Badger Way and Other Trade Routes

Bruno had been hinting that a longish walk would be just the thing by staring at me accusingly for half an hour or so at a time and loading my lap with doggy toys..

And so, after putting it off for a while due to inclemency in the weather department, Wednesday was to be bright and sunny, so we set off to a very small car park near the summit of The Stang – a road from Barnard Castle to Reeth.

We didn’t particularly enjoy the clear-felled forest (save our forests!), but we did enjoy the wide open spaces and bounding bridleways of Barningham Moor – one of which, of course, is the Badger way (nowt to do with black and white badgers – but more to do with itinerant tradesmen wearing a badge to avoid arrest as a vagrant and subsequent deportation to the home parish) Thus, the badgers , or tinkers, had routes across the moors to service the needs of the lead-mining population of Arkengarthdale and Swaledale and/or to transport minerals to railheads.

This makes for fab, wide-open, joyous and fairly quick rambling with a purpose. Not the kind of place to have an attack of agorophobia, and just the kind of place that RAF pilots like to hurtle over just before they receive their redundancy notices.

There was a skylark singing up high in the sunshine. And a lapwing was jinking about and calling. And a plover, bored as ever. It felt like spring. Despite the bright white of fresh snow on the high Pennines of Mickle fell, it felt like spring. We know it isn’t , though, eh?

Basically, we just followed bridleway in a big 14 mile circle. It was sunny and it was warm and this is exactly the kind of walking that walkers wish for.

There seems to be a surfeit of baby rabbits by the way. They’re all over the place. Bruno hunted unsuccessfully due, mainly to being on a lead.

14 Miles and 1800 feet of up.

Bollihope Wet Dogs Club

Various circumstances lead to this short doggy walk at Bollihope in Weardale starring Molly, Pip, Superdawg and Rachel and Matt.

It was driech (one of the reasons). In fact it drizzled for pretty much all of the walk. We parked at the normally popular pickernicking spot at Bollihope, just left of Frosterley. In summer, there’s often an ice cream van stationed here. Just a tip there for anybody who is fond of a 99 planning a Weardale walk.

And we followed the line of an old tramway down by Bollihope Burn, through the old quarry with the cowboy pass, past White Kirkley and the limekilns and down to Harehope Quarry where the carved seat was and the lump of Frosterley Marble. The marble is exactly the stuff that can be seen in Durham cathedral. Its not really marble, but cooked limestone. Its very near the Slitt Vein which runs from here to Cowshill and goes through Slitt Wood at Westgate – a poplier place for this blog.

I had a brief poke into Harehope Gill Lead Mine and found the water too deep for the wellies. The apparently loose entrance arch stood up to a bit of violence to see if it would fall down on me, and it seems reasonably safe just now.

Apparently, the mine produced 1165 tons of lead ore from the Slitt vein between 1816 and 1888 and the miners’ privy is part of the archaeology. 72 years of miner poo, eh? Its probably just as well that they shovelled it away.  The there was another three years  of privy visits later on and then it the mine produced fluorspar for a while. How busy the privy was  is not recorded.

We returned whence we came. Just under 4 miles. Bruno did a few more as there were no sheep till we got to White Kirkley, so he had a bit of a bounce around.

Then I couldn’t get the wellies off as they were full of water. Its the suction, y’know. One day they’ll stick permanently.

This is an interesting and easy walk with lots of geology and industrial archaeology to gawp at.

We all got fairly damp, specially those with the extra legs.

Ushaw Moor Brush Bash Bashes Much Brush

I appreciate that those who read this blog after consuming more than  six units of alcohol may be having some difficulty pronouncing the title of this blog post.
Its Ok. Don’t worry. Have a drink.
Anyway, when I looked out of the periscope in the bathosphere twelve feet down under the goldfish at the knipetowers moat on Monday morning it was, as they say in Crook, “Hoyying it down” And it was windy too. So, instead of fabricating a tasty butty and driving off to Barningham, I fabricated a hot coffee and some toast and went back to the bunk. It was only much later, after a spot of power snoozing that I came to realise that the sun had come out.
I made up for this lassitude today, though, by joining in on a Durham County Council Brush Bashing Bash on the Deerness valley walk at Ushaw Moor.

The “before” picture

There was, in fact, a bijoux bunch of brush bashers bashing the bad brush in a bunch and, in about four hours, we cleared a couple of hundred yards of bramble, whin, hawthorn, alder, birch and empty Carslberg tins. And we had a nice fire and chats with the dozens of dog walkers and their dogs, horse riders and their horses, ramblers, walkers, shoppers, people with kids, and cyclists.

The “after” picture

Its a very busy footpath.
It looks very tidy now. A robin watched some of the proceedings.
Maybe walkies later….but this was fairly hard work, so the exercise quotient is looking healthier, even if I’m not (I have a bramble scratch on the end of my nose)

We had a nice fire too. Forgot to bring sausages.

Foul Weather Alternatives

Here's some useful advice concerning some activities which can be undertaken like when its been chucking it down all weekend kindathing.
Enjoy.
You may need to switch off your search safeguard thingy.
Don't get carried away.

Path 49 Revisited.

After lunch, seeing as the day was fine and warm with yer actual blue skies,  me and superdawg decided that since it was now February (pinch punch..), it was finally time to do our new adopt-a-path route.

And so, finding our warm gloves and lead, we headed off up the hill to find FP167 – a pleasant and well used path between two hedges.

We went on to FP49 (which is the one that started it all off in the first place) – FP51 (missing footpath sign.) Come to think of it, missing bus stop sign too. the timetable was there. But not the sign. A driver out before the gritter, most likely…

FP56 was next – an ancient path with a section of hollow way at the top. FP176, through the pastures and a muddy cropped field to Annapoorna.

FP108 another pasture and another mudfest – but this one has, in the past, been fertilised with night soil. Its full of ashes, pottery and bits of glass. Homelands Hospital , now closed, is nearby. Homelands was once the main hospital for Crook and Willington, pre-NHS days… I wonder if this is the source of the night soil?

Anyway – onwards to FP106, up to the golf course, and FP34 from the golf course, along the edge overlooking Crook where we were greeted by a gang of small ponies. FP106 and fP34 need some waymarking in the golf course grounds….

Then down the steep hill to join the Deerness valley Walk that takes us back to town.

I’ll do this again in July. Its a good walk – just under 7 miles and 650 feet of uphill.

I have to report all of this stuff to the County Council on line. Its a clunky system. I’ll do it later.

Can you spot the Ordnance Survey error on the map?