shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2010-09-05 11:08 pm
shewhomust) wrote2010-09-05 11:08 pm
Ayhope Shield
We haven't walked much in Weardale this summer; we've been busy and we've been away and other good reasons, but still, we haven't, and we've missed it. A couple of days ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler pointed out that the weather has been dry lately, so this would be a good time to revisit a favourite walk which involves crossing several small streams (not to mention various boggy areas), and passes through the abandoned - and now I think completely vanished - farmhouse at Ayhope Shield.
The drive out was... interesting. Circumstances seemed to be against us: the road up the dale was closed in Langley Moor, and the signposted diversion took us along a minor road which also had roadworks on it; the tractors were out in force pulling precarious stacks of straw bales; and the funfair which works its way along the dale each summer was in Wolsingham.
The walk was wonderful, but very hard work. We park by the gate where the road gives out, and tackle the roadwork first. There's a pleasant diversion through the old hall (whichdurham_rambler claims is a former Youth Hostel, but which also appears to be an important site in the daffodil world), and then a long climb and a steep descent to the track which runs along the edge of the heather moorland, with wonderful views down over Weardale. We followed this as far as the Elephant Trees (a small plantation visible on the skyline for miles around, named because the clump of trees had something of the profile of an elephant - though the resemblance was never very strong, and seems to have grown out now). This was our lunch break, and we were ready to sit down, and to eat.
Soon after the Elephant Trees, the walk cuts away from the valley edge, across the moorland; there's a right of way, but no path, so you have to find the right route by dead reckoning - and I'm not sure that we did! You pass to the right of the trig. point, and this should bring you to the path which leads you over the lip of the valley and down to the beck, but we spent a long time bashing through the heather (young heather, fortunately - some years it's older, and so deeper and harder to walk through) and then had to scramble down across the shooting track which slices a raw gash across the landscape. We found the path at the last minute, deep in bracken, crossed the beck with no difficulty and from here on were unambiguously on the right track, thought parts of it were very overgrown. That brings us to the point where I took the picture.
We followed a side stream uphill; the path wasn't as clear as I remember it, and I think may partly have fallen away, but there was no real problem, and we crossed the stile and onto the farmland. The next stretch of the walk is ion top of the mound of the old field boundary, which used to be a great place for rabbits; today I saw one or two, but nothing like the numbers there used to be. Down past the farm, which seems to have gone completely, across one last ford, past the Meeting of the Grains (the point at which the North and South Grain becks meet to form the Ayhope Burn) and along the track above the beck to Hamsterley Forest.
This was odd: for a long time, crossing the dry-stone wall at the stile was a complete transition, from the open moorland into a tunnel of green, a path through soft light and green shade on a mossy carpet that hushed all sound. But trees are a crop like any other, and now that patch of the forest has been felled, and feels so open and exposed it took me a while to realise it has been replanted with baby Christmas trees and little bushy beeches. Across the forestry road, the track down to the footbridge was more tree-shaded than I remember, so it all balances out, and - by now very weary - I made my way down, across the burn and to the picnic tables for a coffee break and one last rest before the climb up out of the forest.
A new sign has appeared just inside the gate: 'Unsuitable for Motor Vehicles' (with a sticker on the back saying 'this sign is made of plastic and has no scrap value'). We laughed, because the track up to this point wasn't anything you would want to drive up, but I wonder whether it was aimed at scramblers? The last stretch was very eroded, and there were some motorbike tracks, so perhaps that's it. The problem could equally well be water damage: at times it felt like walking up a stream bed. But at the top you emerge onto a wide carpet of heather, and it's only after you've been walking for a while that it falls away and you see the green fields of the valley beyond. And from there it's not far down among the sheep to where we'd left the car.
ETA:durham_rambler made a Google map - and confesses that the walk is 7 miles, as I'd thought, or 8, as he told me, but 9.12 - substantially longer than anything we've done recently. We need to get out more...
durham_rambler pointed out that the weather has been dry lately, so this would be a good time to revisit a favourite walk which involves crossing several small streams (not to mention various boggy areas), and passes through the abandoned - and now I think completely vanished - farmhouse at Ayhope Shield.The drive out was... interesting. Circumstances seemed to be against us: the road up the dale was closed in Langley Moor, and the signposted diversion took us along a minor road which also had roadworks on it; the tractors were out in force pulling precarious stacks of straw bales; and the funfair which works its way along the dale each summer was in Wolsingham.
The walk was wonderful, but very hard work. We park by the gate where the road gives out, and tackle the roadwork first. There's a pleasant diversion through the old hall (which
durham_rambler claims is a former Youth Hostel, but which also appears to be an important site in the daffodil world), and then a long climb and a steep descent to the track which runs along the edge of the heather moorland, with wonderful views down over Weardale. We followed this as far as the Elephant Trees (a small plantation visible on the skyline for miles around, named because the clump of trees had something of the profile of an elephant - though the resemblance was never very strong, and seems to have grown out now). This was our lunch break, and we were ready to sit down, and to eat.Soon after the Elephant Trees, the walk cuts away from the valley edge, across the moorland; there's a right of way, but no path, so you have to find the right route by dead reckoning - and I'm not sure that we did! You pass to the right of the trig. point, and this should bring you to the path which leads you over the lip of the valley and down to the beck, but we spent a long time bashing through the heather (young heather, fortunately - some years it's older, and so deeper and harder to walk through) and then had to scramble down across the shooting track which slices a raw gash across the landscape. We found the path at the last minute, deep in bracken, crossed the beck with no difficulty and from here on were unambiguously on the right track, thought parts of it were very overgrown. That brings us to the point where I took the picture.
We followed a side stream uphill; the path wasn't as clear as I remember it, and I think may partly have fallen away, but there was no real problem, and we crossed the stile and onto the farmland. The next stretch of the walk is ion top of the mound of the old field boundary, which used to be a great place for rabbits; today I saw one or two, but nothing like the numbers there used to be. Down past the farm, which seems to have gone completely, across one last ford, past the Meeting of the Grains (the point at which the North and South Grain becks meet to form the Ayhope Burn) and along the track above the beck to Hamsterley Forest.
This was odd: for a long time, crossing the dry-stone wall at the stile was a complete transition, from the open moorland into a tunnel of green, a path through soft light and green shade on a mossy carpet that hushed all sound. But trees are a crop like any other, and now that patch of the forest has been felled, and feels so open and exposed it took me a while to realise it has been replanted with baby Christmas trees and little bushy beeches. Across the forestry road, the track down to the footbridge was more tree-shaded than I remember, so it all balances out, and - by now very weary - I made my way down, across the burn and to the picnic tables for a coffee break and one last rest before the climb up out of the forest.
A new sign has appeared just inside the gate: 'Unsuitable for Motor Vehicles' (with a sticker on the back saying 'this sign is made of plastic and has no scrap value'). We laughed, because the track up to this point wasn't anything you would want to drive up, but I wonder whether it was aimed at scramblers? The last stretch was very eroded, and there were some motorbike tracks, so perhaps that's it. The problem could equally well be water damage: at times it felt like walking up a stream bed. But at the top you emerge onto a wide carpet of heather, and it's only after you've been walking for a while that it falls away and you see the green fields of the valley beyond. And from there it's not far down among the sheep to where we'd left the car.
ETA:
durham_rambler made a Google map - and confesses that the walk is 7 miles, as I'd thought, or 8, as he told me, but 9.12 - substantially longer than anything we've done recently. We need to get out more...
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