My Mountain page

Saturday 17th January

Both myself and Sheena had been feeling lousy for the last few days, I think we had picked up the ‘cold bug’ thats been doing the rounds, the weather forecast for the Lakes wasn’t brilliant for Saturday, so after a bit of a lazy morning we put our boots on and drove up to the pcinic area at Bowlees, the plan was to walk along the river to High Force and back, not a really huge walk but a lovely one at any time of the year. When we got out of the car we were a little surprised to see how much water was in the beck that run’s through the car park, the overnight rain must have been a lot heavier thn we thought. Not far from the picnic area there is a small waterfall and cave, normally we don’t go there if we are walking up to High Force as its in the opposite direction, however, yesterday we thought it would be worth the extra half an hour of walking to see Summerhill Force with all the water in the beck. I’d forgotten how nice the walk along the river was, and there were a number of small cascades to look at before we actually reached the main waterfall, with the extra water they looked pretty impressive. Summerhill Force was really impressive, the water coming over the double cascade at the top and crashing down was deafening, there was lots of water spray and I had to keep drying off the camera lens between each picture. Gibson’s Cave was a little bit of a let down, it was very drak and damp, all it really is the undercut rock to the side of the waterfall, not a place I would want to spend the night, I doubt you would ever get to sleep for the sound of the water!
We retraced our steps back down to the car park and then followed the well worn route, down past the visitor centre and across a couple of fields to Low Force. The falls were really impressive again today, I think there was more water coming down the river when we were last there in September last year, the water was thundering down over the falls and the spray rising up looked like the falls were steaming. The path that runs between Low Force and High Force is very popualr, its also part of the Pennine Way so it get lots of foot traffic, as a result it can get very wet and muddy, after you have passed the footbridge and enter the Nature Reserve there have been loads of improvements to the path as it winds its way through the juniper bushes. We could hear High Force long before we could see it, I was expecting to see some spray rising up but there was little sign of any. On the south side of the river to get the best view point of the falls you have to take a small detour off the main path, the view is a classic, especially today as the water was also coming down over the right hand side of the cliff, which only happens when the river is running high, I could have sat there for ages watching the water coming over the falls, its hypnotic, but the cold wind coming down the valley meant that our stay was a short one, and we were soon heading back to the car and a late lunch of fish and chips in Middleton-in-Teesdale.

photo’s from this walk …

Tags: Teesdale, Waterfalls

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am and is filed under County Durham, Walking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.