Sleeping bag arrived

Eventually, early this afternoon, the courier arrived with my new sleeping bag.

For those interested - its here

//www.backpackinglight.co.uk/product362.asp

Its blue, but the colour on the card says its "grease"...(!)

As I'm off on my pre-TGO Challenge 4 day wander starting saturday (during which there'll be another intermission, incidentally) - I'm well chuffed.

I'm also well chuffed with backpackinglight's customer service, specially as they sent me some chocolate eggs

I might go off and have a nap just now...

Gratuitous pic of Lambley viaduct above!

New Plug for Doodlecat

No, Phil hasn;t been investing in new bathroom equipment, its my monthly shameless plug about the Howgills diary thingy wots over at Doodlecat.

This time, we're in April.

See it here at http://www.doodlecat.com/howgills/08apr.html

Incidentally, Bob Cartwright says my new sleeping bag will be delivered tommorrow...

I'd better have a good old slug of 40% or I'll be too excited to sleep......

Can you see the shape in the scree on the pic? Is it a camel? Is it a Llama? Is it a random shape in the scree?

South Tyne Trail

Maggie did take me to Tynehead and dumped me in the middle of nowhere. There’s gratitude for all that washing up. I was forced to walk….

So I wandered up the road from my dumping-spot on Tynehead Fell just as far as the source of the River South Tyne. Here there is a kind of statue thingy. It has a hole in it and you’re supposed to look through the hole and see the part where the first spring of water squirts out. You can cheat and look round the side. It’s a good idea to have a little drink as the water is pure and clean and not at all what you might expect from the River Tyne.

And so, I began at 20+ mile downhill walk. The section to Garrigill is, in my opinion, the very best part of this walk, with waterfalls and minerals and fine retrospective views. But we’ve done it all before in this blog…. And so, repetitively, and with the first spring lambs dozing in the warm sunshine (despute the snow on the hill and the icicles and so on…) I arrived at Garrigill.

I called in at the village hall here because the local ladies were having a tea room day and were selling tea and teasted toe cakes and some rather exciting spicy soup.

Meanwhile, outside, the local sproglings were amusing themselves by almost bursting in to the “café” with shouts and squeals, and then running away. I’m not sure if they were aware of just how little notice anybody was taking.

Also taking place outside was a dramatic showdown between two of Garrigill’s tom cats. They were swearing at each other and looking unconcerned at the same time – and moving ever-so-slowly…..

I was going to drink beer in Alston, but the hour was late and I pressed on and found a nice, discreetish campsite with a good water supply quite nearby and settled in for whisky, cream of chicken soup, whisky, lancashire hotpot, whisky, chocolate sponge pud and whisky. I had a settled night following an extra small libation or nightcap.....

In the morning a shepherd was doing his rounds close by and a woodpecker was pecking some wood. Nice.

I lazed for a while, had me bacon and beanz and toddled off northwardsly.

I have to say that the Northern half of the South Tyne trail itself is a bit dull, it being an ex-railway line and all that. There is the viaduct at Lambley which is impressive and possibly the reason why the line went bust, and there’s the Wallace Arms which sells all kinds of delicious real beer. Apart from that, the interest lays off-route. There’s the new lambs of course, but also there’s always the river – growing at each turn and quickly becoming a proper big river, and there’s fortified farmhouses, peles and castles (this is proper Border country which was lawless for quite a while) and lapwings , curlews, oyster catchers, snipe and all kinds of small and occasionally colourful small birds.

Then, with a final viaduct over the Tyne at Haltwhistle, its all over. Tea and more soup at the Pillar Box café (has a pillar box outside) then the train back to Durham and bus to sunny Crook.

I’d wanted to do this route since having my cardiac thing a couple of years ago. It was to be a test. I climbed Penyghent and Cosh Knott instead. This time, I did it just cos I had a couple of spare days…

Intermission

There will now be a short interval whilst I get transported off to the source of the River South Tyne to walk the South Tyne Trail to Haltwhistle. I have prevailed on Maggie to take me there in just a mo - probably after eating a baked potato.....

I have my eye on a nice little camping spot just off the Pennine Way too..

And for those interested in such things, my pack weighs 19 pounds which includes a litre or so of tap water and half a litre of extremely cheap scotch. There is to be no link between the two liquids. I am carrying this stuff for training purposes, obviously...

I'll be back Monday...

And its nice and sunny!

Pic is a camp in S Tynedale on my Pennine Way jaunt a couple of years ago.

Photography not allowed at High Force

Superdawg had the idea of heading up Teesdale for some leg-cocking in the juniper woodland around High Force, and also to have a look at the waterfall which should be in spate(ish) due to the recent batch of lambing showers we’ve been having.
And so, armed with the now traditional cheese butty and banana, we parked the knipemobile at Bowlees and crossed Tees by the wobbly bridge (aka Winch Bridge) and headed off up the Pennine Way towards High Force.
Deep in the juniper scrub, just inside the Natural Trust reserve, we came across a small group of Countryside Volunteers doing some (presumably voluntary) work on the NT’s “Dirty Hands” campaign to encourage volunteering in the countryside - aka the “Get Dirty for the Natural Trust” campaign. They were bagging up a batch of juniper seedlings, apparently for sale to a garden centre in Haltwhistle. I was a bit surprised by this, specially since this juniper woodland, just like everything else nowadays is supposed to be “Under Threat” but, as one of them explained, they had to generate some income for “Green Projects” such as the new road and visitor car park for Black Sail Hut and the wind generators for Malham Tarn House. So, I expect that’s OK, then. It kind of explains how B&Q in Bishop Auckland were selling Spring Gentians for £1.99 each last May too, I suppose.
Of them, who’s ID badge introduced as “Maggie”, a skinny, bespectacled hippy-type with beads, spied my digital camera and said words to the effect that she hoped I wasn’t going to snap any pictures of the waterfall. I told her that I was fully aware of the Natural Trust’s “ban” on photography at High Force and I promised not to take any pics without the proper permit. (They’re £12 for a day ticket at the High Force Hotel, apparently) I did sneak the snap shown above – don’t tell anybody!
She did insist on examining the images on the screen, though, just to make sure that I hadn’t been naughty. Luckily, it was just before I took the snap but she did see the "glamour" pics I took of the dog asleep in front of the fire...
I thought it was all a bit officious and left me feeling just a tad annoyed. They’ve also gone a bit overboard with the “No Photography” signs, which are all the way up the Pennine Way from Winch Bridge to Cauldron Snout. I’m wasn’t entirely sure how they police this till I noticed a security camera attached to an old ash tree – and, laughably, very badly disguised as a nesting box! It was the little antennae and the whirring noise as I passed that did it. How they manage to get delicate little things like Maggie to carry out the threat to confiscate the cameras of miscreants is a mystery, although I did notice a cardboard box with a couple of cameras in it at High Force. I wondered how legal this could be….. I though there was a slight whiff of something “herbal” about her anyway and the thought crossed my mind that maybe they were selling the cameras to pay for their habits. But no, I shouldn't be suspicious. volunteers do a great job, specially in Conservation.
Anyway, so much for the dirty handed Countryside Volunteers Natural Trust

Incidentally, I wasn't too impressed by their plant identification either. One of the boxes marked "Juniper" had some gorse in it - complete with yellow flowers, too... (dhuhhh!)