Todays walk was a Durham County Council walk from Barningham, a small village in the extreme South of the County.
Today, we had all of 56 walkers, including Bill Gallon, the leader and Brian, neville and me as stewards.
The aim of the walk was to link up various churches called "St Mary's" in various villages, or ex-villages (explanations later) around this bit of County Durham (the bit of the North Riding of Yorkshore nicked by Co Durham in 1974.)
The forst church was the one at Barningham - in this case called St Michaels and All Saints. St Michael being the patron saint of knickers.
We headed North through fields and woods and along roads (have you ever tried to get 56 people over a stile, by the way?)
We arrived at Greta Bridge a while later. Fans of Walter Scott's tales of adventure may recognise some of the places in this walk as appearing in his epic, (meaning very long) poem "Rokeby". Others will not have heard of Walter Scott at all and may thin k he invented steam trains or something.
Anyway Church Number two was a St Mary's. In this case, a complete ruin and surrounded by a village which once had several inns and its own market but which now is just green fields. The main suspects in the demise of this village are the Black death and various scotsmen.
We continued Northwards, arriving not too much later at St Mary's number two - the graveyard of which was a pleasant spot for lunch and was occupied by a friendly pussy cat from the nearby house, who tried to greet each and every one of the fifty-six lunchers. It must have been exhausted by the end.
More Northwards happened and we crossed the A66, scaring several wagon drivers in our sudden eruptions across the road to get to St Mary's Number three.
Yet more Northwards explorations brought us to the river Tees, where we turned right - thats East, to get to St Mary's number...er...whatever the next one is - but which is at Wycliffe and is very important in the religious history of England - for it was here that the local priest decided that it would be quite a spiffing idea if the bible were to be translated into English from Latin. he got into serious bother for this, so whatever you do, don't try this at home.
We now headed South, recrossing the A66 anf frightening more traffic and three stewards to arrive at a model farm created in the 19th century by the Milburn family - who still own it. All very neat and eco-friendly, apart from, maybe a rather fractious collie dog of a chain in the farm yard who looked very slightly insane and obviously needed to be off working somewhere.
We were quite relieved to have 56 walkers at the end back in barningham, despite the fact that the main pastime of this group today seemed to have been the art of urination. Ay any one time there was at least one person doing this. It does tend to slow things down a bit.
Signs of spring: The scent of both Sweet Cicely (aniseed) and Ransoms (garlic) in the woodland - and bluebell leaves erupting - and various daisies and buttercup-like flowers - and many more new lambs. Lambing is starting. Its bound to snow once lambing starts.
13 Miles, 1100 feet of ascent
