Stanley Moss–A Week of LTD’s Doggy Walks By LTD

Sunday’s walk – walk number three. Yes, I know we missed a day but yesterday was the occasion of The Pieman leading 12 Wolsingham Wayfarers on an 11 – mile ramble around Doctor’s Gate and Black Banks, so we both reckoned that was far enough to avoid a second doggy walk till bedtime.

So, today (dontcha just hate people/dogs who begin explanations with the word “So”?), we headed off up past Kittys Wood and some back lanes to the left of Billy Row to find some re-established/unmapped footpaths leading up the hill to Sunniside. All of this area has been mined andthis particular bit has, in addition, been opencasted twice, most recently in the last couple of years. The result is that the landscape is super-smooth. All random lumps and bumps like wot you get with most British landscapes, have been dug up, ironed out, and replaced very very neatly. It’s not unnatractive. They do tend to put in extra bits of woodland, some rough and tussocky bits for animals and birds that enjoy rough and tussocky, and a few small ponds.

On the top of the hill, we find Stanley Moss. This is a nature reserve, although, the weather being spectacularly cold today with a bitingly strong Northerly blowing that seeped into the very pores , and, also the paws, naturists were noticeably thin on the ground. Stanley Moss is also liberally decorated with wind turbines, which are somewhat noisy.

Stanley Moss is a Durham Wildlife Trust reserve; a lowland blanket peat bog and more info about is can be had by clicking here (recommended, but please come back)

We returned via well-known tracks and bridleways. Aoart from the nithering cold, it was quite a nice day and there were many opportunities for running about daft, investigating suspicious smells and, generally sniffing. We met just a few people, three on horseback and one with a small and friendly dog. We wagged our tails at each other and enjoyed a brief moment of bum-sniffing until rudely interupted by an old lady, who thougt she was in control of the other dog. (Hah)

We also came across a fine example of the work of the local Roddymoor Feral Art Group. The artist in this case has, by the clever interplay of an image of a soft and incompetent male member roughly inscribed onto the hard brick ediface of a small culvert or bridge, suggested ironic tension between eroticism and humour, and, quite cleverly, I feel, failed quite spectacularly and deliberately to describe either, thus attacking the concept of male aggression in inter-gender sexual relationships. Amazing.  Either that, or he started the image from the bottom  and , during the process, suddenly realised he was too near the top of the wall to get the whole image on. It is, of course, criminal damage.

Here’s a map: The walk is 10.18 km (6.73 miles) with 198 metres (about 650 feet) of ascent. The map doesn’t shopw the new paths but has the word “workings” where the new fields are. The high-quality coking coal – about 70, 000 tons, went by train from Wolsingham to Lincolnshire to make coke and , then, presumably, steel. There should have been more coal but the old miners had removed 85% of the coal instead of the 75% considered safe, so there was a bit less.

Landscape by Banks, drawings by Mr Floppy.

Cold Knott and Kitty’s Wood–A Week of LTDs Dog Walks By LTD

I spent most of the morning and into the lunchtime snoozing, watching the street from a bedroom window or murdering a squeaky squirrel who thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I expect. Eventually, after the postman had been with some new toys for The Lad, he put the lead on and orf we jolly well went into the nithering northerly blowing from somewhere even colder than here with ice and big white bears and eskimoes and stuff. Nice to have the fire lit back at Pie Towers

Today’s trundle was up through a few narrow lanes and quiet roads to the highest point to the immediate West of Crook – Cold Knott – 259 metres above sea-level and with a cracking view of Weardale and bits of the North Pennines where, it seems, having not enough grouse to shoot , the local gamekeeperami are occupying their time by setting fire to the moors.

And then we did some more lanes and bits of woodland, some sheepy pastures and into Kitty’s Wood.

Sometimes I was off the lead, doing my sniffing and sometimes I was on the lead, doing the navigating.

DOG ON THE TELLY< DOG ON THE TELL>>>TWO DOGS ON THE TELLY .. TWO DOGS

Most of this area has been seriously dug up over the last 100 or so years, specially the places on the way to Cold Knott where huuuge holes were dug in the late 1980’s to get at the coal underneath and, also in Kitty’s Wood, which was the site of part of Roddymoor Pit and, if you dig a small hole, like I enjoy doing on occasions, you’ll find lots of ash and clinker and not much soil. Roddymoor Pit was a massive industrial complex employing 3000 men at it’s peak. It had railway sidings, the coal mine producing high quality coking coal, a benzine works which the Luftwaffe attacked but missed and a brickworks producing signature cream-coloured bricks with the word “Pease” stamped in them and which appear in most, if not many of the old houses throughout Crook. It closed in the 1960’s and the place was landscaped, including a 200 foot high smoking spoil heap and was substantially planted with trees. Following a campaign by locals, significantly those living in Roddymoor, seven new rights of way through the woods were established a couple of years ago. So, it’s a busy place for dog walkers, kids on bikes, Ray Mears wannabe’s and teenagers having late-night boozy parties. Most people agreed that the pit’s closure was a bit of a bugger, specially when the other big pit closed at roughly the same time. Thus the men of Crook were to “enjoy” a period of leisure, so it’s no wonder that many got a bit miffed when new owners of Kitty’s Wood recently tried to prevent access.

Only a few doggies out today – just one of those little Tricky-Poo fancy, barky little feckers and a greyhound who was a bit nervous. Other animals were some sheep, some horses (quite a few horses as it happens) and a donkey. None of these were specially threatening.

The walk is 7.59 km (4,72 miles for Anonymous) and 109 metres of ascent (about 300 feet) and there are plenty of opportunities for a bit of a mad dash-about/ zooomy.

Hedleyhope Fell–A Week of LTD’s Doggywalks by LTD

Ok, so, I’m taking over the blog for a bit. I’m doing seven walks wot that idiot Mike takes me on every day. He likes to vary them a bit. In fact he thinks he’s in charge of where we go, utterly unaware of the mind control wot I have over him just by shear concentra…. CAT ON TELLY. LOOK THERE’S A CAT On TELLY……

Hennyway – Today’s (Thursday 9 November 2017) was at Hedleyhope Fell near Tow Law, which is where Mike buys his coal, sticks and logs. Probably a coincidence that we went there….

Hedleyhope Fell is technically a lowland heath and a nature reserve for adders and butterflies and lowland heath stuff, but it’s also somewhere people go to walk their dogs, so there’s quite a lot of sniffing and standing on three legs and barking to be done.

Apart from the doggies and the feckin butterflies, Hedleyhope Fell  also has coal. There’s two old shafts and, probably some drifts with bits of coal appearing in the spoil heaps. They’re a bit hard to spot. One shaft is now just a depression in the floor of the valley, but, apparently goes to a depth of about 80 feet. It closed in 1929 which even before Mike can remember. Just before that, about 400 men were employed. The very last diggings finished in the mid 1950s with just a few old blokes in flat caps mainly looking fowrward to a few pints of mild and a bath in front of the kitchen fire whilst SHE cooks the tea. Nowadays, it’s under the management of Durham Wildlife Trust. I’m not a member, but Mike is.

The walk is 4.29 kilometres with 133 metres of ascent, mainly on paths but with a short section of tussocks. I had to be on the lead cos the notices say that dogs have to be on leads and there’s a bunch of fairly stroppy Swaledale sheep doing some conservation grazing, presumably to stop the place turning over to scrub.

It’s very nice anyway.

You don’t have to take a dog and it’s very nice in summer.

DOG ON TELLY BTW….. NO SORRY, IT’s A MEERKAT. Where’s ,my chewstick anyway? Also- there’s two chickens in the car park. Nobody knows why, but, apparently, you’re not allowed to chase them or play with them.

Fight Club Hikers–A Gas Fridge For Callater

With incredible generosity and forebearance bordering on recklessness, the Fight Club Hikers were allowed a weekend stay at Callater Lodge.

Many TGO challengers will have happy, perhaps hazy memories of evenings spent at Callater Lodge as they’ve been extending hospitality to challengers for thirty years or more before walkers progress to wherever it is they intended to go next.

For those who don’t know, its a three mile walk from the main Braemar to Perth road and, in the pastm was often occupied by Bill and Stan who provided a warm and friendly welcome to TGO-ers passing by. I’ve been there three or four times, I think. Unfortunately Stan died a few years ago, but Bill has continued the tradition with support from Jeanette and several other Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire individuals. It has long since become a rich and important part of the TGO challenge.

So, it was a privilege to visit “out-of-hours” as it were. There were five FCH peeps and Masey’s dog Pepper. I didn’t take LTD since there’s a resident Rhodesian Ridgeback who is a bit nervous and LTD can be a bit of an arsehole with other dogs to be fair and he hasn’t yet been defeated in a canine show-down. But this dog could well have been LTD’s nemesis. So he stayed home, hiding from the fireworks.

I met Masey in Braemar and, armed with some fine but expensive steaks from the Braemar butcher’s shop, we met Paddy, Gill and Cory at the start of the track to Callater and wandered up there in the dark. Bill welcomed us at the door.

Friday night, Masey cooked the steaks, Pepper threatened a squaky horn and the evening was was spent sipping jinkies in front of the fire.

On Saturday, I went off to walk the ridge which leads towards Braemar, with a shopping list for more plonk and scotch to be brought back to the lodge from the shop in Braemar.

The ridge is gained from the path to Lochnagar and is rough and heathery low down but stony and mossy high up, which provides for some fast and easy walking. I managed five of the six 610+ metre tops – Creag an Loch 836m (it has a lochan) , Meal an t-Slugain 849m, Creag Loisgte 795m, Creag nan Leachda 784m and Millstone Cairn 743m, dropping down to Auchallater on the main road to take the knipemobile shopping. Together with the walk back from Auchallater, it was 16km and 800 metres of up.

In cold, clear, sunny weather, which is what I got, this is a fine little stravaig. And the first flakes of the winter’s snow landed on me as I lunched, hunkered down out of the nither on the summit of Creag Loisgte.

The remaining FCH-ers went off to bag Cairn an t-Saigairt Mor, a Munro on the way to Lochnagar.

On the Saturday, an Aberdeen walking group arrived, including a few TGO challengers and Jeanette provided a fine evening meal and brekkies the next morning.

Callater Lodge is substantially maintained by the efforts of Bill, Jeanette and a few local stalwarts and many TGO challengers will have slippeda note or two into their collection tin. This will go some way to providing heat and fuel. But what they really need at the moment is a gas fridge. There’s no electricity, so an electric fridge would basically just be a cupboard. TGO challengers who enjoy a drop of milk in their tea, or who may prefer a chilled beer may like to reflect on the hopitality and, indeed, help, provided here going back into the mists of TGO challenge history. And they may consider a small donation to be just a symbol of TGO challengers’ affection. If anybody were to send such a token to me I would ensure that it’s passed on to Bill and, maybe, next year, there’ll be a swanky new piece of white goods loaded with sustinence for passing Challengers. Gwan. Do it. Email me at mike.knipe@btinternet.com for the address. Trolls, time wasters and eejits in general will be hunted down and “reprimanded” by Fight Club Hiker agents.

Samhain Chanted Evening

So, it’s the end of the summer (I should have put “summer” in inverted commas) and, for some reason, probably hidden viscerally deep in my  interduvet ancestral memory-thingy, I start to feel the need to plan next year’s  “stuff”. Yes, I know it’s not the end of the year and there’s still the delights of the darkest and longest nights of Yule and then the nithering cold of early 2018, before it starts to warm up next May, but I still feel the desire to plot.

What it isn’t, is (not) the time to look back. Not yet, anyway. So, no wing mirroring for me and LTD, we’re looking forward. Strategically. And a bit tactically.

Recently, I’ve been assailed by health issues. I don’t feel ill and, in fact, I’m feeling fitter than at any time since they put that spring thingy in my cardiac artery. I put this down almost entirely to a refusal to eat any cakes, particularly ones with associations with carrots, or any other root vegetables. (These are Just Wrong by the way) and a loss of excess weight, so that I am no longer officially obese, but , merely, overweight. That is to say, I’m a bit fat.

I’ve just had a series of medical/nursing/dietetics/podiatry appointments and the news is that my right big toe feels absolutely nothing, I am advised not to walk about barefoot, but to wear comfy slippers, not to eat anything vaguely tasty, not to drink anything exciting that might make me a bit dizzy and/or garrulous and not to play with matches or go anywhere near fractious cattle. I am also advised that my conditions are all progressive and that any adjustments in my diet will just put off an Evil Day when it all comes crashing down. I could sit and ponder/cuddle the dog/get a bit grumpy and so on, but I have Stuff To Do.

So, I applied and, have got a place on the 2018 Great Outdoors Challenge. This may well take over my life in the months leading up to May 2018. Backpacking and wild camping will be involved. This is good.

I’m also helping, along with others, to support the Wolsingham Wayfarers expansion of their programme from the rights of way around Wolsingham and Frosterley to a slightly more expanded area of operations. That is to say, I’m leading a few walks. This is also good, and quite good fun, too. And LTD is allowed to attend as well, so that’s a bonus over the Durham County Council walk leading stuff.

Similarly, I have a few walk leads for the Wednesday Walkers Walking On Saturdays group |(or whatever their name is) This is also good.

My strategy is to expand this sorta thing. I expect that I’ll explore the local Ramblers groups.

And there’s a list of Things To Do – includes lots of beach bivis and naughty dipping up Northumberland and visits to far away exotic places such as The Malvern Hills and , maybe, The Arran Coast path. I may invest in a wet suit to allow the swimming to continue during the colder times – I strongly suspect that Dawn would be interested in such a thing. This is really not the kind of thing you’d want to do alone. Somebody at least needs to witness the fact that you’ve just been washed away even if they can’t do very much about it. I’m intending to learn how to say “Glug glug” in Danish.

In other words, things may well continue in a similar way to that which they did in the past. I realise that this is probably not really very exciting.

Samhain is the end of summer by the way. Its the start of the dark time. You know what I mean. It’ll get cold and miserable quite soon.

This next weekend is the Fight Club Hikers meet up near Braemar. We don’t talk about it, though, obviously. I expect it’ll all be very wholesome.