North Pennines Walking Festival – Cross Fell

This was my final contribution to the North Pennines Walking Festival and this time I was acting as back stop/hillwalking-type safety bod for a walk up Cross Fell lead by Gordon and Jenny from Barnard Castle Ramblers. Actually, I strongly suspect they could have managed without me, but Elf and Safety suggested that somebody with some kind of qualification should be on a walk up such a big hill and, as everybody knows, I passed both my eleven plus AND my cycling proficiency whilst studying humanities, arithmetic and the successful avoidance of sago pudding on Thursday lunchtimes at New Road Junior School in Earby between 1959  and 1963. (The cycling proficiency was a close run thing due to a faulty bell and duff brakes) (and my mum was highly suspicious about why my trouser pockets were always full of sago pudding on Thursdays)

And so, I plopped over the misty Pennines to Kirkland to wait for Jenny and Gordon and the four walkers who turned up and, in improving conditions, we set off hopefully for Cross Fell

This went well and soon, or, perhaps, eventually, we all turned up at the cross shelter on the top for the scoffing of butties and bananas etc. We did notice that the radar station on Great Dun Fell had disappeared and that a wall of cloud was boiling up to the South and East, and so, after taking bearings on a prominent cairn and a GPS waypoint on a crucial path junction somewhere over there ------->, we set off on a Southerly course and were soon enveloped in cloud.

But it was all right, cos we’re skilled hillwalkers who never get lost, and we wewre soon at the path junction and descending underneath the cloud cover back to Kirkland via the Hanging Walls of Mark Anthony and the huge and impressive Western corries of Cross Fell.

The walk was 9 miles and it started raining just as we arrived in Kirkland City Centre.

All good, clean fun.

Here’s a map.

North Pennines Walking Festival – Best of Teesdale

It was the best of Teesdale. It was the worst of Teesdale.

This was another of Pieman’s walking contributions to the North Pennines Walking festival wot is on this week. In this case, a walk I’d done before as a Durham County Council guided walk and repeated here as part of the festival.

Today’s stewards were Compulsory Dave (David) and Sheila and today’s punters numbered thirteen – substantially from Durham CC walks, but we also entertained people from around the North and some on holiday from other parts of the UK.

I did the reccy on Monday in a flat non-photogenic light, which explains, or , maybe excuses, the quality of my pictures. Luckily, though, in view of today’s driech drizzle, I did manage to take some pictures of the bits we missed today and they’re here on the pieblog for those customers who may stray over here who might be curious about whatever it was they missed.

As I set out on Monday, I came across a sheep with a bucket on it’s head, being chased around the pasture by a pony. I watched this for a bit and considered that my horse-and-sheep-with-a-bucket-on-it’s-head skills were probably not up to the job of sorting out this particular situation, so I reported the matter to the farm nearby. the nice lady there said (with a smile) that she’d tell her son. I returned. By now, the bucket had slipped around the sheep’s neck and the pony was chasing the whole flock around the field. It was only now that I had the bright idea of taking a picture. By today, the bucket had been removed. I think it had anyway. All the sheep looked the same without buckets.

Anyway, today,  I abandoned the walk in the face of sheets of rain sweeping across Cronkley Fell and chopped a huge chunk of high ground off the route. Instead, we went straight for the caves, getting only slightly lost in the hillfog on the way. Only Graeme entered the cave, but here’s a picture of what it looks like when you’re in it. Innit? It’s quite dark as you can see… only..you can’t..actually….

Anyway, it chucked it down pretty much all morning and only abated just after the abandonment. We had to shelter behind a sheep shed for lunch and we scared the cattle as we loomed out of the mist towards them.

About half of us visited the Bowlees cafe afterwards. they were happy to see us. It had been a quiet and drizzly day at Bowlees..

Here’s a map of the full route. We chopped off the Western end of the walk. the full route is about 14 miles. We did 9. 

The Best of Teesdale walk contains the following best bits:

Wynch Bridge aka The Wobbly Bridge

Low Force

Two stone sheep, neither of which Bruno is very keen on

A flowery riverside path (not very flowery in October, though)

Juniper forest

High Force

Bleabeck Force

Green Trod

Cronkley Fell exclosures, sugar limestone

Riverside path complete with tricky duckboards

Forest school time sculpture

Caves

Bouncy cows

Hay meadows (not in October!)

Bowlees tea and scones.

More North Pennines Walking Festival stuff tomorrow. here's their website – click on EVENTS

North Pennines Walking Festival – AW’s Pennine Journey in a Day

First of all, I’d just like to thank Brenda and Andrew for their kind donation to my sponsored skinny dip on the North east Skinny Dip in the North(brr) Sea (aaargh) at Druridge Bay the other day in aid of MIND and national Trust. Its got nothing at all to do with this walk (no skinny dipping took place), but its just nice to say thanks, eh? I’ll be reporting on the total amount collected when the virgin giving link closes at the end of October.

Back to the plot…  This walk was part of the North Pennines walking festival organised by Friends of the North Pennines. It’s also part of a project to do the entire route of Alf (that sheep is looking at me in a funny way) Wainwright’s Pennine Journey in a single day. This was achieved in a series of day walks including this one lead by me… in this case from Tan Hill Inn to Baldersdale – some 16 or so miles later.

There was only the three of us – me, Mike the steward (who may be referred to as “Mick” to avoid confusion) and Graeme. Graeme has contributed some pictures to this blog post.
A minibus from Teesdale Community Transport removed us from Balderhead Reservoir car park and delivered us a bit later to Tan Hill, where we failed to stop for any refreshments, but launched off on the soggy path down the hill towards Bowes. We set a cracking pace at first (note that the route was substantially downhill)

Soon, and after only the one short stop , we blundered into Bowes and were drawn, as if by magnets, to the public bar of the Ancient Unicorn, a truly ancient coaching inn advertised for sale and occupied by a temporary troubleshooting manageress fresh from the tropical warmth of The Gambia and a few locals, intent on mopping up the very last dregs of whatever beer remained in the cellar and whatever scotch was on display. This effort was carried out with enthusiastic and self-sacrificing dedication. In fact, we were so moved by this display of public spirit, that we decided to help out as best we could.


More beer and new beerlines are due to be delivered shortly, apparently. In the face of this resistance, we left for the plod through RAF Bowes Moor to a lunch stop beside the beck at Levy Pool. The locals refused to quit, though and bashed on regardless, helped by a small crowd of walkers who arrived shortly afterwards.

After lunch, we motored on over by West Loups’s, which had a shoot going on, and by Goldsborough, which had a couple of climbers with bouldering mats.
And so, on a day of reasonably warm sunshine and mainly clear blue skies, we heaved our aching limbs up the final steep slopes to the reservoir car park, where our cars were still there, the lights were off and the wheels were still on. So, we counted this as a success.

The route follows the Pennine Way and the eastern half of the Bowes Loop, should anybody want to try to follow it. it’s a long, but reasonably easy bit of walking with a pub in the middle. All really good walks have a pub in the middle and should you wish to help in the quest to rid the Ancient Unicorn of it’s booze supplies, you need to get there quick before the drayman arrives.

It’s haunted by the way…. I was in a seat on the corner of the bar – a spot known for contact with one of the pub’s ghosts, one “Emma”, who is renowned for tapping customers on the shoulder……..  ooer…..  anybody for a pint at halloween…?
The North Pennines walking festival runs until 6 October and has a total of 50 walks of all grades and 9 events. My next contribution is on Wednesday 2 October 2013 and is a 14 mile walk starting from Bowlees at 10:00 (be there from 09:30). The walk is called “Best of Teesdale” and visits some of the best bits of…er….. Teesdale – Low Force, Wynch Bridge, High Force, Green Trod, Hurth caves and the cafe at Bowlees..

See the festival’s website for more details of all the walks including how to book and so on at north pennines walking festival website (click on Events)  note that even though the walk details for Wednesday’s walk say that you have to pay in advance for this walk, you will be able to pay the steward on the day, just before the walk starts.

Rangering Around Hunstanworth and Edmundbyers

In between all this skinny dipping and glamour posing   running about daft, I have, actually been busy doing Durham County Council voluntary rangering stuff. This has consisted of wandering about on the moors just to the left of Consett. Being busy doing this kind of stuff isn’t really onerous, consisting , as it does, of mainly walking , interrupted by short sleeps or watching the world go by….  One such episode of world watching witnessed a red kite swooping low over Sykehead dam and taking a sip of water. The particular bird is shown in the introductory pic having a bit of a float around in the blue sky.

Today’s rangering was a guided walk entitled “Hunstanworth Hobble”, possibly a slightly ominous name for an event with a Risk assessment. There were 36 of us, including me and the stewards Compulsory Dave, Maria and David. This is quite a lot of people to have following you about, specially when it’s very claggy, as it was today.

 
The potential for losing somebody off the back of the walk is a real one, but armed with a safety procedure involving jumping up and down and shouting loudly till somebody came to look for you, nothing much went wrong, apart from a few less than graceful descents from stiles, wet feet and gazing at a magnificent view that couldn’t be seen due to the fact that our heads were almost permanently in the clouds. I’m speaking of the cracking view from the top of Bolt’s Law, obviously…   I think people generally enjoyed it, though, despite the glaur.

 
To have a guided walk, of course, there has to be a reccy. Me and superdawg did the reccy about a week ago. The weather on this occasion was warm, showery and a bit blustery. This reccy also covered the first half of my equinoxal adopt-a-path thingy in which I stroll through Deborah Plantation, over the footbridge and along a moorland bridleway looking for things for the rights of way peeps at the council to put right – such as the three fallen trees on the steep bit of the path up to Townfield. Before I managed to report these to the council, though, somebody had been along and turned them into Christmas logs – so nothing much to report.
The dawg enjoyed it. The cows above Blanchland only went into a frenzy as we got to the field gate (we’d been mugged by cows in this field last year) and we escaped without injury.

I did the rest of the adopt-a-path walk a couple of days ago in warm, almost hot sunshine, with big blue and beautiful skies. I added on a little trip to Sykehead Chimney and sat in the suntrap there for the best part of an hour. The moors nearby were occupied by at least three groups of grouse shooters, and, occasionally, the RAF and what I took to be a police helicopter paid brief but noisy visits,  so it did sound a bit like a war zone and I had some difficulty in retaining snooze status....


In ten miles up the leadmine trail out of Edmundbyers, and back down by the Pedam’s Oak path, the worst I found was a waymark that had gone blank. This happens to me occasionally, but it seems more important for a waymark to retain at least some element of clarity. So, I’ll report that one. I don’t expect that this will receive a really high priority…

And that’s it for now. Next up is the Alf (I seem to have lost a sock) Wainwright Pennine Journey celebration walk during which we attempt to walk the entire Pennine Journey route in a day. The bit I’m doing is from Tan Hill to Baldersdale. We start at 09:00 on 28 th September at Balderherhead dam for a bus trip to Tan Hill to walk back again. We need punters for this, so come along. You’re supposed to book via the AONB  book free pennine journey walk  Note that this event is FREE OF CHARGE and is lead by an expert leader who’s been to Tan Hill before and is an absolute brick…
Some of today’s pics have been donated by Graeme Ferguson. Ta Graeme.

Finally –D for Dip Day - The North East Skinny Dip

The instructions in the string of emails from Dip Central were to park at the Druridge Bay Visitor Centre and to make our way either by a five mile road trip in shared cars, or by a two mile walk along the beach to Diptopia, the centre of skinny-dipping operations. The actual baptisms were to take place at sunrise – at 06:45 hrs and it would be best if we were there by 06:00 for any necessary beaurocracies to take place. As it would be an hour’s walk (ish), 05:00 had top be the start time from the car park and, in order to get the 55 miles or so from Pie Towers, I would have to leave by 03:30, which, since once I’ve gone to bed, getting up again at 02:30 would have been unlikely, it would be best if I just stayed up and drank coffee – so that’s what I did.
I found the car park eventually. There was a small Dippers campsite, complete with snoring and dogs trying not to bark as I crunched by on the gravel. I met a few lurking figures – who turned out to be locationally challenged press photographers. I showed them my map – an old OS map which hadn’t got the main A-road on it since it had been re-aligned in nineteen echty blob and got on with the job of marching South into the night – a full and very bright moon on my right and a flat calm sea lazily flopping onto the sand on my left. Druridge Bay by moonlight, on such a warm and balmy night was a joy, and that alone would have been worth all of the expended caffeine reserves. I must do this walk again – by moonlight, maybe on a frosty winters night….

Eventually I arrived at the dip site where just a dozen or so shadows were mooching around. I checked in at the reception and sat on a WW2 tank trap to await developments. Gradually people arrived and quietly wandered about. The sea continued with it’s laconic slapping of the flat sands and bit by bit the sky lightened.
More people arrived with a cool breeze. The organiser asked if anybody minded if she “got naked” and took her clothes off for a photo-shoot. Nobody minded. A lad with a drum started drumming. It was irritating. His noise was just so much litter. I’m not sure what he thought he was doing, but I had a strong urge to shut him up. I didn’t. The sky got lighter and a jet stream lit up orange in the sky. There was a bit of a buzz going on. There was a  sense of nervousness amongst many and whilst some were greeting old friends and joking, and the local naturists at least were being confident and friendly, many were silent. The drummer battered on and, as dawn broke, we were directed towards ten numbered markers in the sand – these were to provide reference points for locating our clothes. Announcements were made and a few shoes and socks were removed, and , the occasional t-shirt too, but , it seemed that nobody was going to be first to strip off.

Finally, the instruction came to remove clothes and, slowly at first, people began to comply. Suddenly almost everybody was naked. We did some nervous warm-up exercises and then , on a word of command, there was a noisy rush into the sea. The North sea, dear readers, is not the warmest of the world’s oceans. Internet research seemed to indicate that the best it could offer in terms of heat, happens around the autumn equinox and, at very best would be 14C. The most likely would be 12C. This, I have to say, is Chilly. Nevertheless, when a herd bolts, it all bolts, and this herd bolted, screaming, laughing and gasping, following a count-down into the cold cold briny. There was splashing and jumping about and many went for the full-length dip. Photographers clicked away all along the beach. Some made a hurried exit. I managed about ten to fifteen minutes of , basically, walking around up to the nips(ish), before I gave in and made for the shore.

Some of the dippers were obviously old hands at this cold water stuff and quite a lot of people were swimming far out. One group formed a large circle and went around and around. There was a lot of laughing. It was, in fact, quite good fun.
I got dressed, shivering along with many others. I wandered back up the beach in the warm sunshine and went home to get breakfast and, frankly, have a nice sleep for the rest of the morning.
It was the merlot made me do it. I registered on-line on a whim. It was either this or the backpackers club treasure hunt. I wanted to do both and didn’t realise the clash till much later.

One of the aspects of this that’s promoted by the organisers, is that it’s a life-affirming experience. Having done quite a bit of skinny-dipping in mountain tarns and streams and, occasionally, the sea, mainly alone, not wanting to offend anybody or get into any bother  (alone with the dog!) I didn’t really understand this. But, having done it, in a crowd of nearly 200 people, and with press photographers all around, I must say that, I think I now “get it”  Most people are pretty nervous about stripping off in public. There’s always that worry that your body isn’t really quite what it was, if it ever really was all that attractive – and I’d be the first to admit that my expensively acquired beer-belly is probably not my most attractive physical asset; so, in the end, I’m just like everybody else. And that’s it, really. We’re all different, and that makes us all the same. We have whatever God gave us, probably a bit worn and floppy, but that’s it. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.   The life-affirming part is, of course, the act of taking off your clothes in public and then doing something ever so slightly daft, and the realisation that, apart from the old hands – the local nudists who do this sort of thing all the time – that everybody, more or less, feels the same about it. There’s a sense of relief, somehow.
And, of course, taking off all of your clothes is a little bit naughty isn’t it? Doesn’t it appeal to our mischievous side just a bit?
And then, as well as this, there’s the contact between the body and The World. Nature, that is. Reality perhaps. You know – away from the technology and the central heating and all that civilised stuff..   The sea is cold and prickles the skin. The breeze touches places where breezes don’t often get to touch. The moon finally knows who you are. The sun finally gets to greet it’s beautiful creation.

I was quite nervous about publishing stuff on the internet about my participation in this jape, but, a bit like the stripping off, once you get used to the idea, and that you realise that if you do want anybody to pay you money for doing it, you have to tell them about it. Simples, really. I was quite chuffed with the response I got – most people just said I was mad to do it, which was the response I would have hoped for.
And, sponsors have donated £200 on-line (thanks to Brian Cowling who is the latest generous donator of spondoolies) – and there’s fifty quid or so on a sponsor form back in Crook, plus family and friends donations of, perhaps another fifty quid. So, as far as Mind and the National Trust is concerned – and St Catherine’s Community Centre in Crook – I’m fairly pleased with what we’ve done.
Would I do it again? Too true I would. Next time, though, I might bivi or camp somewhere along the beach and I’d go into the water, come out and then go back in again – since this works for me in terms of dealing with the cold water (and it is cold…..) And it would be nice not to be the “unaccompanied male” – a status which might meet with some suspicion where an activity involving the displaying of naughty parts is concerned.
And, of course, Druridge Bay is a particularly beautiful piece of Northumberland coastline. It’s a huge horseshoe of a  beach of flat sand backed by high dunes. At any time, it’s a fabulous spot. On a moonlit starry night it is more than magical.
Thanks to all who supported me and to Jax Higginson who organised it (and who announced she was going to “get naked” and did anybody mind?) and to those who gave of their hard-earned cash. You can still donate by the way…..
And now, back to walking……
I walked six miles altogether, by the way…