Beechburn and Enginemans Terrace – Howden le Wear

This is walk 3 of the series. I said there were three walks. I’d forgotten about the bonus walk, so there’ll be another one.
This walk follows a section of the little valley of Beechburn Beck. (Beechburn and Bitchburn seem to be interchangeable here) This little valley is very pleasant. The walk returns to Howden on an old road which runs parallel to an old railway line. There is the remnants of Victoria – a hamlet built for miners, railway workers and brickmakers. Engineman’s Terrace is substantially the remains – plus a few cottages and farms.

There was one bit of confusion where the path stops at a farm complex. The farmer, who was playing on his tractor, said that I could go anywhere I liked. He pointed out a variety of possible routes. He said it didn’t bother him where I went. He said that some people went that way whilst others preferred to go this way (indicating). I thanked him, Bruno wagged his tail and we chose a route, emerging on the path at the other side of the farm, somehow.

Some of the rest of the route needs a bit of TLC – duff stiles, tied up gates – that sort of thing, but , generally, its OK. Its very nice, in fact.
The walk is three miles, and, due to it’s shape, and a bit of exploration along a permissive path in some woodland, I did 7.
Bruno did a bit more.
That’s it for walking for 2010, although there could be one New Years Eve/Happy New year posting……  probably in the morning.

Howden le Wear Walk 2

The second out of three short Howden le Wear walks.  Attentive readers will remember that there are three walks around Howden that are published in a County Council set of leaflets concerning short walks around Howden le Wear. And I’m checking them out for the Rights of Way peeps at the Council as part of my Lone Rangering activities along with my trusty dawg, Bruno the superdawg aka Tonto.

And so, we eventually dragged ourselves away form the fire and into the slippery and misty thaw and, once again, we slithered off down the bridle road to Howden.

Walk 2 coincides with the Crook Around the Compass South walk for a time, and also uses the bridle road.

Its quite a nice walk and passes an interesting mine tip (only interesting for those who find such things interesting, obviously…). This particular tip is fairly small but what appears to be the fishplate sticking out of the black shale of the heap indicates an underground railway, which probably means an extensive mine. There’s nothing much to show on the surface, apart from the heap – just a few large stones with some embedded iron work and, of course, the public footpaths which lead to it and form most of our walk today.

No mine, no paths, I suspect.

Very foggy today, although a weak bit of sunshine told me that not too far up the hill there was probably a very nice temperature inversion, warm sun, cloud sea, blue skies.

The walk is just two miles starting and finishing at Howden le Wear Community centre. I did four, cos I walked there from Knipe Towers, along the bridle road, in fact.

One more Howden walk to do.

Blackie and The Naxie – Howden le Wear

And so, with a nagging dawg, we drag ourselves out from a Yuleish stupor of roast beef, red wine and various liquors and stumble off through the snow to Howden le Wear.

The purpose, apart from exercising superdawg’s latent powers of bouncing around in the snow, was to have a look at the prosaically-named Walk 1 in a small collection of leaflet walks produced by the Council. The remit is to have a look at the route descriptions and the paths.

This one is just two and a half miles long, has one bit of a pull up a hill, and a selection of refreshment stops – just the kind of walk you might want to do in an evening, in fact. If you’re not fully refreshed after doing this walk, then you’r enot trying very hard.

The walk description is quite good, and has lots of local information such as the  long-gone whereabouts of railway stations, coal mines, brick works and that kind of thing. The Naxie and Blackie are, in fact, the names of the local pastures. Hill 60, pictured here, is the spoil heap from a long-defunct coal adit, named Hill 60 by soldiers returning from The Great War for Civilisation (aka WW1)

There’s a lot packed into the walk, in fact, and its all the better for it.  I enjoyed it, and so did superdawg. there’s no problems with the paths – they’re all well used by locals by the evidence of lots of footprints in the snow.

The walk is two and a half miles – I did six, cos I walked there and back.
Two more Howden le Wear walks to do…

Solstice Morning

Me, Brian and Charlie got up outrageously early this morning and turned up on the Durham/Northumberland border just as the moon was going into it’s final stages of a total eclipse.


(Very poor picture of the lunar eclipse. Well, it was dark, see..?)
As we totterred off over the hard neve of Middlehope Moor, it finally blanked out, turned red and disappeared into some Cheviot haze.
We pressed on up the hill, reaching the summit cairn not too much later (its not very far)

Here, we lit some hexamine and produced a fairly frazzled breakfast of sausages, bacon, black pudding, tomato and rolls.
And then the sun rose in a pink and red light. We all agreed haw great it was to be here and not tucked up in a warm and cosy bed.

The snow began to steam gently and, despite the severely negative celsius readings, Charlie pointed out a heat haze.
Everything was now bathed in sunshine.

The snow conditions in the North Pennines, I have to report, are absolutely superb at the moment. There is hard neve to walk on. The bogs are frozen up. There is blue sky and sunshine. And the roads are open. This can’t be missed. I must have a walk tomorrow.

And, of course, the year has now turned. From now on, each day will have just that extra few minutes of daylight. There is hope. Spring is lurking somewhere far away but has it’s bags packed, the taxi is waiting, the cat is at the Aunty’s and the neighbours have a key, just in case.
Solstice sunrise and a lunar eclipse. That can’t happen very often. It would have been a shame to miss that one.

Oh, Holy Night

OK, so this is war…..   Stick this up yer chimneys and see if Santa finds it….

This’ll make you reach for the tissues..