Wednesday 27th January 2010

Walk From Broompark

It is wednesday, which has become our regular day for "doing" a walk.

Once again we select a walk from Phil's book of walks in County Durham. A healthy 11 miles according to the book. We delay our departure until 10:00, so that Peter is able to join us after his hospital appointment at 08:30. He has been given a clean bill of health, and pronounced fit enough to have his operation next week, which presumably means they have his records mixed up with someone else.

Phil has chosen a walk starting at Broompark. It is my turn to take the car and we set off both firmly convinced we are starting at Bearpark. We did discuss this last week, and I even spotted and noted a parking spot on our way back from Sunderland Bridge.

We arrive at exactly the wrong place with unerring accuracy. We never had any difficulty like this last week, finding our way to Sunderland Bridge, and consider blaming Peter for this fiasco, but eventually agree it must be our age.

Fortunately we notice our mistake before we actually start walking, and quickly get back in the car to make our way to Broompark, which we do without too much difficulty.

So here we are at the correct starting point Broompark, with Peter and Phil double checking the map before we set off.

Things have not started well, and within another few hundred yards, we are not convinced we are following the correct route. The walk is supposed to take us along the Deerness Valley Walk (an old railway line), towards Ushaw Moor. The diagram in the book clearly shows that the river (Deerness) should be on our right, whilst the descriptive text in the book describes it as being on our left. It is actually on our left. A kind lady dog walker offers her advice, not that we need it you understand since we are three expert walkers. We set off along the track with the river on our left. Fortunately we are correct, well I never doubted it actually.

Once again it is a very pleasant route, and the weather forecast proves to be wrong, we even have a little bit of blue sky and sunshine as we make our way along the Deerness Valley, following the path of the old railway line past Ushaw Moor, and on to Esh Winning.

We find a convenient park bench and stop here for lunch. Peter brings a very large bar of Cadbury's Milk Chocolate from his bag. He explains that he has this problem with chocolate, namely that Val eats it all. Phil and I help solve his problem by eating a third each, thus leaving a third for Peter. Not a bad deal for him, I think, compared to Val eating it all.

Next the route follows a minor road (B6302) for a short distance, until we come to a Catholic Church, just after the church, we turn right and begin a long climb up hill. It is a well defined track.The instructions are not clear (after the third stile, the track bifurcates, being an example, who was counting stiles? and there is some doubt as to the meaning of bifurcate). We have a few tense moments. But Phil deciphers the instructions with characteristic patience and good humour, and the uncanny accuracy of Peter's watch, in telling us how far we have walked, more or less see us through.

To be honest, we do not get it totally right, we overshoot one of the "bifurcations" in the track and emerge onto a road. We rely on instinct and bushcraft to make the decision to turn right.

We soon pass what we took to be a church, but, it is in fact  St Michaels RC Primary School. This rather impressive school was built in 1795 and presently has 153 pupils from surrounding villages and towns.

We are now off the "official" route, but, shortly after passing the school, we see a public footpath signposted, which we believe will put us back on track.

I hardly need say, we were right and soon we emerge onto another minor road near to Ushaw College.

Another small confusion here, the distances and signposting are not as described, but we soon overcome that and enter the grounds of Ushaw College. This is a Roman Catholic Seminary.

It was orginally founded in 1568 in Douai (now in North Eastern France), by English Roman Catholics escaping the consequences of The Act of Settlement in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. The seminary has occupied the present site at Ushaw since 1808.

As you can see, it is an impressive set of buildings, and I assumed it was probably the training centre for Roman Catholic Priests for the whole of England, but according to the web site it serves only the North Of England.

The walk takes us through the grounds of Ushaw College. The grounds and buildings are certainly extensive, and must require a great deal of care and maintenance.  The  route skirts a wood on our left and the rear of the college on our right, until we emerge at a farm and along the edge of several fields. One of these fields appears to be planted with many hundreds or even thousands of small willow trees. Another couple of fields have clearly had a planting of willow trees harvested. They have simply been cut down at a stage when they are still quite small (perhaps 6 feet high, still quite spindly). We ponder what they may be used for but do not arrive at any conclusion which we consider plausible.

After the mystery fields of willows, the path takes us down hill, and eventually joins the Lanchester Valley Walk . We turn right and head along this old railway line, now converted into a walk and cycle track, until eventually it brings us back to our starting point at Broompark Picnic Area, according to Peter's distance calculating watch we are dead on time at 11 miles.

For our regular followers, there will be no walk report next week.

Both Peter and Phil are required to attend hospital for operations. They are expected to be in and out in one day. The nurse explained to Peter that given the shortage of beds in the NHS and since they shared a bed with the other four McCaffery brothers as children, they would save scarce resources by giving them only one bed on Tuesday next. 

Consider the situation:

• 
  
  they share the same surname and initials (P McCaffery).
  
  
  
• 
  
  they are both being admitted to the same ward of the same hospital on the same day.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Phil is to have an operation on his hand, while Peter is to have a Hernia operation.
  
  
  

 You just know what is going to happen, Peter will emerge with his hand bandaged, while Phil emerges with his hernia (he did not know he had) repaired.