Skip to main content

Deepdale Nature Reserve

We had a wonderful wander down Deepdale Nature Reserve today, British natural woodland at its best...- ostensibly looking for an esoteric crag - well there's a surprise.  We had a map and a guide book but managed to completely over shoot where we thought we were going and ended up sat on top of a different but still very nice rock with a rather grand almost 360 degree view of Teesdale.   It was fairly obvious why it was called Deepdale as we walked along the valley deepened into a definitive gorge and then we climbed up the path into the top of the valley for amazing views.


The walk from Barnard Castle down through the nature reserve was very splendid. It was perfect weather for a stroll through the woods - the colours were amazing, bright blue skies with the odd white cloud, greenery bursting out, moss, trees, new leaves, flowers everywhere... Birds singing, a heady scent of wild garlic, swathes of bluebells, dappled sun light over the amazing verdant greenery, gentle streams running and some amazing limestone pavement stream beds almost empty of water in spite of all the rain we have had! - so very different from our last walks along the river in the snow.... 

limestone stream bed
It almost goes without saying it was another of Dr Freds misleading walks, what with massive fallen trees to clamber over or under and land slides to bypass, streams to ford, it wasn't quite the straight forward affair promised but we found some rocks and I spent a happy half hour sketching in the sun before heading back along a track giving us amazing panoramic vistas across the country - right back to our house if we had had binoculars which as usual we had forgotten!!!  We had to make do with more local scenery, lots of chunky little lambs, a large number of moody looking cows and some very beautiful horses tethered in various enclosures. 

fine specimen of animal and the house in the background was stunning


Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown16 May 2018 at 21:20

    Hmmm... chunky lambs - they are getting a bit choppy now ;/ Yes - Deepdale... spotted that on the map, and Cat Castle which is also in that neck of the woods... so much to explore :) xx

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords  looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop.   More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained.  The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...
6 comments
Read more

Istanbul

We had a really excellent day exploring Istanbul. It's over 25 years since I went to Istanbul on a long weekend trip with somebody that I thought was my friend at the time. But with with hindsight.... Well that's another unimportant story for another time... All that time ago I did have a brilliant time and loved the city. I loved the mix of east meets west - It left me intending to return sooner than later so I was really looking forward to revisiting.   I was a bit unsure about how Dr Fred would take to the place because it is enormous, it's bustling, it's noisy, it's smelly. There are lots of exciting backstreets and of course there are a lot of tourists - And I was determined to visit the Grand Bazaar... Istanbul didn't disappoint - but I have to say it was a very different city to how it had been all those years ago. It seemed even bigger, and was definitely more full of visitors. I had started with a plan that packed the ...
1 comment
Read more