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

Isle of Bute

 Another Landmark Trust tick - this time Ascog House on the Isle of Bute - stunning as always... a very comfortable warm accommodation for the usual 8 suspects. This time we had a wee tower house for Dr Fred and myself - a lovely bedroom up the stairs with a big window and a bathroom al to ourselves - having said that all the other bedrooms in the big house were large and serviced by two bathrooms so there was no hardship for any visitors!   The grounds of the house were very extensive with ponds and secret passages - hidden paths and we even spotted a deer late afternoon - there were lots of old features - ornate staircases and a lovely hidden door which I did a quick sketch of. Bute provided quite a lot of entertainment as well - the weather was kind and we did a a muddy wander down the south of the Island taking in St Blanes Monastery and Kilcannon Bay.  The views were spectacular and it was fabulous to be out in the fresh (and it was fresh on the tops) air and we...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more