Two Different Places on the South Downs Way

This is a picture of Chanctonbury Rings – an iron age/roman age hillfort with 18th century and modern plantations of trees. This is a beautiful and magical place which would be a delight for an overnight in high summer; perhaps on a summer solstice night. And, maybe frosty cold night in midwinter could be more than beautiful here.  We passed this way a few days ago. This seems to be a happy place and a positive place where good times can be had; a place for celebration and love and dancing and flowers and intoxication and joy.

 

And then, a few days later, we walked over Beachy Head. Here, there were crosses and flowers and Christian messages which those in absolute despair will doubtfully read. I was quickly repelled from the summit of this hill by the utter gutteral sadness of the place . My pictures of the top with it’s crosses and flowers have failed to be recorded.  It’s a place that is occupied and haunted by a formless black dog. This animal hounds it’s victims remorselessly from far and wide, possessing minds and causing nothing at all but pain to the people who are lead to believe that there is nothing, but nothing left for them except the relief of death  by leaning forwards, in final desperation,in to thin air. And to their families and friends who plant crosses and leave small messages of love, wishing they could, by just a word, have changed things or altered the outcome in some way.  And to the people who’s job is to to collect the damaged cadavers from the sea or the stony hard beach, far below; those who are damaged  slowly and slowly by the job they have to do. There is pure evil here. There is nothing good here just now. The only outcomes are death and lasting despair. There are ten or so yards of complete and powerful nastiness in a little circle around the top of the hill, hanging over a beetling crag of pure, soft, white. And everything just about to teeter off and shatter down into a shallow blue/green sea and move a little more inland.

The cwn annwm of Beachy Head would hate the dancing and the celebration of Chanctonbury.

More and better stuff on the South Downs Way with Dawn later……

A Pink Interval

There will now be another short interval - around eight days altogether whilst me and Dawn go and walk the Sahf Dahns Way.

Try to keep yourselves busy and don't let anybody into the house.

And don't forget to turn the bathroom tap off. It's expensive to leave it on like you did last time.

My train is at 4:27 in the morning as well, so don't make any noise tonight.

Here's a video with some specially unusual people in it. Innit?

Rangering Reccy to Bolts Law

I wonder who Bolt was……hmmm never mind.

Today, it was cold. In fact, it was perishing – but as with all arctic blasts, the air was clear as something really clear. And the Cheviots and bits of Scotland were clearly to be seen…

Me and the dawg went off to do a reccy of a route that’s in the winter programme of Durham County Council guided walks. (see… I’ve got cold and winter and arctic in this end-of-summer blog post.

Most of the walk has been done before on the blog, but there’s a section where there are dark rumours of electric fences and fences with no stiles. We set off hopefully.

 

Every Christmas, a some members of a NE cycling club decorate this isolated tree with Christmas decorations.  This year, I’ll take some pics…  I love it when people do stuff like this…

First of all, we encountered a grouse shoot. Our route took us across the front of several grouse butts manned by people with guns and ear protectors. One of them waved. We waved back. An old chap guarding a beaters transport responded positively to “Its a nice day for it” – so I felt comfortable with a chilly ascent of Bolt’s Law. It was, in fact, nithering. Not really an August day at all, bit the views up and over the Scottish border were clear as gin.

Then there were the fences.

The first seems to be in the wrong place. It’s a bridge over a deep and ancient leat with an electric fence. OK so far.

Next, is a bit where there’s a crossing over an electric fence, but the insulated way is a few yards to the right. Damage to the fence indicates that insulating a bit of the fence that’s not next to the stile could be classed as a mistake. Crossing the stile in the correct place could lead to exciting and painful experiences for the hiker’s “parts”. Some people like this kind of thing, however. This is exactly the walk for them.

Next is a fence with no stile at all.

It needs a stile. There’s a DCC waymark, indicating that the rights of way peeps have been here, but no stile. There’s going to be a stile!

Overall, the path between Bolts Law and Ramshaw could easily be described as a disgrace. Lets see if we can make it better. This may well take some time.

And so the walk ended through Deborah Wood and alongside the river into Blanchland, during which superdawg went into monochrome for a few minutes. I’m not entirely sure how he does this.

It’s about nine miles.

More of this later….

Burbling In Baldersdale

I put a walk in the Durham County Council Winter walks programme which visits Burble Well in Baldersdale.

The walk is in October and so, yesterday, I thought I’d best go and see if I could actually find Burble Well. Eventually, after plodging through some very wet bogs, I got to the place where Burble Beck meets a road, and, by handrailing the beck (just a trickle) and by counting paces, I found two very old manhole covers and an orange bog, swelling out of the ground in a huge dome. The water looked reasonably clean but there was a lot of orangey “stuff”  which may or may not have been organic.

Burble Well is chalybeate. In translation, this means that it’s got a noticeable content of iron salts. Most of the becks and bogs around here seem to have lots of iron salts, judging by the orange and red deposits, so I came across several possible candidates, mostly in the wrong places, due to navigation based more on hope than how many double paces there are in 100 metres.

So, the reccy was successful and I decided to alter my original route quite a bit – it’s now a bit shorter, and come at the Burble from the East, where it’s easier to find and not so boggy, and I can build up the exciting anticipation of waiting to see the famous (well it will be by then…) Burble Well.

The rest of the walk circumnavigates an army shooting range, passes through Battle Hill farm with all it’s cattle (I came across several excitable heifers and one huge but , thankfully, calm bull.

Then it started to rain heavily, so I curtailed my wanderings and hurried back to the cosiness of the knipemobile parked cosily in Hury Reservoir Car Park.

I hope the punters won’t be too underwhelmed by Burble.

I should have called the walk “A Bimble to the Burble” but it’s too late for that now as the programme is at the printer’s.

Two North Pennine Guided Walks

It is with a smug fizzog and ever so slightly damp undies that I write this post.

Yesterday and today I had back-to-back guided walks: Friday’s was a trundle up the Elephant Trees and around Bollihope in Weardale, stewarded by Sheila and Chris and attended by two small dogs and fifteen walkers, and today’s was the final section of the Pennine Way in Durham, from Forest in Teesdale to Cauldron Snout with stewards Doug and Neville and nine walkers. There was a certain amount of overlap in attendance (that is to say, some people came on both walks)

I’d reccied both walks last week, the Teesdale one in half a day’s driving drizzle and half a day’s hot sunshine , and the Weardale one on a nice,warm summer day. Today, it persisted all day, and the grass was wet and the rocks were slippery, which is why I’m a bit damp.

Unfortunately , I forgot to take the camera on the Weardale walk, but got some pics on the reccy, but there’s a few pics from the Teesdale walk.

The Weardale walk was pretty much uneventful once it had stopped raining and we visited the Efelent Trees again (some avid readers may say “yet again”) and the flowery Bollihope side-valley and the Harehope Mine and Quarry. All very familiar stuff….

The Teesdale walk’s fortunes were maybe a bit more ominous. First, there was the mistake in the programme which talked of a walk to “Cronkley Spout” This is almost entirely my fault, with some small responsibility at least falling on the proprietors of the Bunnahabhain distillery who’s product I may well have been sipping whilst putting in my bid for the walk. I did fail to notice the mistake on proof reading/checking the details. There is, of course, no such place as Cronkley Spout, although there ought to be. We went, instead, to Crumply Scout Cauldron Snout

Secondly, the day was wet and stayed wet, so rocks and duck-boards were slippery, and deep grass in the remaining uncut meadows were specially wetting.

I must pay homage to the grit, determination and persistence of the punters who turned up. (I was a bit surprised that anybody turned up, given the weather) There were no complaints and nobody came a cropper. The scramble up by the waterfall went as smoothly as could be expected although one or two of the walkers had a little flutter of adrenalin since the waterfall was in a bad, bad mood.

So it was all OK.

Maps below:

Weardale walk 11 miles

Teesdale walk 11 miles as well… spooky, that…