Today was an absolutely super star day. The weather was generally comfortable, although the sky couldn’t decide which way it was going sometimes which made for a really beautiful display of swirling clouds and swathes of bright blue. I woke very early with light and birdsong streaming through the window at 4:30am, managed to half sleep a while longer. Eventually I heard the happy voices of children playing hide and seek on the village green, so roused myself to prepare for the day’s walk. The siblings from next door continued to play while I packed; they were very sweet with each other.
We caught a bus back to the Pennine Way trail, and stopped in Middleton-in-Teesdale to get provisions for the next few days at the CoOp. It’s the largest town in this area of Durham County, the River Tees flowing through it. We had lunch in one of the most cleverly named cafés - ‘The Tees’ Spot’. There was a choice of four places to eat, but this place won out because of their wit. I enjoyed delicious vegetable soup and a homemade cheese scone. Yum. We set off and for the rest of the 11.5 mile day we were walking parallel to the river upstream.
The day was all about flowers because they are beginning to bloom like crazy now. The fields and forests have been colorful since I began in April, but now the diversity and colors are astounding. The fields are so full of yellow buttercups it is almost blinding. There were cow parsley and red clover mixed in with the buttercups, and there were the last of the bluebells ringing their bluey-purpley cheer. I saw two small heath-spotted orchids starting out, and a thistle pregnant with potential bloom. There were wood cranesbill, bistorta, water avens, globeflower, and of course the hawthorns along the path. I do not know most of those plants, but have deep gratitude for the Apple plant identifier on my phone.
When I could pull my eyes from the plant life, I noticed that this was a very busy trail because not only is it the Pennine Way path, but also the local way to the many waterfalls tumbling along the Tees River. The rocks have become worn and shiny from all the steps upon them. There were also more clever signs to chuckle at, barns that are very common sights to me now but I realized they are not really very common at all to my walking life so I wanted to record them, and many, many stiles between the fields to scramble over. The bird life was also abundant, and while Bill was trying to capture the perfect beauty of the buttercups with his phone camera, I was biding my time on my phone’s Merlin app from Cornell University to identify the huge amount of bird song in the air. At one point twelve distinct bird songs were filling my ears.
On our way along the river we came upon a man who was throwing a stick for his dog Charlie into the deep, cold water below Low Force Waterfall. We were worried about the dog, but both dog and owner seemed to know what they were doing. We chatted with the man, who was wearing a wet suit style shirt, and he was dripping. Had he gone in? Well, yes, since he was 5 years old, when his dad, a diver before him, threw him over the falls to his childhood delight. He’s been enjoying it ever since. He even climbed up so Bill could tape him diving off the fall. We laughed, shook his wet hands, and forgot to ask name. We decided it was Jumping Jack. Eventually we stopped today at the High Force Hotel, and finished the walk down to its namesake, the largest waterfall in England at 70 ft.
