Weardale Weeds and Slit Wood

Me and becky (adminfairy) and superdawg had a little Easter Sunday walk in Weardale up the rather lovely Slit Wood at Westgate.
I’m not entirely sure whether or not Slit Wood is named after Slit Vein or Slit Vein is named after Slit Wood. Slit Vein, I should explain is a 22km long mineral vein which runs along Weardale and has been dug and mined and generally messed around and, if you know how and where to look, it is easily identified. (It just needs somebody to point it out)
Any road up, as you’d expect (possibly), Slit Wood is intersected by Slit Vein which runs crossways to it. This means, of course, that Slit Wood holds lots of industrial archaeology…..

So we set off at a sign pointing g to “Weeds”. Is this the other end of the Weeds Wivverpool Canal I hear you ask. Don’t be daft say I, its nothing of the sort.
We enter Slit Wood at the ex-mill at the bottom (still has a wheel pit) and we ramble up the little gill beside a tumbling and occasionally gurgling beck till we reach Slit Vein, where there are the bargain stores, where each mining team stored it’s gains or ore before payment, and some interesting culverts in the beck, which I am honour-bound to explore. So – discarding boots and socks, I enter the frigid waters and splash upstream. But it gets too deep, so instead, I escape and we have a little brew-up in the hot sun. (yes – hot sun….)
In terms of weeds – so far Ive identified some Wood Anemone, Wild strawberry, Cowslip, Daisy. Coltsfoot, Pansy (not sure which type), Ramsoms and Bluebells not yet flowering, though. Oh, and dandelions, a much maligned but rather sophisticated and beautiful plant in my opinion. And lots of little white things, probably some kind of bedstraw… But its nice to see flowers flowering and lambs in the fields, and even an ex-hedgehog squashed on the road. Just like the mentalist bikers roaring up Weardale, and the now green hawthorn hedges they’re all good signs that spring has finally sprung. And willow-warblers in the woods too.
And so, post-brew we continue.
A bit further up, we exit the woods on to the moors and cross the beck where we find four 4wds stuck in the lane, which they have virtually destroyed. The crews of these four cars seem to be families of what my son-in-law would call “Pikeys”. I take pics of their registration numbers for forwarding to the County Council, but I’m not sure of their legal position in this lane. They’d have had to have driven on bridleways to get there, though.
An hour later, as we return on the “down” lane, they’re still where they were before – still revving up, still stuck. The shepherd who appears to be doing something vaguely obscene to a ewe, says that they’ve been there since this morning. He says that they don’t usually get stuck at that point.
I’m not unhappy that they are well stuck.
A bit later, we pass a little quarry which has an enormous boss of rock in it. The boss is the Slit Vein itself. The very man. The ironstone has been dug out from around the sides and the galena has been mined from the middle and what’s left is an enormous lump of quartz. For anybody who doesn’t quite understand the concept of a mineral vein – this is the place to visit.
We end the walk and go home via Boozebusters in Crook (all good walks should have beer at the end)
We’ve done just 6 miles and 800 or so feet of uphill and forty feet of paddling in two-foot deep water at not much above freezing (it felt) . Is that enough statistics?

Loadsa work for charriddee

....don;t like to talk about it.

I have acquired a rail travel Voucher worth £21 which is valid for payment/part payment of the cost of rail travel on the principal train companies.

I will sell it to the highest bidder and forward the amount paid to Sue Ryder homes as a donation. (seeing as I got it for nothing)

It has to be used before 28 May 2009, and, as I'll be on the TGO Challenge in May, I'm setting the closing date for bids at 20 April 2009. This should allow time for cheques to clear before despatch to the most generous bidder. I'm not expecting a fortune, but I won't have time to use it and otherwise it'll just be thrown away.

Spango! and a scrap with the elements

Today's bag was the very lovely "Spango" - a cracking little grassy hummock in the middle of nowhere. In fact, its the middle of nowhere feel about these hills which is so enjoyable. I approached this one "from the back", so my impression that nobody ever climbs it was all the more thingy...

Anyway, its got Hares. Loads of Hares - running about being daft. In fact, I swear that one hare ran up behind another and touched it whilst announcing "Spango!" - at which point the chaser became the chased.

Spango could also be a Japanese TV game show involving people being made to eat worms whilst being dressed in diminutive underwear with little silver stars on them . Spango pants, in fact...

Anyway, after this conquest, I determined to walk to Wanlockhead for a pint of beer.

Head down into the fierce headwind for five miles and go for the Southern Upland Way. This was important.

The pub doesnt open on Mondays and Tuesdays does it? Story of my life, that is. And me fragged from the wind. The museum tea room sold me an egg butty and a scone and lots of tea. But no beer. grrrrrr....

And so, I climbed hill number seven - Green Hill just above Wanlockhead. The descent is just fab. A romp. A dance. A skip and a hop.

I'd chosen a camping spot deep in the little valley of Glendyne Burn. The valley is crossways to the headwind, so it should be sheltered. This was my thinking.

I descended and put up the tent. Not much soil. Tent pegs difficult to get in to any depth. It was calm, though. I had my tea and finished the final double scotch in my cycling bottle. The wind was getting a bit frisky. I dozed off. It went dark. the frisky wind waited for me to get into a proper sleep before unleashing and proper madness. About sunset(ish) it started raining, heavily and enthusiastically. The tent walls started dancing around. I chided it...

Half ten, pitch black, something had collapsed. I went out into the gale and replaced the pegs. I searched for big rocks to weigh them down. Everything was tight again. Midnight. Something else had collapsed. The tent heaved and flattened. Out again. More rocks. More poking the bloody pegs into stone. I got soaked.

At 3:00 an after more collapses and even the odd rock and peg pinging off into the night, the water was in the tent and I decided to pack whatever I could and sit in my full waterproofs till daylight. I couldn't get away from this spot in the dark. The beck was roaring nearby.

I seem to have got all the pegging points sorted but there was some danger of the pole breaking.

I could hear each big gust thundering and roaring up the valley before the tent pole lurched and flattened, and all the time the rain was like a hose.

A long night.

At six, I shoved the tent into a bag and abandoned the spot in a blizzard of huge snowflakes.

The route involved climbing back up the hill and contouring for a mile or so of steep hillside, then another couple of miles of flooded moor to the lanes into Sanquhar.

"No day fer walkin'" Said an old chap outside Nisa. "Are ye goin' East tae west or West tae East"

"I'm going home".

I must try to learn not to camp in wind tunnels

Another 28 km by the way....

TGO training - bagging day

And so, following a cosy snoozy comfy night at the restaurant for local foxes by the Poldive Burn (The place is heaving with little field meeces and the local foxes are having a field (meece) day, judging by the amount of fox poo laying around) - I blundered up through the forest and out on to Stony Hill - passing quite a bit of well distributed aircraft wreckage on the way. Whatever it was must have hit the hill very hard indeed -I would have thought... and some really nice lichens which were busily flowering.

Stony Hill is fairly nondescript, almost Pennine-ish, but it's neighbour - Cairn Table has more about it. The more about it being firstly a large and ancient cairn and an even bigger war memorial cairn and a view indicator and a path to Muirkirk. The big memorial cairn remember 87 people from Muirkirk who lost their lives in WW1. This is an enormous loss for such a place. But what a fine tribute.

I followed a path shown on the map, but non-existent in reality back down into the forest and through much tussling in the tussocks to the fine Cairn Kinney. Cairn Kinney's trig is rather strangely placed in a hole in the ancient summit cairn.

Due to it being perishing cold and freezing bits of me not meant to be frozen, I left the summit post-haste and put me tent up by Sherrifcleuch Burn (Northumbrian place name?!)

A fine spot too, with two streams of good, clean water.

It chucked it down during the night and the sleeping bag got a bit warm!

Another 16 and a bit kms...... but its not about kms, is it. (Its about ten miles)

TGO chally training in Galloway

One of the skills that all TGO challengers need to learn if they intend to travel to and from the event by public transport is the diplomatic return of all the spectacles, sandwhiches, small babies and pet dogs which stick to the outer eruptions or "straps" of the fully packed rucksack as you blunder up the central aisle of the Virgin voyager whilst it's accelerating and you're trying to concentrate on finding your reserved seat C17A (which will have somebody sitting in it who will growl as you approach)

And so, with unreserved seats on a train over half an hour late due to a goods train in the way , I arrived at Sanquhar and sought out the campsite. It appeared to be somebody's back garden and they were out and so, instead, in the tipping rain, I set out for the hills to find a nice somewhere to camp.

It stopped raining and, roughly five miles outa town, I spied a bit of untussocky grass with a big view and a water supply only slightly affected by a dead fox, set up camp, had me tea and just chilled for a bit.

A starry, moonlit night, it was, with only the distant lights of a remote council estate called Kirconnel glinting romantically in the distance.

In the morning there was ice on the tent.

The sleeping bag worked well

I was chuffed.

I went and bagged Cocker Hill, defended as it was by a rather fine array of tussock grass and bog.

I followed up this success by the bagging of the very fine, but grassy Kirkland Hill, a Marilyn of almost no note at all, but all the better for that.

And so, down into the depths of a deep, dark forest to find my bedding place for the night - which I found in an enorous clearing by the Poldive Burn.

The first 20km of my TGO challenge training walk was done. No rush, no route-marching; a saunter, in fact.

But what about the "Danger to Life" sign? Bit mad , that - somebody didn't want a communication mast up one of their hills, I suspect. I think the danger may have been exaggerated a bit.