100,250 & 400 metres races

Source to the Sea

Last Wednesday the first of the guided walks ' I see no ships' took place along the footpaths, lanes and bridleways of Stainton  and Hutton.

Walking through Bleasehall wood

Before leaving the mill some of the group saw the Heron breakfasting on small fish unsuspectingly swimming in the turbines supply tank, that was the start of the bird watching.

Breakfast -easy pickings

 We saw a buzzard at close range,  a Woodpecker high up in the trees and as we picnicked below the road level at Blaystone Bridge to be  out of the wind the first swallows of summer swooped above us.
St Sunday's delightful tumbling beck hosted blackthorn trees frothing with fresh blossoms then in the small Bleasehall Wood it was carpeted with delicate wood anemones  and bluebells not yet flowering but green and fresh.  We rounded  Low Bleaze hamlet and followed Peasey Beck up to Blaystone Bridge. Freshly sown fields were crossed, fields with cows just turned out of winter quarters  and others with horses or sheep with lambs afoot.
Stone stiles,  wooden stiles, footbridges, gates with various fastenings many with surfaces polished by human hands as they passed over, everyone commented on the delight of local footpaths-walks that are on our doorsteps but had not been discovered until now.
At sites of mills I read Somervell's notes and we talked over changes and imagined the past.

Ghost of Halfpenny millthrough the trees

Halfpenny Mill had a colourful life flax mill, dye works, manure mill, paper and paper bag mill, cocoa matting manufactory and sugar boiling, now  the stone long gone to make other houses, is now a woodland site  full of birdsong.  The surprise of a waterfall at Beckside gave rise to talk of turbines past and present.

Waterfall at Beckside

Our final stop Millersbeck for tea and homemade biscuits to see the late Ian Dunn's humorous representational drawings of mill life when he was a lad and the sad tale of the Millers daughter who took rat poisoning and died, which she had bought for 2d, when she mistakenly thought the millers helper was not interested in her anymore.

The rain poured  so to  Fisher Tarn we did not go to view the distant sea.
    Join us this Wednesday 10 am at Heron Corn Mill to roam the byways of Milton, Millness, Crooklands and Preston Patrick.
Ring  015395 64271 to book a place.