Boxing Day in Wensleydale

After a bit of a tour of closed County Durham petrol stations, I eventually managed to turn up at  Askrigg parish church where you can park for an honest donation into a broken honesty box. It had money in it, so that just goes to show how honest….

Anyway, the plan was to ramble eastwards for a bit and then go up the hill to bag Woodhall Greets, a heathery bit of grouse moor overlooking Wensleydale and sporting an ancient beacon and bits of grouse-shooting infrastructure. After this, the slightly amended plan (due to wasting time finding petrol) was to have a look at Whitfield Gill Force – mainly for nostalgic reasons in that I once camped here with two Airedale General Hospital student nurses (ah, those were the days…) and I remembered a flat, sylvan pitch at the top of a huge waterfall with a campfire and a warm breeze sifting through the branches…

And so, in me and the dawg heaved our seasonal wobbly fat bellies up the hill out of Askrigg and through the sloppy fields to Newbiggin.  After that, there was a really nice, dry path running parallel to the road along a flat limestone shelf. This gave delightful walking with plenty of sticks for Bruno to run about with and break into lots of little sticks before finding more sticks…..

After another heave up the hill, a similarly easy bridleway apparently goes as far as Castle Bolton (hmm.. could be quite a nice walk, that…) – but we only went a mile or so before another pleasant green lane took us up onto the moor.  These tracks are exceptionally pleasant to walk on, I must say – nice, short turf, dry underfoot, cracking views…

After poking around the “shooting house”, we followed a couple of lines of grouse butts, descended a bit to avoid superdawg impaling his naughty parts on a fence, and then found the beacon – a large and neat cairn and a ruined beacon hut. The summit is somewhere along one of the lines of butts, so I expect that we walked over it…

We descended by the road for ease and speed (started to go dark by this time, even though it was only half one) – to the sounds of battle in the dale below. It sounded as if the local pheasant population was being reduced by the minute.

A lane took us towards the head of Whitfield Gill, but got lost in pastures and, eventually, we had to climb a wall to get down to the paths in the gill. These paths were occupied by gangs of ramblers discussing whether or not to “go high”. I’m not entirely sure what they meant by this but me and the dog went low – on disgustingly slutchy paths down into the depths of Whitfield Gill and back up the other side to find the Force. I was disappointed not to be able to take a pic of the waterfall, cos it’s impressive – but it was pretty dark by this time and the path has fallen away at the top so a good view can’t be had. I inspected our camping spot of all those years ago and it was muddy and covered in wet leaves – and a bit tilted, so it didn’t appear attractive at all. And my route down to the plunge pool at the foot of the fall looked stupidly risky. Whitfield Gill, though, would be beautiful in high summer. I should come back then. Today, it was driech and damp and sloppy.

We slithered our way back to Askrigg, finishing in darkness the twelve hour  post-monsoon drought just ending with sleety rain as I let the dog into the knipemobile.

The map shows the planned walk. I did a bit more wandering about than this..  Its about nine miles.

Last Time For Tunstall

It’s that time of year when bids and plans are submitted for the Summer 2013 Durham County Council guided walks programme, so I’m currently considering walks for April to September next year.

And, I’ve given instructions that if I mention any walks to Tunstall reservoir, that I must be immediately locked up in a secure institution. I really don’t know what came over me when I was planning these walks last summer, but I seem to have been to Tunstall reservoir from several different directions over the last twelve months – and, I must say, for each guided walk I do the route twice, maybe three times.

The Tunstall sheep and ducks are getting suspicious and so, yesterday, when I lead yet another group of walkers out from Wolsingham towards The Biggest Stile In The World and that notorious puddle at “T”, I was sure that I was getting funny looks from the grazing stock and all those laughing ducks.

The main difference this time was that the sun was shining. OK, it was windy in a howling Wuthering Heights kind of way, but it was sunny. We (nine of us) started with rainbows and ended in bright sunshine.

Not so with the reccy a few days earlier during which me and superdawg got really muddy and a bit wet.

The route is an easy one, though, just about seven of your Earth miles and only one, brief steep bit but lots of squishy, sloppy mud – having been the wettest drought since Noah and having consistently persisted since April, except when it all froze up for a week or so early in the month.

I did notice at Chapel Walls well, just outside Wolsingham, that the two springs (Holy springs?) were marked with pink-painted stones. I wonder what the significance of this is. Anybody know? Is it just another mystery?

In case anybody is busting to follow this route, there’s a map below. Go either clockwise or anti-clockwise. If you were to start at the reservoir car park, you could have a lunchtime pint in Wolsingham. As for me, I’m not going anywhere near Tunstall for at least another twelve months. I mean, it’s all very pretty etc, but I do need to introduce some new stuff.

My New Year’s resolutions will also include some cutting down (don’t they all – shouldn’t we, perhaps, resolve to do something more often…?) – cutting down on my visits to Bolt’s Law. I’m sure that Durham County paying punters might be relieved about that.

 

Midwinter Dawn With Prince Caryn

 

Carreg Caryn (aka Kircarrion) is a copse of a hundred or so pine trees in a walled enclosure which has no entrance and sits on top of a small knoll overlooking the junction of Teesdale with Lunedale. The wall was built and trees planted was built on the orders of the bailiff of the Strathmore estate following the enclosure of Crosthwaite common on the 1830’s and it protects the burial place of a long-dead British prince. It’s reputed to be haunted by Prince Caryn, but we don;t believe in such things nowadays but , the landmark is atmospheric and , on a shivery mid-winter morning near the turning of the year, it’s dark and brooding prescence is just the place to witness the dawning of a new, grey morning.

I went there last winter. And I went there this morning.

When I arrived, it was pitch dark but the route to Kirkcarrion from the layby is easy to follow and quick to walk. I entered the sanctum where the wall is falling down and got to the little cairn in the middle. The world was dark and misty with a seeking wind blowing icy rain. I waited in the quiet.

As the dawn began to seep into the trees, I could start to make out the shredded nature of the mist. I must have been just below the cloud base and the ragged ends were blowing through the wood, dancing around the trees and rushing on, out over the fell. It was as if the place was full of swishing wraiths , spinning and pausing, and teasing sometimes with outstretched arms. It was quite unnerving and rather than feeling safe inside a sheltered sanctuary, it was beginning to feel more like a trap. The sky lightened a bit more.

I decided to see if I could get a picture. Several attempts failed to get anything much on the camera’s screen.  I was starting to get so twitchy about the place that I could imagine dark shapes moving at the edge of my vision. A crow, maybe. My attention was being drawn to things that weren’t there. 

I got a very poor picture of the cairn in the middle of the wood. But it was dark and misty and….  there’s a light on it, moving from left to right at some speed….

Very odd.

As my watch said that the sun had now risen, it was time to go. I’ve left the place to it’s spirits. You can go there if you want.

Brrrrr…….

I mean ter say, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a spooky tale, now would it? Mwwwahahaha!!

 

Christmas Time Is here Again Och Aye The Noo

I've been resisting putting a Christmas video on the blog - but I give up...

Laydeez and Jennelmen - The Beatles.

Hands up all those who've heard this before

I love carpets Christmas, me.

Skiddaw and Cockup with an A-Z atlas and a Brown Dog

Yesterday (Sunday) was the day for killing several birds with one stone, the bird, figuratively speaking, being a bit of a walk.
Stone #1 was the field testing of the A-Z adventure atlas of the Northern Fells so I can write about it.
Stone #2 Was the bagging of the fabulously craggy and awesomely remote Birkett called “Cockup” which rises magnificently in a series of sweeping, rocky terraces from the Northern flanks of Skiddaw, dangerously defended by Cumbria’s only glacier “T’ Mere de Herdwick” and which has resisted the Knipe ticking pencil for over forty years. Actually, very little of the above is true, but otherwise, why call it “cockup”. In practise it’s a grassy and slightly sloppy abscess-shaped heave on a grassy fellside. It does have a grid reference for it’s summit, which is one reason why it was quite good for testing the atlas. And it’s a bit obscure, whihc is another reason.
Stone #3 Was my desperate need to control my burgeoning wobbly  winter belly with some exercise. There’s obviously some kind of technical problem with the scales, but just in case, a few calories expended up Skiddaw would be just the thing.

Stone #4 was the attack of cabin fever demonstrated by Bruno’s obsession with chewing my leg and growling whilst pointing to a map of Skiddaw. Something Had To Be Done.. so
About ten o’clock on Sunday morning I parked the knipemobile in a pull-off on the minor road to Orvillethwaite (or somewhere….)
I folded the atlas so that it showed Skiddaw AND Cockup and typed in the co-ordinates of Cockup into my GPS from the index in the atlas with all the grid references. This was to see how accurate the grid references were.

And we set off up the bridleway which marks one of the starts to the Ullock Pike/Carlside route up Skiddaw. We didn’t go that way, though, but crossed the little beck by the rather nice camping spot in the old sheepfolds (note for later…) and headed for a string of Knotts – Little, Great and Buzzard and, eventually to the flat top of Randel Crag where we crossed into the hillfog zone. Here, it started raining.

We lurched ever upwards, hitting some very slippery scree and soft snow which, as we got higher, became hard, icy snow. As it was much easier to kick up the snow rather than slither about on the scree, I put me new Khatoola spikey things on and kicked off up the steep snow, arriving on the foggy and sleety top of Skiddaw absolutely hours and hours later.
The top of Skiddaw was not place to be sitting around so I consulted the map, tore a hole in the relevant page (put it in a map case next time!) and determined that the crucial attack point for Cockup and the use of the GPS would be a significant turn in a fence on the path down to Bakestall. As it was snowy and a bit icy, I wore the spikes again for this bit.

At the fence corner, I switched on the GPS, selected “Cockup” from the list of waypoints (doesn’t seem like a good idea at first glance, does it?) and headed off downhill, emerging from the fog a few minutes later to see the festering lump of squishy grass below me. The GPS grid reference was as accurate as you could wish for and was very close to the little cairn that marks the summit.

I got the impression that Bruno, who had been enjoying eating snow and running about daft up Skiddaw was less than impressed by Cockup.
We left and followed a path along the intake wall back to the sheepfold with the lovely camping spot. We were back at the car by half two.
verdict on the A-Z adventure atlas – it was easy enough to use, much lighter than the OS maps and it fits into the front pocket of a buffalo jacket . The grid reference taken from the index, of a pretty obscure sort of place, was accurate and my view is that this index is one of the real strengths of these maps. I was a bit miffed to have torn the page. Nevertheless, I’ll be buying some more of these atlases.
They’re still on offer for £5.45 – a 31% discount on the normal price by inputting the discount code TRMK250 into the A-Z cart. The offer ends on 31 December 2012. There’s a direct link to AZ’s website here:AZ Mapping Co

We did six miles and 2800 heaving feet of slippery upness.. Cockup was my 490th Birkett.