them jump.

Weardale from near Fawnlees Hall

Me and Superdawg slopped through the clart alongside the ancient park wall, up past the ex-Pet Shop Boys house at Fawnlees and over the biggest stile in the whole universe, including that really big one on Zephilon Seven, the one that the Great Magrab of Dumple fell off and broke his flipper…. Anyway, despite his superpowers, Bruno couldn’t quite manage this one without a bit of a push….

No!  Don’t!  Stoppit!

 

And then down to Tunstall Reservoir which is quite pretty and has lots of interesting signs telling you to stop doing whatever it was you were thinking of doing. There’s quite a nice, but very short walk around the reservoir, suitable for a warm summer evening destined to end in the Black Bull.

Tunstall Reservoir

A quick zip around the reservoir and back to the dam and a short road walk followed by some nice but muddy meadows beside the beck and we’re back in Wolsingham in just about three hours, including lunch and shouting at some geese.

Quite an easy and pretty walk. I seem to remember getting stung by wasps or bees or something last summer on one of these paths, though.

It was seven miles. Quite a nice day, really almost spring-like – I noticed there was much more bird song today

More Tunstalling later.

 

Looking In To Holes

As part of my strategy for turning myself from Mr Wobbly into Mr Six Pack, I’ve started exploring a bit further afield from the immediate environs of the Knipetowers Deer Park – just a couple of miles or so, making a, more or less, daily six mile dog walk.  Sometimes, this means entering some of the woodland which graces the area just to the North of Crook – and the outcome is that I’ve started finding stuff. This is what I found the other day, and today, with fairly new batteries in the camera, I went to take some pictures.

I think I’ve found the remains of part of the complex that once made up the coalmines of Josephine Pit and No. 1 Drift. Josephine Pit was initially owned by the Pease family and operated  for around a hundred years from the first decades of the nineteenth century till November 1911. No. 1 Drift was a little to the South and worked from 1955 to 1968. Some of the area has since also been open-casted. Nowadays, there’s the Deerness Valley walk from Crook to Langley Moor at Durham, on the trackbed of the old railway line, and dense woodland and nature reserves, so it’s much better. 

The Durham Mining Museum website records forty deaths in and around Josephine Pit – from 13 year-old “drivers” to a “delicate” man dying from a minor leg injury or the chap who got blood poisoning from an abrasion caused by uncomfortable boots…..  Anybody who has any thoughts about ghosties may consider wandering around these parts (at midnight with just a hand-torch) to be a little risky.  And the pines do creak and groan…

What I found, along the sides of Stanley Beck was first a new hole which has appeared next to the beck. This isn’t very deep but seems to have a

passageway in it. I daren’t slip down into it to have a proper look in case there was a much deeper shaft underneath…

Next – the beck runs through sections of culverting and has old culverts running beneath some very old spoil heaps which block the little valley.

Further up, there’s a huge culvert with cream-coloured brickwork with the word “Pease” stamped in. The cream coloured bricks are identical to those found, and, probably produced in Peases West colliery and brickworks at Roddymoor. Most of the older houses in Crook and the villages around are made from these bricks in favour of the soft  and porous sandstone which makes up Knipetowers. Its these bricks which make me think of the older mineworkings rather than the NCB’s 1950’s and 60’s workings.

Around the big culvert, there was also the noise of what I thought was a water pump. I followed the beck, found a small entrance which must lead to the big culvert, some more old workings – and, at the end of the plantation, where there’s natural regenerating woodland, I found the source of the rythmic noise – four lovely, white wind turbines.

Retracing along the path, I found evidence of more sensible developments. A little bower with a seat, defended against the nithering breeze by pine branches. A little table and some strange scribblings and a cartoon of Prince Charles….

Poking around, y’see…..   I might have to have a better look inside the big, arched one….

 

A Shivery Border Walk – Reccy Sans Specs

I was joined on this little pre-guided walk reccy by Louise (whom we met in the breakfast hole the other day – she was the one covered in mud, or, rather, one of those covered in mud…) and her collie pup Rosie.
The idea was to walk from Cowshill in Upper Weardale, up to the Northumberland County Boundary, across a bit of moorland and back to Weardale, following the River upstream back to Cowshill. So this is what we did.

I’ve put pics in of the same walk taken last July because my newly installed camera batteries failed immediately and those taken from my GPS didn’t have enough power to take a picture, so there are no pictures. This is a pity because the day quickly developed into a sparkling winters day with fabulous views and some fairly daft doggy antics from Rosie the pup and Bruno the codger who, frankly, should know better. Rosie seems to particularly enjoy staring at puddles, then biting them. Rosie also likes running around in large circles very very quickly and Bruno follows her as fast as possible, barking like a pup and, occasionally, cutting a corner. Bruno is a little bit stiff tonight from all this running about….  If he was a person, I’d prescribe a good dose of tasty beer, but as he’s a mere dog, he’ll just have to confine himself to watching me drink it vicariously. I don’t mind, really. In fact, I’m  completely OK with this idea.

I should also add, for clarity, that the title of the post refers to the fact that whilst ramming my specs on through the resistance of my hat, I snapped them in half. They're now sporting a temporary, selotape reinforcement.

The walk is a good one, I think, and goes up to the Northumberland Border at 600 metres, and then contours across the moor at just the right level to get cracking views into Weardale. Its a bit exposed, though and landmarks are out of sight of each other, so no handrailing can be done. But,  I’ve got the bearings and I’ve marked five places as waypoints on the GPS, so this should do the job if its foggy. There’s a wall shelter a little way across the moor which turns out to be a fine suntrap with a fine view, so we stopped for butties and coffee just here. (Another good place for a solstice “do”, I think)
After the moorland part, the walk follows Sedling Rake, on the line of the Slitt Vein then descends to Ireshopeburn on a quiet and very steep lane, followed by a riverside ramble back to Cowshill.

This pic’s not from July, obviously…. Cowshill waterfalls…

At the end of the walk, I celebrated by mending my broken specs (they don’t make them like they used to…) and scoffing a healthy orange before driving home.  ….er………. actually I ate a mars bar. But I can eat the orange later. Look, I know that the doctor and the cardiac nurse and the fat nurse all say that I’m much too short for my weight, but this is my fourth walk this year so far and it’s only the 5th of January. I need sustenance. I need sustenance that’s a bit more entertaining than broccoli and carrots. This is why I’m off to Crook Boozerama in a minute….  I’m probably wasting away here, by the way; I’m almost down to clinically obese. I could be in danger or something.
I hope somebody turns up on this walk – Its on Friday 13th starting at 10:00 o’clock at Cowshill in bright sunshine. It’ll be fab.

Justaminnit, though…. Friday the 13th…….

There may be trouble ahead……

New wire across a stile on footpath 20

 

Oh dear oh dear oh dear….  what have we here? ( I like to sound like a traffic warden every now and then…) A blocked path. A path barricaded off with barbed wire. Tsk Tsk. I couldn’t get across. I wouldn’t allow Superdawg to even try, remembering the damage done to Mr Sloman’s hand back when we  did some Peebles to Moffat walking - and not wanting any similar brutality to Bruno’s naughty parts. So we diverted.

Bruno expresses his feelings at a derelict stile on footpath 25

 

This is Footpath number 20 in the parish of Crook and Willington and today was my adopt-a-path walk around Crook, the purpose of which is to discover things just like this. There will be bother.  I’ll have another look at this in a few weeks to see if anything has happened. There’s always a chance that a local dog walker will discover that he’s left wire clippers in his pocket…  In the meantime, I’ve told the rights of way peeps at the council. I expect they’ll have a word. These things can get a bit routine if nobody does anything naughty. So, I’m chuffed in a smug petty-official kind of way. It would be more than my jobs worth to let it pass, had I not been a volunteer, that is….

Our new open cast coal mine

 

It was a really nice day for this type of thing today, though, and I expect that the farmer was just about to reinstate the stile anyway… (koff)

Yes, there were blue skies a frozen crust on the muddy bits and a thin, slicing kind of wind blowing off the Pennines, which seem to have suddenly turned white. This is good, because I have to do a Reccy at the top of Weardale this week and a play in the white stuff would be nice.

A squall with snowflakes on the lens.

 

There’s some other stiles falling to bits. Same as last time, but a bit more so. Two stiles have received some TLC by the look of them and, towards the end of the walk, there was a brief but lively snow shower.

The walk is about 5 miles and links 3 footpaths and 4 bridleways in a circular walk. The bridleways are always open due to use by local racing stables  kids on bikes and dog walkers. The paths all have stiles which have been made from mining timbers dating to the 1960’s and , mostly, they’re not in good condition. many of the paths have been open casted in the past – some are currently being dug up again. And they put one back in the wrong place……. dhuhh….

Howgills Hoolie

On the last day of the year, I thought it appropriate, for a blog that’s supposed to be about hillwalking, to walk up a hill. Many candidates presented themselves and, as I’d not been to the Howgills for quite a while, a little trundle up Green Bell and Randygill Top presented itself as The Thing To Do. Parking at the foot of Bowderdale would mean that there would be a bunch of options for returning to the piemobile post hilltop-bagging.
So thats where me and superdawg went.

It was raining in  a warm Atlantic blow kind of way when we arrived. It was that sort of driving drizzle that defeats hydrostatic heads. Be plodged off up a bridleway and then on a track over a moor. Contours were crossed. We found the path to Green Bell and plodded uphill, tugged by a wind that was a bit more than a breeze. Sometimes the driving drizzle morphed into a slashing deluge. Things started to become wet.
We passed a group of four very friendly “chaps” descending damply the way we’d come up. I declared (over a now thundering gale) that I’d probably “Just do the first one…..” One chap said something Important which hurled away on the noisyness. We plodged ever upwards.

The wind on Green Bell seemed a bit more gentle somehow. We pressed on into the blankness of the hurtling hillfog. And soon, well, after a bit anyway, the dripping summit cairn on Randygill Top was reached. The driving rain had been stinging my eyes. Bruno rolled about on the heath and rubbed his face in the sphagnum – presumably his eyes were suffering the same. A path presented itself. I guessed it went to Leathgill bridge – a narrow bealach with deep drops on either side. It did, steeply. But here, between the two hills, the wind was extra lively. Side-on it pushed me around and, generally, roughed me up a bit.

We descended over Hooksey, me hoping that it was actually Hooksey and not something else and the dawg considering the possibility of me having my sandwich any time now.
We returned to the car. Everything was wet. I was damp to me undies. My socks were wet. My baselayer was wet. My five pound note was wet.
We went home. Damply.
Note to self: take a change of clothes next time… dhuhh….
We did 8 miles and 2000 feet of up.
No more 2011. We have good plans for 2012, I think.
Happy New Year to All Pieblog readers.