North Pennines Walking Festival–Around the Long Man

This walk got included in the North Pennines AONB walking festival by a fluke of timing – that is to say that it’s timing to coincide with the festival was ..er….. coincidental.

It doesn’t  matter, though and 17 people turned up at Bollihope and NO DOGS because there was a little bit of open access where yer pooches are technically banned and , as I found on the reccies, there was a lorra lorra cattle.

The route circumnavigates the Long Man – a hill on the Weardale/Teesdale watershed so named either because it has a big cairn on the top or because it’s profile is of a long ridge. The top can be easily accessed from the parking area at the summit of the Eggleston to Stanhope road, but this delight was not for us. We went around.


Me and Lucky did a reccy in cold, windy and sunny conditions about a week ago – doing about half of the route, and abandoning the attempt near the Elephant Trees due to four fields full of cows with no apparent avoidance tactics available. So I returned a few days later and did the cowful bits without Lucky my Cuddlebuddy (interesting concept by the way – check it out on Google – there ought to be more of this kind of thing…). None of the cows were any bother and neither were the two horses or the two friendly farm dogs, one of whom selected a cow pat in celebration of our meeting and presented to somebody in the farmhouse kitchen.
On the day it was cool on the tops and quite hot on the bottoms… not that..er…  that was a different blogpost…
Here’s a map. Its 11 miles and you’re supposed to try to follow the line of the “roman road” (not actually roman at all) “Five Peaks” mentioned on the map is actually called “Five Pikes” well dhuhh…

TGO Challenge–Shall I or Shan’t I? (Do you really care anyway?)

Mrs Pieman gets me the TGO mag on subscription as a Christmas present, so I got the copy with the application forms in it (innit?) a week or so ago and I started filling it in. But it’s still sitting there half completed.

I’m not sure if I really want to do this or not. I have completed 12 TGO crossings, starting in 1998 and my last one was in 2013. On a couple of occasions I’ve haunted the route instead of doing the walk – notably 2014 when I did “Cafe akto” which raised loads of spondoolies for Mind and was, basically, a hoot.

But I’m undecided.

There are pro’s and cons:

Pros:

If I do another I’ll probably aim to get to 20 crossings. This would be a bit of  an achievement, I believe.

I’d meet lots of old friends.

I’d drink lots of scotch, most of it fairly cheap stuff.

It would be fun (mostly, but not all of it)

It would be a hoot.

Cons:

Its fifty quid!!  Fifty quid. I meantersay – it’s fifty quid….

Last May I did the English CtoC with my little dog “Lucky” and this was a hoot and I met some friends (and relatives) and I supped lots of cheap scotch and I could do something like this again.

I would put myself back into a hillwalking rut

Everybugger and his dog (apols- not his dog – dogs aren’t allowed) does a feckin trip report and some do a feckin feckin list of gear. The sheer weight of all this information is mind-bendingly dull. And I would have to write a feckin feckin feckin trip report on the Pieblog otherwise readers would assume that I’d died or otherwise failed to complete the route. Casual readers would turn away as soon as they spotted yet another feckin feckin feckin feckin TGO chally feckin trip feckin report.

If I don’t get a place at first and end up on a standby list, it buggers up my 2016 walks planning. Or I could withdraw at that point and lose my fifty quid. FIFTY QUID BY THE WAY|!

I could do something else.

I could do something else.

I could do something else.

I’m still thinking about this. I won’t decide to apply (yes, I do understand that I might not get a place – see above_) until I’ve had a fortnight in the Trossachs with Mrs Pieman and the little Piedog. And in 2013 I wrote that 2013 would be my last and final TGO challenge.

The dog would get fat and bored whilst I’m away.

I think I can see the way it’s going…..

Tales From Druridge Bay

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A Week in Ennerdale and Eskdale

This could be a bit of a challenge – fitting in a week’s wanderings into a blogpost, but here goes anyway.

The idea behind this tripette was to finish off the four Birketts I had left, not including the fifth Beatle Birkett, the undoable (for me anyway, not without lots of help anyway…) Pillar Rock, the mere thought of which has me with wobblers.

The first of the four was to be High Hows (Lamplugh) which is quite near Ennerdale and not too far from Low Cock How – a campsite I’d enjoyed on my Coast to Coast jaunt.

And so, me and Lucky headed off through the North Postern Gate of Pietowers for the collection of Dawn and then up the A69 to somewhere else and eventually to Low Cock How where we pitched on the soggy lawn. An evening expedition to High Hows (Lamplugh) was quickly organised. Now High Hows (Lamplugh) has a bit of a reputation for being defended by a farmer who has a low opinion of walkers in general and, more particularly of those out to bag HH(L).

So we went round the back, through the midgies and the trees and over the spiky fence and through the landmines and the caltrops and the trained killer budgies and all that – without incident.

Next was Lingmell – a minor nobble on the side of Scoat Fell which we approached from Ennerdale. This hillock is defended only by very steep bracken and a bull with a ring in it’s nose. Happily for Lucky and luckily for Happy, it wasn’t at all interested in us as we passed by within feet of it’s huge and sharp horns and the steam emanating from both it’s nostrils and it’s huge backside at the same time.

After Lingmell we heaved ourselves up the ridge and across to the Haycock/Scoat Fell col and thus to the top of the Fell. We returned via heathery and brackeny slopes which went on and on and on in a downwards direction causing some significant pain in the thighs, knees and bumpsadaisy.  I had some “special medicine”  back in the tent which dealt with these aches and pains successfully, though.

Next up was Great Bank – a precipitous height overlooking Miterdale and surrounded by deepest dark jungle occupied by tigers, remnants of two misplaced units of the Viet Cong and a forestry commission tree harvesting team, two of whom are reputed to have specially bad tempers and are prone to some Very Bad Language.

In preparation for the assault on Great Bank, we removed ourselves to Fisherground campsite in Eskdale and explained our compex plans to the Warden On Duty, who charged a reasonable price.

The assault on Great Bank failed, I’m afraid to say. There were notices which indicated that the area was closed for harvesting and that open access was suspended till after Christmas and that the Viet Cong had already mounted a mortar attack on some walkers that very day. Nevertheless, we pressed on past the “You can’t go any further than this” sign, just after being passed by a forestry commission vehicle retreating at some speed from a large tiger somewhere up in the trees. Finally, the Tin Hat had been placed on the head of our attack by a second FC vehicle which we avoided by hiding in the bracken. So I called it off to fight another day.  Research indicates that the hill is a bag of poo anyway and can wait till I have nothing better to do next March.

Then, next morning, we caught the La’al Ratty up to Dalegarth and wandered up through more jungle and rocky bits to the stupidly beautiful Great Moss, girded, as it is, by rocky and spikey mountains and roofed , at night by the darkest of skies sparkling with the full set of stars and other stuff. Oddly enough (maybe not) several people were noted to be wandering about in the darkness during visits from Mr Bladder.

In the morning, I had Pike de Bield to bag and Dawn walked with me and Lucky for a while in the general direction of the ridge up to Esk Pike, but decided to wait for me to finish it off. The ridge is a grassy plod at first but soon morphs into a delight of rocky tors and, at Yeastyrigg Crag, it gets narrow-ish, specially when smothered in one of the clouds which were drifting about that morning.

Pike de Bield, it turns out, is a delightful top perched on a rock overlooking Great Moss and with a fine view of the Scafell range. A cracking lookout and a place to spend some time considering how best to seriously damage an Asda value milk chocolate bar.

I retraced down the ridge to find Dawn pretty much where I’d left her and we paddled through the bog back to the tents for a bit of brewing up and Not Doing Very Much.

At some point we decided to move down to Lingcove Bridge, partly to cut a bit off next day’s walk, but also to give an opportunity, perhaps, to take advantage of some of the superb pools down there. So we left.

Not long after we’d arrived and pitched camp, it started raining. Then it rained some more and kept on all night, often heavily, sometimes torrentially, and always noisily, along with the roar of the becks and waterfalls which developed.

In the morning it had stopped but the becks were happily roaring away in some kind of watery frenzy and not really safe for anybody considering a bit of a dip. Lucky decided that it was probably still raining anyway, or it was just a temporary halt to the downpour, and refused to get up out of bed. He’s a teenager, really, though, y’know, so….

So we walked back to Dalegarth, had tea and a cream scone and returned to Fisherground on La’al Ratty – an excellent service for yer walkers, I have to say.

And that was that. The tents have just about dried. The undies and socks are in the wash. I managed to lose 1.5kg.  Lucky is happy, the Great Bank Viet Cong are having peace talks in Paris and the UK press are having hysteria about Jezza Corbyn (this developed whilst we were up Ennerdale, apparently) So, it’s all good.

We did about 35 miles altogether. (Dawn’s device will likely have recorded more than this by the way)

Just Up The Street

I had unfinished business in the land of the Upper Coquet in the form of an unbagged Tump called Swinside, a rounded lump of a Tump with some Very Nice Views.

I collected the digitally injured Dawn* from her dockside den and we progressed haltingly up to Alwinton (couldn’t remember how to get there from the coast) and we parked reasonably prettily at the start of The Street, a green trod of some antiquity which heads over the Border.

This is easy walking and height is soon gained and the views soon get better and better and the target bag was soon bagged, followed by lunch out of the hefty Southern breeze on a soft grassy carpet Northern slopes.

After lunch the same hefty breeze gave us a bit of help getting up to the Street’s junction with the Pennine Way where we turned left , or, as some might insist, West and with the considerable help of the long line of Lancashire mill slabs we romped easily over Mozie Law and Lamb Hill to the Ten Mile Hut aka Yearning Saddle mountain refuge aka shed…  for Lunch #2

Some serious tussocks were then defeated as we entered the lovely gill or cleuch of Buckhams Walls Burn which has some cracking camping spots were it not for the two herds of highland cattle crapping all over the place and mooing and other cow-like stuff.

A brief road-walk where we encountered just the one car, brought us back to the knipemobile which was exactly where we’d left it.

Upper Coquetdale is particularly beautiful, though, I must say…

12 or 13 miles or so and here’s a map… 

*Dawn cracked a bone in her hand whilst resisting the force of a huge and lively wave on a Northumberland beach whilst testing the temperature of the North Sea and in plain sight of Holy Island and is wearing NHS strapping. This is not, however, preventing her taking part in the North East Skinny Dip, a circumstance which may well have caused others to back off whilst rejoicing in a nice and irrefutable excuse not to do it. Determined, or what…. (nuff respect by the way) (which is why you should bung some dosh into her virgin money-giving account by clicking on the Mind logo below!!!)