Pennine Way Day Nine - Keld to Middleton in Teesdale

Distance: 21.5 miles
Ascent: 850m
Weather: overcast, light breeze
Lapwings, curlews, plovers, strange humming flappy birds, weasel, more bunnies than you can shake a stick at, voles, Americans. Sheep surprised by a bird, stampeded bunny.

Discarded footwear update: one white Nike.

Anyone who has read any of this blog before will know that we like a bog. Everyone loves a bog. However, today was taking things to the extreme.

Just assume, unless otherwise stated, that we are in a bog.

Leaving Keld, we stopped for a look at the Catrake Force waterfall and then headed up the track (heard an odd bird sound, a bit like the percussion instruments you play at primary school) around Black Moor onto Stonesdale Moor towards Tan Hill. We called in at the Tan Hill Inn for a coffee (not a bog) and then set off, to the quacking of ducks, down to Sleightholme Moor. The way was not clear for a while to start with, but became more obvious the further along Frumming Beck we got. Just passed Washfold Rigg we joined a track (not bog) which went down to Sleightholme Farm where we left it, at The Bog, next to Bog Scar, and over to God's Bridge where we had lunch on the massive limestone rock (not a bog) that crosses the River Greta.

Under the A66 there is an underpass (not a bog) and beside it there is a lot of rubbish.

We went north over to Ravock Castle, Knott Hills, Race Yate, passing what are marked on the map as Bields. We looked Bield up, and it means a shelter. There is a shelter at the footbridge at Peatbrigg Hill but that isn't marked on the map.

It is beautiful and not a bog around Hannah's Meadow, which is a nature reserve at the farm where Hannah Hauxwell used to live. We saw a weasel. It was obliging enough to let me take a photo. 

We had a sit down at a picnic spot near Grassholme Reservoir and then crossed the fields, which became drier and grassy - nice to walk on at the end of a long day - over Wythes Hill and down into Middleton in Teesdale. We met some playful cows, saw a gazillion bunnies (one that looked surprised to find itself being chased by herd of playful cows) and figured out that the noise we'd heard first thing, and were now hearing again into the evening, was coming from a bird in flight. It turned out to be a snipe, the noise is made when it vibrated it's wings in descent.

We also heard what I thought might have been a toad, but now we think was probably a woodcock.

We are staying at The Teesdale Hotel and have washed an enormous amount of mud out of my trousers and eaten an enormous amount of food.