Howgills – Green Bell and Randygill Top

Yet another walk in the series of Yorkshire dales 2000 foot tops. This top being the one at the top of Randygill. And let’s be honest, there’s not much thats all that randy about Randygill Top. We should just clear that up before we start.

Before we start on Randygill Top, as it happens, there’s the little matter of Green Bell, a not very green and not much like a bell either kind of little grassy hill not really towering above the not very big place called Ravenstonedale.

But first, we park the knipemobile on the patch of grass just next to the little back lane to the farming hamlet of Bowderdale.

The morning was crispy and blue. The ground was as hard as something really hard and had crispy vegetation. I noticed that there wasn’t all that much snow left on the Howgill fells.

I also noticed a red squirrel peering at me from up a tree at Weasdale. I took it’s photo.

We progressed up the path to Green Bell where there were patches of ice for Bruno to eat. The summit was occupied by two chaps eating bananas, so we headed South for a bit to a sun trap I just happened to know about. I was dead cosy, like.

Onwards and southwards we went to the grassy slopes of Randygill Top which was occupied by a rather sulky and almost hostile group of four and a couple with a dog called Jack who wasn’t allowed to socialise with Bruno. Bruno got the message and had a little growl. We left for the quieter and shapelier top of Kensgriff, just down there, across there and up there a bit.

We descended steep grass with remnants of snow thawing in the sun and followed the bridleway which runs from Bowderdale Head to Bowderdale. This is a fine path.

Randygill Top is an easy climb from the North and a bit of a slog from the Cautley. Its a grassy lump. It should pose no problems at all for those with healthy knees and cardiac parts.

Its vaguely possible that you might get lost trying to find it on a misty day if your navigation is a bit ropey and the slope off Yarlside down to Kensgriff is like walking off the edge of the world if you’re coming that way.

The Bowderdale bridleway is inhabited, or , at least occupied, by small groups of Fell ponies. These are harmless, gentle and disinterested. They may be semi-wild, although they don’t act like semi-wild animals.

The sun was warm today. This is a breakthrough in the advancement of the season. There was also just the one lonely skylark singing its little beak off on the slopes of Green Bell. This is another good sign. The ground is still frozen hard and the in-lamb sheep near Bowderdale looked, frankly, exhausted and couldn’t be arsed getting up to put any distance between themselves and Bruno. This is probably not a good sign.

Afterwards, we repaired to the Ventriloquists Arms in Kirkby Stephen for a kint of gitter. Unfortunately, the drayman hadn’t called so we just had a gottle of geer. Incidentally, its traditional in this pub that whilst drinking your pint, you sing "Sonny Boy" or similar. Not easy at first....

10 Miles and 2000 feet of up.

For anybody interested in yet more Howgill walks, there’s loads and loads of them here http://www.doodlecat.com/howgills/index.html

Its all downhill from here

It seemed like a perfect plan. We would leave a car at the bottom of the hill, drive another car to the top, sledge down and retrieve car number one after a long descent of 1800 metres horizontal (er….tilted…) and 150 metres vertical (ish)

The maths should have told us it wasn’t really very steep, although, from Brian’s house, it looked quite scary. White and scary as it happens.

So thats what we did. We left a car at the bottom and drove to the top of Killhope Cross – at 627 metres above mean sea level – and we walked another ten metres of ascent before beginning our individual luges.

This is where it went wrong. The snow was too soft and deep. The sledges didnt so much hurtle down the slope complete with screaming bearded geriatrics, but rather they slid very very slowly, powered by pairs of rotating arms and cries of “faster, faster….” It was difficult. There was blasphemy and the snow was cursed.

The slope even levelled off a bit, just to make it a bit harder. Then came a steep bit. We had a short hurtle. A very short hurtle, as it happens.

And then we arrived at the little dam. Ice covered, it was. There was a foot of snow on top of the ice and the ice had sunken and collapsed in the middle due, no doubt to it not having rained liquids at Nenthead since the 12th of December.

This gave a few minutes of slippery sport.

A gully gave two fast and scary runs into a beck, but the effort of climbing back up the sides was too much.

We had managed an 1800 metre "journey" with a 150 metres drop, though.

So we went back to Brians for soup and regroup.

After, we had a look at the Yad Moss skiing grounds, which had a few skiers and snowboarders skiing and snowboarding.

(Note: next time take skis to the top of the hill – or at least the ski-bike…)

And then we contented ourselves for a good while trying to snowball a boulder in the stream below the waterfall at Ash Gill. A snowball descent of around 40 metres. We missed. We explored the little cave which can be used to descend to the foot of the waterfall and found it full of water ice and quite slippery. We went to the co-op in Alston.

There’s still a lorra lorra snow on Alston Moor and the North Pennines, and its either very deep and powdery on a deep, hard base, or very deep and soft and heavy on a deep, hard base. The main road is just slightly over single track and the road to Teesdale is single track between walls of snow.

Its quite fab, really. Walking on the moors would be difficult, however.

The Greenburn Horseshoe

Martin continues to collect his collection of Bill Birketts Great British Ridge Walks and so, me and superdawg met Martin and Graham at a slippery Little Langdale quite close to the phone box.

This walk was arranged immediately after the Littledale Horseshoe walk, so maybe the warm sunshine and snowy hills is an omen of cracking walks to come.

We set off well till we hit the steep, hard snow of Birk Fell, at which point, kicking steps and lurching steeply upwards, I managed to plunge both ungloved hands into powder snow a couple of times and by the time I emerged from the shadow of the hill, I was in some degree of agony. I couldn’t warm up my hands at all due to duff circulation and soon began to feel quite nauseous with the pain. I was considering abandoning the thing altogether till I put my fingers in my coffee and managed to put gloves on. After that I recovered fairly quickly and we continued upwards, though Martin took charge of the dog. I put crampons on, with assistance, due to inoperative fingers.

Little Langdale Edge, which climbs Wetherlam, was excellent steep, hard snow and we lunched in the sunshine on the top. Great fun. Graham put his crampons on here and Martin had his snow chains. Bruno’s enthusiasm for the little bits of snow kicked up whilst walking lead to me accidentally puncturing a front paw with a crampon spike. There was a little blood and much shaking of the paw – and a bit of limping. But this soon wore off and more thoughts of having to abandon the walk for the sake of the dog’s foot, passed without much comment on my part. Graham also managed to spike himself in the leg round about this time, so less a less determined party, not enjoying themselves so much in the snow and sunshine, perhaps, would have read the signs at this point and packed it in. No question of this today, though, so we climbed Swirl How and descended back towards the start over Great Carrs and Little Carrs.

The blue skies began to give way to a more hazy grey at this point and the warmth of the sun was missed as a nithering breeze sprang up.

Between Swirl How and Great Carrs, we stopped for a short while at the cross and cairn, containing the undercarriage and other bits of a Halifax bomber S for Sugar LL505 which had impacted here on 22 October 1944, killing its mainly Canadian crew of, principally, young lads. The rest of the aircraft rests on the scree at the foot of the hill.

We ran out of snow well down the ridge and rejoined the outward path.

Martin located a geocache near Slaters Bridge and did whatever geocachers do, before we all repaired to the boozer at Ings for our tea.

Bruno’s paw seems to be fine. I can’t find any holes and the bones feel all rights – and he doesn’t object to examination. I noticed that our other dog, Tammie, went straight to the injured foot and sniffed at it. I’ll keep an eye on it, though, but I suspect that there’s only very superficial damage.

We did 14km and 970 metres of ascent – which was, frankly, harder work for me than it should have been. My walking record for 2010, I notice, doesn’t show much in the way of contours climbed up – in relation to the distance covered. So, I think that since the option of giving up the beta blockers isn’t maybe such a good idea, and I really am trying to shed a bit of blubber, the only extra thing I can do is to do a lot more if this kind of walking. Steep stuff. Lots of brown wriggly things on the map. I’ll give it a try anyway….

Thanks to Martin and Graham for the walk, sympathy, help and patience. And to superdawg – be more careful in future…

Stop press - late announcement - Martin's partially fictional account of the same walk is here and with a link to an excellent slideshow featuring me...http://phreerunner.blogspot.com/2010/03/tuesday-2-march-2010-great-british.html

Teesdale – Moking Hurth and High Force

My plan for today – up until last night anyway , was to go and bag Penyghent and Plover Hill as part of the Yorkshire Dales 2000 foot tops thing.

The weather forecast was a bit borderline for the Dales, specially late in the day, and I didn’t have any change for the pay and display, and I could have a lie-in if I went somewhere closer to home…… so I went to Teesdale. In particular, I went to the Gibsons cave visitor centre care park, which is free.

I determined to go and have a look at a little crag on the North side of Teesdale which has some caves – and then come back to the start using the Pennine Way.

It was sublime. In fact it was very sublime. Gwan – ask me how sublime it was. It was, sublime. That is to say, it wasn’t beautiful, not in the usual twee sort of romantic green kind of beautiful. No it wasn’t that. There was lots of snow on the ground for a start. And then the sky was grey and white and heavy and, and the high moors were bright white, and maybe there was a bit of hillfog. So there wasn’t actually a boundary between the hills and the sky. The hills became the sky and the sky became the hills. There were flakes of snow and no horizon. There were deep drifts and frozen gates, impossible to open. It was bleak and tough and unyielding. It was, in fact, The Pennines. I really like it when its like this.

So, after leaving the easy lanes, we blundered into the white desert and there was hard work, for a time. And swearing.

Bruno plunged through a soft new drift into a beck and struggled dogfully out again. There was limping for a while.

We lunched (I lunched, Bruno dribbled) on the limestone crag at High Hurth Edge. This is a fine suntrap in summer. Today there was a little shelter from the sneaking wind and a fine , if monotone view. There’s some caves in the crag – Moking Hurth, 1000 feet Grade II, and a pothole – Moking Hurth Pot, 35 feet deep, 800 feet long and Grade II. Must have a look down here sometime… there is mud and crawling to be done….

We descended by easy tracks to Forest in Teesdale school and crossed the river to join the Pennine Way.

The Pennine Way, for some reason, was icy, and quite slippery till I reached the bottom of the snowline, somewhere just upstream from High Force. There were a few people rambling on through the juniper woods.

The juniper woods are quite remarkable. The trees are ancient and mainly sterile, so every year, as many juniper berries as possible are collected by Natural England and given to a nursery. Any germinations are shared between NE and the nursery – and quite a bit of new plantings have been done. Its a great place. It smells of gin. There are fierce suntraps in summer and its a favoured place for adders.

We passed High Force and came to Low Force where we found – a pair of trainers. Just removed and left, by all appearances. I wonder if anybody is missing? Low Force would be a bad place for a dip on such a day. High Force would be more efficient if ending it all was the aim. You might survive Low Force.

It started snowing heavily. We left via the wobbly Wynch Bridge

Its a good walk, this. Quite easy to do. 9 Miles and 1200 feet. Which isn’t much…

Incidentally – I saw some signs of spring today – a flock of about 30 lapwings by Cronkley – and by High Force, a flock of about 50 lapwings heading West. Coming back from their hols at Redcar, no doubt. That’s a sign of spring that is…..

A visit to HMS Ark Royal and some Geordie stuff

This was Brian’s idea. He turned up this morning along with Charlie and we hurtled off to South Shields to have a look at the Ark Royal which had an open day today before receiving some aircraft at sea tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the ship was parked in North Shields, so, after some excitement amongst the road works of the new Tyne Tunnel, and the old Tyne Tunnel, and getting ourselves trapped inside a maze of “No entry except buses” signs, we abandoned Brian’s car amongst some traffic chaos somewhere in the posh end of South Shields and went off to find the ship. There was a bit of a queue. (About half a mile, I should think) Some shivering was done, but eventually we came to our turn and were allowed up the gangplank and into a hangar. There were various displays of weapons and engineering and forces and lifeboat charities. The crew were all quite keen to show off the ship and tell anybody about it who cared to ask.

We followed the crowd upstairs (I expect that this isn’t the correct term) – where there were armed guards, a helicopter and various vehicles including a venerable crane. It rained and yet more shivering was done.

So we left. It was good to see. This is where the ship was built, so there seems to be a strong link. Some of the sailors were asked if they were enjoying their time in Newcastle. Some of them could remember….and some had only vague recollections of a night in the city.

We went to the Fish Quay and had haddock and chips in the Kristian, and mooched around the seafood shops and other foody places – and the fish dock itself. I thought this part of Britain’s heritage had gone. But apparently not. There are only a few trawlers left, though. I left with a kipper.

Brian decided I needed a bit more in the way of a tour, so off we went to Tynemouth where the waves were breaking over the piers and the lifeboat museum was closed.

More touristy stuff took us to see the surfers at Whitley bay – then on to St Mary’s Island and, finally, to a Charlie’s old workshop in Newcastle and his ex-local pub where various people seemed to recognise him. The big window in the pub has a superb view of the Tyne and its bridges and the beer was wholesome….

The final act was visits to a couple of Tescos and a ride through the snows of North Durham. Hopefully, Brian will have got home. It was still snowing a bit…

This is a fascinating area – full of it’s very own character. I’ll have to come back.