Advent Adventure Yet Again

It must be Yule when this walk gets trotted out. This is the third year running we’ve done this Durham County Council guided walk.  The idea is to circumnavigate Crook (thereby ensuring the minimum of development or travelling effort from Yours Truly) and have hot refreshments and , maybe a cake or two at St Catherine’s Community Centre in Crook afterwards, thereby boosting their income a bit.

Me and The Pooch did the reccy last Monday in claggy fog and drizzly drizzle so dense that I didn’t take the camera out at all. On the day – Wednesday – it was frosty and bright and sunny and the visibility allowed huge views of the Pennines and North Yorkshire Moors and so on..

23 People had fought their way to the start at St. Caths, plus Compulsory Dave and Neville – and me, of course, despite the efforts of the road resurfacers in Crook City Centre to prevent any access at all to the place. I suspect that several people are still, even now, searching for a parking spot.

The walk initially passes through areas only known to local doggy walkers and people who leave lots of litter everywhere but soon emerges into green countryside at the Western edge of the town using footpath No’ 49 (was my adopt-a-path route till the Council abandoned adopt-a-path) and then to Kitty’s Wood. Now Kitty’s Wood, some people may remember, was the subject of a recent access “misunderstanding” and now has seven brand spanky new public rights of way. Much of the credit for this probably lies with Steven Horner, sometime hillwalker and blogger, who organised the right sort of action particularly from the residents of Roddymoor who were specially irritated by their favourite walks being fenced-off. I must have an explore around here quite soon…

And thence to Billy Row where we lunched in the sun before climbing the 1.5 heart-attack slope up to Dowfold Hill – the 249 metre summit of our trundle – short and  struggle against unfriendly contours but which delivers the now heavily panting walker a cracking view of Weardale and beyond.

Dowfold hill provides a brief hill-type experience on it’s Southern edge but soon merges with kale crops and Crook golf club’s new wind turbine (rumours that this is the first of a new grown-up crazy golf installation) – followed by fields to Annapoorna (Yes you read that right)!) where I found bits of clay pipe on Monday and where on Wednesday, the fields were glistening with gossamer and several little black spiders hitched a lift on my specs.

And then pony fields and more crops to the old tramway from Watergate to Bitchburn and back through our small bit of suburbia to the delights and hot coffee at St Cath’s – where Lucky had been brought to greet me.

Its 8 miles. Those who believe that the countryside around Crook can’t be up to much, surely, are wrong. Here’s a map. The new public footpaths don’t appear on it! (And note the OS’s deliberate mistake with the spot heights on Dowfold Hill just South of Stonechester)

Drifters Bag a Christmas Birkett

The idea was to have a shortish walk quite near to Kendal including what will likely be the last Birkett bag in 2014. And that was basically the plan. We had to invent the rest as we went along. Mainly, The Bro was allowed to do this. He had a map and one of those satmappy things.

We collected Ria and the four of us Me- playing Hank Marvin, The Bro (Bruce Welsh) Ria (Jet Harris) and Lucky (Tony Meehan) and journeyed to the foot of Gummers How which we climbed in lovely bright sunshine. Here. The Shadows made their first appearance on a Wainwright Outlier

Next, was Hill318 – aka Birch Fell – our Birkett of the day. This was found over there ------> after a bit of boggy stuff and lots of trees and bracken.

And then we weren’t sure what to do – so we found a sunny spot for lunch and lunched.

Later, lead away expertly by Bruce Welsh, we located a bridleway which went North towards a lovely little hill called White Moss, which we didn’t climb due to confusing paths and diffidence. Instead we stravaiged to Bowland Bridge, then , through cows puzzled by Tony Meehan’s attitude which involves growling and generally being an arse towards our bovine friends. Around here, somewhere, we cam across a “bridalway”. As it happens, no wedding was taking place (the person who wrote the sign indicating the direction of the Bridalway and where it went probably wouldn’t understand this quip by the way), we headed back over fells and through woodland to back to the start just as the light was beginning to fade.

Sometimes things can be overplanned. Not so on this occasion. We did 8 miles and a fair bit of climbing. Here’s a map of the walk.

Beard Thats White, Special Night, Nose that Glows, HoHoHo ....

Just did the reccy for the Durham County Council guided walk next Wednesday called "Advent Adventure" OK, I know it's abit naff, but it means it's Christmas. And we like Christmas.

 

Here's a pic of a young Santa practising his jolliness at a recent reception for young santas in the Lord's banqueting hall at Knipetowers. (An Elf also appears in the background)

 

 



And also to celebrate the fact that I've not yet had time to put up the twinkly lights, here's Bob Dylan.

Yippee (Ooer, was that a sleigh bell outside...?)

Howling in the Dark and Misty Night (Kirkcarrion with Chrissiedixie and The Hounds….. Oooer…

Ok, actually it wasn’t nearly as scary as it was supposed to be. Me and Chrissie and her dog-not-called-Dixie-but Tilly drifted into a plan to spend the night in the notoriously haunted Kircarrion – a gloomy and occasionally spooky clump of trees often looming in a menacing kind of way over the junction between Teesdale and Lunedale.

So, we met at Bowlees in order to have a walk – Me, Lucky (perhaps an ironic name on this occasion…?) and a huge brown labrador called Tilly. And after coffee in Chrissie and Geoff’s van, we set off into the gloom and drizzle of a grey November lunchtime. Tilly’s hobby, by the way, is getting wet and goes enthusiastically into any water that’s available We all need an interest , innit…? Lucky only gets wet by accident and walks around puddles and mud if possible.

It was very gloomy, grey and drizzly. I may have already mentioned this above and I’ll probably mention it again below.

We slithered off over the wobbly bridge (aka Wynch Bridge) and up the paths to Holwick and thence up The Steep Bit onto Crossthwaite Common – into deep and driving hillfog – the kind of stuff which may well appear in a horror story or a tale of a mysterious double disappearance. However, due to my superb navigational skills [koff], we managed not to get lost all that much and eventually, having wandered through deep and raging streams, across quaking bogs and having teetered on the Very Edge of Oblivion a couple of times (it was a bit slippery), the haunted trees of Kircarrion finally loomed into view out of the gloomy grey drizzle (see above).

Just, in fact, as the last vestiges of gloomy grey and drizzly daylight seeped out of the ..er.. day, I managed to  locate the basha and ten litres of finest Weardale tapwater wot I’d hidden under some bracken a couple of days previously and we threw up the tents (take this phrase to mean we set up the tents, not that we’d previously eaten the tents and they were now making us ill) (although if one did try to scoff an akto there could certainly be unpleasant consequences – just sayin…)

As we waited in the darkness (and drizzle etc) for a decent interval before starting dinner, we discovered that both Tilly and Lucky could be made to howl quite easily by the deft use of a bit of human howling. I suspect that this short episode of unearthly hounds-of-the basketcase stuff was probably one of the reasons we weren’t disturbed by any local farmers or shepherds that night.

And That Night was a long one and almost unremittingly gloomy, grey and drizzly (see above and below , but not at the same time or you’ll crick your neck)

There was a brief period when the lights of Middleton-In –Teesdale appeared, but generally it was you-know-what.

At one point an owl sat in a tree quite close by and hooted. Another owl somewhere else hooted in reply and the two met and left sharpish, showering the tents in water from the tree branches they disturbed. Later, another owl Too-witted but didn’t Two-woo…

So, to celebrate, I had a brew and shared some cheese and oatcakes with the Pooch.

In the morning, guess what it was like….. to help with this question , I’ve inserted the initial letters of the weather conditions here as a clue.  G_______, G_______ and D________

We packed up and left at tennish after a slow start and returned to Bowlees along the Pennine Way where that path could best be described as “clarty”

Chrissie and Geoff are away for more adventures with James Backpackingbongos and , no doubt, Reuben. Hopefully, the weather will brighten up a bit.  I’ll post links to their blogs as soon as they are available.

Eleven miles and No Ghosts (unfortunately) (or maybe not) (Oooer)

Birkett Common Second Go - and Wild Boar Fell

Due to being seriously put off from bagging the very lovely Birkett Common on Dawn and me and Lucky’s camping jaunt the other day by some pretty duff weather, me and the pooch decided to return to Kirkby Stephen to have another go.
The knipemobile was parked in a patch of mud on the newly rebuilt minor road across Wharton Fell and wandered off to collect our top.

Birkett Common, it turns out, is a rather nice Carb limestone top littered with a few lake-District type erotic boulders and some lumps which would only really qualify as “stones”. And it has a very nice view of the Upper Eden valley as well.

Having got this off my chest, I wandered up the long ridge which eventually ends up at the top of Wild Boar Fell. This was covered in hill-fog but over to the West, the Lake District was all shiny and golden in lovely sunshine and soon, the Howgills too shrugged off their fluffy mantle and shone proudly in the sun. Wild Boar fell, meanwhile hung on to it’s cloak until we’d got to the summit area when the mist lifted suddenly and we were bathed in the golden glow etc and so on.

This was in stark contrast to the last time me and Lucky were on this ridge – when we crossed it against  with Dawn on a wet and windy Wednesday a week (ish) ago. Conditions today were, in fact quite civilised and this way is quite a good route for climbing or descending Wild Boar fell

It wasn’t warm, though. In fact it was nithering. We lunched at the trig which some hungry hiker appears to have had a big bite of, and then splodged through the bogs back to Eastern edge – the one with the lovely view of Mallerstang.
It was here that my camera stopped working. I struggled to get that last picture – taking out the batteries and warming them up only to be foiled time after time by the cold and the lack of electricity in them.

Eventually, whilst the pooch whinged, shivered and complained, I finally got the picture and we headed off back down the long ridge in double-quick time.
On the way home, I also bagged Ash Fell – a summit with a trig and two tumuli and a stupendous view of the Northern part of the Howgills, just as the sun began to set. My camera wouldn’t let me take any more pictures, though, so, with a grumpy heart and Lucky’s last winalot biccie safe in my pocket, we returned over the Pennines back to Pieland.
Note self: Try to remember that this route would be quite good as a walk between Garsdale head  and Kirkby Stephen train stations. Just sayin’…
Nuther note to self: Get some spare batteries for the camera, idiot….
We did about 9 miles.