Author Topic: Waskerley (?wabbit??)  (Read 3878 times)

mike knipe

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Waskerley (?wabbit??)
« on: 11:19:39, 27/12/07 »
One of my "hobbies" is being a voluntary countryside ranger for Durham County Council and one of the things the rangers do is to run a programme of guided walks around the county. On boxing day, myself and three other rangers supported a walk starting at Castleside on the A68 and which used some long sections of old railway trackbeds for the route.
We had 17  walkers for this walk which is quite a nice size for this type of event
The walk started on the WAskerley Way at Rowley Station (long since demolished) and after a couple of hundred metres turned off down through fields into a well wooded landscape alongside the River Derwent.
This is an area where the  Derewent valley is deeply incised, meandering and very heavily wooded and at some points we were down by the water and at others walking along narrow ridges between streams. Its a fascinating area.
After a lunchstop we emerged  into some fairly clarty pastures and on to moorland at the fot of Nanny Mayer's Incline. 
This is an ancient railway route which was later bypassed. The incline used the weight of descending railway traffic to haul up empty trucks.  At the foot of the slope was nanny Mayer's drinking den for the railway workers and  any passengers - hence the name.
The incline itself rises about 70 metres to the old railway works at Waskerley station - a distance of about a kilometre
At this point it was fairly obvious by  the large gang of dogs running about that we had got ourselves in the middle of some sort of hunt. There were also people dressed in silly clothes blowing horns and shouting things. At first, we thought that it was a fox hunt, but none of the brave hunters were riding horses, and the dogs appeared to be fairly small. Basically, they were running around the gorse, jumping over fences and walls and scaring the sheep. Two of the dogs became very confused and joined the walk.  We thought they'd get bored and run off back to the hunt, but they didnt.  They were'nt very friendly, though and they were quite timid. One of them did run off with somebody's glove and shook it to death. After about a mile, we rang the full-time ranger for the area (Pete) and he came to pick them up in his 4WD. Unfortunately one of the dogs (beagles I think, had got scared by a couple of walkers collies and had done a bunk. Pete's intention was to return the dog back to the hunt which was now going on a couple of miles away.
From WAskerley, we just walked down the Waskerley Way to the start - about four miles of very easy going. About halfway , theres an area which the rangers have planted with trees and certain wild flowers which support some quite rare butterflies.
Next walk is on saturday at Causey Arch. I'm not sure if I'll manage anything else in between!  Next time I'll take me camera.... (doh!)
The Waskerley Way joins the Derwent Valley countryside park at Consett and runs to Stanhope. It joins another railway path  above Stanhope which goes to upper Weardale via Rookhope. Most of this route is used by the CtoC cycle route but also provides a very easy long distance walk from Gateshead to Upper Weardale and joins routes which go to Durham city and to Bishop Auckland.
Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

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summitzero

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Re: Waskerley (?wabbit??)
« Reply #1 on: 12:39:25, 27/12/07 »
Cheers Mike.

So well worded that you dont need a camera  O0
Are we there yet ?   http://walkingforlife.piczo.com

 

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