{"id":5202,"date":"2025-02-18T14:10:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T14:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phoenixwalks.xyz\/?p=5202"},"modified":"2025-02-18T14:11:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T14:11:52","slug":"250131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/phoenixwalks.xyz\/index.php\/2025\/02\/18\/250131\/","title":{"rendered":"250131"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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31 – 01 – 25\u00a0 BARNARD CASTLE<\/strong><\/h1>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Distance 15.6 Km\u00a0 (9.7 miles)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Ascent\u00a0 \u00a0344 m\u00a0 (1128 ft)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Average moving speed\u00a0 4.18 Km\/hr\u00a0 (2.6 mph)\u00a0 \u00a0 Start\u00a0 10.17 am\u00a0 \u00a0Finish\u00a0 16.13 pm<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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On an overcast, but dry day, 7 of us left the coach in the Barnard Castle (Barny) car park.\u00a0 After visits to the loo, we headed down the main street then continued towards the River Tees passing the castle on the way.\u00a0 We then turned NW alongside the river with an excellent view of the castle and river behind us.\u00a0 Crossing a stream via a bridge we then joined the Teesdale Way.\u00a0 In my description of the walk for the website I wrote that being a named walk, the footpath should be fairly good although I hadn’t walked it before.\u00a0 How wrong could I be, the path was muddy, very narrow in places, up and down and sloping towards a significant drop into the river on a good number of occasions.\u00a0 Sound like a good walk?\u00a0 Well, we had little option but to carry on, as the valley sides were very steep and not possible to ascend.\u00a0 One good point was that we had good views of the river although with the very dull sky, even these views were not as good as they might have been.\u00a0 A coffee stop, while sitting on some fallen tree trunks was a welcome break.\u00a0<\/p>

While, after Tees Bank, the map showed a path climbing the valley side, I couldn’t see any evidence of it on the ground.\u00a0 Eventually, we arrived at a track gradually climbing back up the side of the valley.\u00a0 Arriving at the top of this track, we were very pleased to see a level grassed surface.\u00a0 Easy walking at last.\u00a0 After passing West Home House, the path was slightly diverted with some kind of excavations taking place on the rhs.\u00a0 Shortly after, as we circled around an earthwork I made an error following a more obvious path heading towards a gate to the north.\u00a0 Reaching the gate and checking the MM software on my phone, I realised we should be heading alongside the wood to the NW so we made the appropriate detour and headed to Cotherstone Crag.\u00a0 Soon after, we crossed a footbridge over the Tees and a second bridge over the nearby R Balder and made our way into Cotherstone village.\u00a0 Finding a seat, four of us sat for lunch while the other three sat on a nearby wall.<\/p>

After lunch, we walked through Cotherstone before turning SE onto the Tees Railway Path (TRP).\u00a0 After a short distance, the footpath was detoured around some private land attached to\u00a0 a house, but then we were back on the straight line of the TRP.\u00a0 Reaching a stream (Common Sike), we turned off the TRP onto a bridleway heading E.\u00a0 This brought us to an intersection of paths with a No-Entry sign on the path I intended taking.\u00a0 After some consideration, I decided that the path was a RoW, so passed the No-Entry.\u00a0 At the time, I was trying to contact Heinrich re the difficult Teesdale Way path and obviously wasn’t concentrating, because, after the sign, the good track bore right while my RoW headed N.\u00a0 Anyhow we continued on this good track for some distance before I realised, so we continued until we were able to join the Teesdale Way on the west bank of the R Tees.\u00a0 We headed SE on a not very interesting route past Towler Hill and through Pecknell Wood.\u00a0 This brought us onto a tarmac path close to the river so much more interesting.\u00a0 From a distance we were able to see the metallic structure of the footbridge crossing the river into Barny.\u00a0 So we crossed the bridge, but instead of heading straight into the town, I advised the group that we were going to walk past the castle and then into town.\u00a0 This brought a few moans of “but we are tired” but nevertheless they followed me as we walked below the extensive and high walls of the castle.\u00a0 Joining the A67, we then headed into town, losing some members as we passed the pub while the rest of us cut up to the coach park.<\/p>

Not the best of walks by a long way, with very dull weather, some difficult paths, uninteresting scenery and a couple of mistakes from me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0Click on any photo to view full screen.\u00a0 \u00a0 Move through the gallery using the\u00a0 \u00a0<\u00a0 >\u00a0 arrows.<\/p>