Sunday 11th September

Our church has been in the papers for all the wrong reasons! A man who had been attending arrived at the church during the week, having been beaten up. After he had calmed down, he went home, fell into a coma, was taken to hospital and later died. The police, of course, are treating it as murder.

After church, it was such a lovely day OH and I decided we would go hiking for the afternoon. We drove up to Beamish Open Air Museum, parked just outside and walked round towards Causey Arch and back through the woods.

The path wasn't too clear at some points and we missed a turn, but it didnt matter as the path we eventually found ourselves on was parallel to the one we should have been on and joined the next section just a little higher up the track.

The terrain was varied for such a short walk. There were some country lanes, then woodland paths and field tracks and paths.

We sat down for lunch in an open field, surrounded by trees. There we saw two red kites. They were really close, so close in fact we could clearly see the markings and the red of their tails. I didnt get any photos sadly as it took too long to change the lens on the camera. However, after lunch and two fields further over we saw what we thought was another red kite. It came closer and was in fact a buzzard. Got photos this time and will add them to this page once I have downloaded them from the camera.

Down through the woods, the path was less than helpful, but we soon came to a wide track and followed that down by the stream. Part way along, there was a bit of a clearing and we could see the wall of a nearby stately home. Squirrels were running along the top of it. Unfortunately they were the grey ones, rather than the red. Then we noticed one hanging from a tree close to the path. Because the land fell away at the edge of the path, the squirrel was about level with us, but the ground below it was several feet further down. It was hanging by its front paws by a thin twig and appeared to be injured.

We dont know if it had fallen or perhaps escaped from the buzzard, but it wasnt behaving normally at all. It seemed as though it couldnt move its legs, but was just hanging on for dear life by its front ones. There was nothing we could do, as we couldnt possibly reach it. Eventually it fell out of the tree, landed on the bracken below and vanished into the undergrowth.

Somewhere in the woods, we came across an interesting seat:

And passed a lake where we saw a huge heron. It didn't stay around long enough for a photo, but I took a picture of the lake:

Not quite sure what the signpost in the middle of the water is meant to be doing though!

As we approached the lane back to the car, we came across two female pheasants. They didn't seem afraid of us at all, so I was able to take some closer shots than normal:

All in all we walked about 4 or 5 miles around the outskirts of the Museum. We could hear the steam train and the fairground music as we walked. We could also hear other steam trains at the Tanfield Railway which was having a special event and we could see and smell the smoke. One of the paths we walked along was the bed of a long gone railway track and the fence that separated the path from the stream (Beamish Burn) was made from old railway track.

Haven't done a proper hike for ages and discovered that I am really unfit and out of condition. Note to self: must do something about that!