Northern Rambler

  Whitworth to Wright’s Folly: A Circular Walk   History Thomas Wright (1711-1786) is topical at the moment with the recent unveiling of a commemorative plaque in his name in his birthplace of the small village of Byers Green, near Spennymoor. I am yet to visit the plaque and the walk featured here does not pass through Byers Green. An earlier post on the North East leg of the Camino de Santiago covers this area if you are interested. The main feature of this walk lies a little closer to my childhood home of Middlestone Moor, in the nearby hilltop village of Westerton, where Wright designed an observatory tower (or “folly”) which remains fairly well intact to this day. Below I provide some historical details about Wright and his folly as well as more general information about the area covered. At the bottom, I describe the route in detail should you be interested in following it.   Wright and his Folly Thomas Wright was something of a polymath. He is best know...

It's the first of December and what better to mark the occasion than with a ramble. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go. I have been walking Lancaster canal in sections, soon to reach the northern-most point near Kendal, but I thought I'd leave this till the end of the week. I have a few other long distance walks on the go, which I am doing in stages. The one I decided to add to today was the Wyre Way. The river Wyre runs from the grassy slopes of Hawthornthwaite Fell in the Forest of Bowland to its estuary between Knott End and Fleetwood. I walked a couple of sections last year. I found the river's source (or should I say one of its sources) on Hawthornthwaite and followed it to nearby Abbeystead. And around this time last year I walked a section from Scorton Picnic Site to Garstang, which was a very pleasant section. Today I started from the opposite end of the river, at its mouth at Knott End. The walk follows a circular route, taking in a short section of the Wyre Wa...