Arwenned bluebell wood

Its been weeks since I last saw Ailie as she had Covid then her daughter and family visited for 3 weeks so this morning I picked her up as I’d promised to take her to the lovely bluebell woods Shona introduced me to last year.

But first we had a mission even getting to the start of the walk as the Netherton road was closed. My Google map did not work as there’s no signal from Thropton. I have a road map but reading a map is not one of Ailie’s skills. We were on tiny narrow roads, zigzagging left then right then she forgot where we had got up to. Eventually we reached Alnham Church. I thought instead of going straight to the wood, it would be good to have a 6 mile walk over the moor to Ewertly Shank which we enjoyed. We returned some of the way by the road leading to that remote farm, then took a track to Hazeltonrigg. From there we went over a stile into the bluebell wood. Just when we reached the bluebells we had to crawl under trees, blown down by storm Arwen. We managed a few then had to climb steeply up a bank to try to get round more densely fallen trees. It just wasn’t possible to go further so we crawled back out of the woods to a path. From there we climbed steeply up to the top of the hill from where we got a view of the decimation Arwen had caused. Where the track I’d used used last year had been was broken trees. Even if we’d been able to enter, we’d have seen no bluebells as blown down trees and branches covered the ground.

However we had a lovely walk and did see some bluebells. The return journey was just as fraught as we got lost and almost reached Whittingham before we found a signpost to anywhere on the map!