One fine day

[shewhomust]

It wasn't raining yesterday, so we grasped the chance to go out for a walk.

We parked at the eastern end of Wolsingham - the Upper Town, apparently - and climbed up onto the moorland abpve the Tunstall reservoir, then down to the reservoir and back up the other side of the valley to Park Walls, and zigzagged our way down to Wolsingham, roughly following the Waskerley Beck. durham_rambler made a map of the route, but he's used the Ordnance Survey website, which requires me to download some software before I can view it; he measures it at just over seven and a half miles.

It's familiar territory, but there were still new things to see: how could I not have seen the 'Holy Well' just above Holywell Farm? There was a heron by the reservoir, and at the picnic site a family of ducks seem to have displaced the chaffinches which used to be quite fearless in their quest for crumbs. We hadn't been up to Park Walls before: it's a tangle of ruined buildings, like so many old farms in Weardale, and we picked our way through the surrounding bog and speculated about whether the name had anything to do with the Bishop's deer park. And we had a fine view of the very visible development at Holywood on the edge of Wolsingham (houses like this one clustered around an older 'Holywood Hall').

Comments

The big house in the trees, top right

[(Anonymous)]

A training place, reputedly, used by a govt organisation.
If we knew which one, we'd have to be killed (they say).
Bob the bolder
PS - a very very familiar route - hate those mansions at Holywell, don't you?
PPS - nice photo!

Re: The big house in the trees, top right

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm disappointed - I thought it looked interesting, not sinister...

And yes, hate the buildings at Holywell and hate even more how visible they are. How did they get planning consent?