Actually, this should be Bolam and Dere Street, but this sounds better to me.
Brian rang last night and suggested we joined this Durham County Council walk, so he drove over from Cumbria and picked me up. Dawg had to stay behind - he's a pest in a group if he's not always at the front, and I'm usually at the back.
It was quite nice not to have to bother about group management on one of these walks for a change.
36 walkers, including the usual leader and 3 stewards set out from the litter infested estates of West Auckland and walked various lanes and bridleways through agriculture and pet pony fields to the slightly posher village of Bolam.
The low level bits of this countryside are, it has to be said, irredeemably bleak and seem to be covered in waste plastic of all colours and kinds. We should really go out and start to pick it up. It drifts on the winds and gets stuck in streams and hedges and trees where it stutters like so many badly tuned motorbikes. I wont be walking around here again anyway.
I did meet a very friendly blind donkey and a freshly dead dog fox. There was also an owl hunting through the plastic fields. I expect there's a lot of mice in there or something.
The return journey was a bit better. We visited Legs Cross, which is the remains of a stone cross or pillar on an escarpment overlooking what must be the most Northerly extremes of the Vale of York, so the view is BIIIIIG. Its right next to Dere Street roman road and, so local legend has it, is named after a now long worn-away insciption made by the 10th Legion - i.e. LEG X. - hence Leg's Cross.
Some muddy wheatfields followed and then a long section of the roman road and the original inclines and bridges of one of the world's first railways -partly gravity powered (now there's green for you) by the Stephensons and fine tuned by Timothy Hackworth.
Then up the boozah for a beer.
Back to the pure Pennine hills, next time , though., although we did pass very very close to Darlington Borough's County Top.
11 miles, 600 feet of upness and lots of mud and supermarket bags.