Wood Lane

More Pathwatching this afternoon - in a gap in the Rugby. (I quite like following these paths on my own, but Gordon knows them all well as he runs them so often . . . and he wanted to collect blackberries, of which there were lots.) It was a lovely sunny couple of hours, with not a breath of wind and no one else about.

We followed the sunken lane, which featured in an earlier blip; this picture is it quite a bit further on, out of the wood. Looking back along the track you can see the Pennines and Dufton Pike. This is a very old green lane called Wood Lane. Over many centuries it was used to link Dufton and the village of Brampton. At a time when most transport depended on horses, it was essential to have a Smithy close by and our village had Smithy. In fact it was the house next to ours and there are pictures of this cottage when it was the Smithy. So horses were once ridden along this lane to be shod in Dufton.
I have added an extra picture of the ford and stepping stones at Brampton . I rather like them and the steps, but they can be avoided by use of a footbridge a little further on, as we did today. It was quite a hike back along the road, but it is interesting what you see when you walk a road you have driven along a hundred times.