Felton and Morwick. December 6th.
Muddy but goody!
Felton is a village some miles, but not too many, north of Newcastle, just off the A1. It has a Running Fox cafe for breakfast bacon. Felton is Old English for "field farm".
The walk is covered by two maps:OS Explorer 325 Morpeth and Blyth and 332 Alnwick and Amble.
Hopefully it's dry, but it is cold so the man on the TV says, and we won't get the latest storm until Saturday.
We had breakfast at the Running Fox, one of the finest bacon sandwiches available in the North East. It is advisable to book at this very popular bakery/cafe.
No car park, we left our vehicles on the street.
We crossed the modern bridge and turned left. There are two paths, one next to the river and a higher one which is part of St. Oswald's Way. We went with the saint, initially staying close to the river but leaving the bank after about 1.5 miles and plodged along a muddy track, crossed a road and continued to plodge through or close to pools of water and yards of mud and going under the East Coast railway line.
River Coquet, full after recent rain.
We walked through the mud of Rake Lane until we reached a road, turned left and after a few hundred yards turned into the Morwick Dairy and ice cream shop, which was open. 
Morwick ice cream shop.
There were several picnic tables in the yard so we called a Herbie: Cherry Bakewells, cookies, cake and sweet and savoury from Mrs A.
Lunch consumed we headed off through the farmyard and across fields and woodland until we reached the railway line again. The footpath crosses the railway line, take care.
Once across the line the footpath took us over fields and into a wood which had a sign proclaiming "Sid's Wood". It also had feeding barrels for pheasants.
Reaching a road we turned right and crossed the Coquet.
The ruins of Brainshaugh Priory chapel, close to Guyzance which is possibly named for the Guines family who came over with William.
Turning left we followed a rough track, passing the memorial to the Guyzance tragedy.
The path crossed fields but at about 8.5 miles goes off to the left and descends to the river bank. The entrance to the path is not marked but is fairly easy to spot.
Leaving the riverside walk we crossed a field and joined the road back to Felton.
On the way home we called in at the Ridley Arms, Stannington, which had Wylam Gold on offer. A good session beer.
Contains OS data, copyright. Crown copyright and database right 2024
At nearly 10 miles of muddy but easy going tracks this is a good walk, fields, woodland and riverside, plus the opportunity to have an ice cream.
No comments:
Post a Comment