Sedgefield, August 19th 2014

Sedgefield, originally spelled ‘Ceddesfield’, is a village that was built by the Normans at the conjunction of some old Roman roads. The settlement was bought by Bishop Cutheard for the church back in 915 and it remained in the possession of the Bishops of Durham until 1836. It was granted a market charter in 1312, and had a large hospital, originally the Durham County Lunatic Asylum, then later Winterton Hospital, and now a housing estate.

The walk is listed in the Cicerone Guide ‘Walking in County Durham’, walk 11, for those who want to have a go themselves.

Following the instructions in the book, I stood facing the lych-gate at the entrance to the church and turned right. So far so good. The church, St Edmunds, stands in the centre of the village and is elevated above the main street, so you can’t miss it. Within 30 paces, I hit my first snag. A road runs down past the church to the right of the lych-gate and the next instruction simply says: take the path to the left of Manor Farm. Manor Farm however is nowhere to be seen on arrival at the road – is it to the left, or the right? Across the road is Ceddesfield Hall and to the left of that I could make out a large farm-like building with a path to the left of that. So I turned left and walked down the path.

The next direction in the book was to walk between a small park and a school. At the end of the path, I found the small park. Where is the school? Well, not down here, that was certain! I returned to the road and tried turning right after leaving the church. Sure enough, I found a building marked ‘Manor Farm’ – an end terraced house – who would have guessed? I found the path to its left as described and set off down it, shortly passing the primary school to my right and a small walled woodland to the left – was this in fact the ‘small park’ mentioned earlier? I continued into a housing estate. Next instructions: take ‘the Meadows’ to the bottom. Okay, so it is flat, therefore no ‘bottom’, secondly, it was circular, so no ‘end’ either, and thirdly, there were no signs to say whether or not this was indeed The Meadows. I set off bearing slightly left, looking for the next road mentioned, The Leas. Shortly, I came to a road on my left marked….. The Meadows! Interesting! So I walked along The Meadows looking for a road to the left called The Leas (again). I found it, though the sign was covered with foliage so reading it was harder than it needed to be. It was a short cul-de-sac, which ended in a stile. I crossed the stile and walked through an area of rough grass, nettles and stumpy trees. It didn’t look like anyone had walked down there in some time. Emerging from the trees, there were some concrete steps ahead that brought me up to the side of the A689, a very busy dual carriageway. Five minutes later, I managed to cross the road and proceeded down a track leading to some sewage works. It started to rain (for the third time), this time quite heavily, so I put on my plastic cape, to cover both me and the rucksack.

Looking at the instructions again, I saw I was to pass a gate and head towards a farm, then turn left by another gate into a field and follow a small stream. ‘Pass the gate’ seemed to mean cross a stile next to a gate that barred the path immediately past the sewage works. As I did so, there was a small stream came to meet me on my left. The second gate mentioned was nowhere in sight, so I set off towards the farm, which I could just see over the rise in the ground. I arrived at the farm, having not seen any gate to my left, or any sign of a small stream to the left either, though the stream that had been next to me vanished off somewhere in the undergrowth. Following the path from the farm, I soon found myself crossing back over the A689 on a footbridge. This was not at all what I was expecting to do, as, sure enough, this path took me back into the housing estate I had recently left.

Okay, start again: down The Meadows (much easier to find from this direction), along The Leas, over the stile, into the rough ground, up the concrete steps, over the A689 (again), past the sewage works and over the stile next to the gate. A touch of déjà vu was setting in. There is little more conspicuous than walking through a housing estate, wearing hiking gear, unless it is walking a second time through the same housing estate, within twenty minutes, this time wearing a green plastic cape!

I knew I needed to turn left by a gate and follow a small stream. I came to a field edge – no gate, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one in the past; maybe the book was old enough for the gate to have been removed. I decided to walk up the edge of the field and see if there was a stile at the top – there wasn’t. So back down to the main path/track. I arrived at the next field edge, determined to repeat the excursion left if necessary until I found the relevant field. This time, I saw the gate. I had missed it the first time because it was completely hidden by long grass and weeds and it didn’t seem to back onto a field, but a tiny patch of rough ground with trees and 4’ high nettles. There was a field beyond the rough ground, so maybe I was supposed to walk through the rough and then into the field. But there was one small snag – there was no stream going left. The stream next to the path went past the gate, running east-west; I needed it to run north-south. Ho hum! I skirted the gate, crossing an ancient stile (also hidden by the undergrowth) and entered the rough ground, following the edge of the stream. After a few minutes of struggling through the undergrowth, I realised the stream was turning left and as it did so, it turned back on itself to run alongside the field I had just left. Rather than continue fighting through the grass and weeds, I decided it would make more sense to go back to the gate and walk up the edge of the field, as the stream would then be on my left after a couple of hundred yards.  I hoped that the next instruction – a stile or two to cross – would turn out to be correct.

On this occasion, it did. For some time, I walked through various fields and at this point, the path was way marked. Some of the fields were laid to grass; others, wheat, in varying stages of harvesting. In one huge field, with the path clearly visible across the middle, there was a farmer hard at work, putting large bales of straw onto a trailer. In the middle of the field, I stopped under a tree, which was obviously part of what had once been a hedge line across the field, but had long since been removed. It had stopped raining some time before, and I was now hot, so I took off the cape and packed it into the rucksack.

I got as far as the next field edge, next to Shotton Farm (about 100 yards past the tree) and it rained again, heavily. It had been less than five minutes since I had taken the cape off; I wasn’t going to spend the whole day taking it off and putting it back on. Besides, it was too hot to wear it. So I got wet, but it wasn’t for long.

The next field occupied by around a dozen bullocks. They were very curious – they had probably never seen a crazy hiker passing through their field before! They came over, en masse, to investigate me, so I shooed them away – three times, as they kept coming back. The field was thankfully very small, so I quickly crossed onto Yarm Lane, a well appointed and tarmaced farm access road. Turning left, I read the next instruction: follow the lane, then turn right along a ‘wooded track’. This was my undoing. After not too long, the tarmaced path did a 90 degree turn to the right – but it wasn’t wooded. at the corner was a path joining the lane, which was gravelled and continued straight ahead. I considered that if I followed the tarmaced lane, then turned right onto the ‘wooded path’ I was looking for, then I would be going in completely the wrong direction. That made no sense at all, so with no clear instruction in the guide book, I took the gravelled path in front of me. It turned out that this was the right thing to do, thankfully.

Shortly after that, the gravelled path took a 90 degree turn to the left. To the right of me was a gate and a track with some fairly dense trees and bushes either side. This must be the ‘wooded track’ mentioned in the book, so I turned right, though I was a little puzzled by the direction I was now headed. The track was supposed to merge into a farm track (which it did) and then join a farm access road to my left (which it also did), then, at the end of the access road, I should be on the A177 (which I wasn’t!) instead, I was on a minor road that ran through Thorpe Leazes before joining the A177. Clearly I had made an error – and the only place it could have been was in taking the track to the right along the ‘wooded track’. I had two choices – either I could return to the point where I had gone wrong, or I could continue on the road through Thorpe Leazes and join the A177. Looking around, I could see a woodland in the distance and a farm building or two between the wood and the main road. It looked to be about a mile down the A177, so I decided to use the road. That was the wrong decision, as it turned out. I really do not recommend tramping down the edge of a very busy dual carriageway during the rush hour!

It took about twenty minutes to traverse Thorpe Leazes to join the A177. I crossed the road, so I could face the oncoming traffic and set off. As expected, about a mile along the main road, I connected with the farm I had seen in the distance. Unfortunately it clearly was not the farm I should have passed. The route description said there would be a connecting path on the opposite side of the road. Here there was no path opposite the farm track. Neither was there at the next farm, or the next, or the one after that. I tramped along the edge of the A177 for at least two miles. Finally, I could see the road sign on the opposite side of the road telling me I was approaching a roundabout. I began to think that maybe the path on my side had gone, been built on, or just disappeared, as paths and tracks sometimes do. This one had been part of the old A177 before they upgraded it to dual carriageway and bypassed it. However, twenty or thirty paces further on, I saw the start of the track; it had been hidden by a dip in the road. When I reached it, I turned to look at the path I should have taken. I could see it clearly, running past a farm house and diagonally across the fields towards the woods I had seen earlier. It looked a much nicer route than the one I had just taken, which was not only along a dangerous road edge, but had taken me about two or three miles out of my way. I now realised with certainty that I should have continued along the gravelled path, following its curve to the left and I would have found a path actually through the woods. Had the directions told me that the path went left by 90 degrees, or even mentioned that it ran through the woods, rather than speaking of a ‘wooded track’ (capable of more than one interpretation), maybe I would not have made the mistake.

I reached the section of old road and thankfully set off along it, glad to be away from the roar of the traffic and the constant danger of cars speeding past. There were no cars along this stretch, though it was still driveable. It seems to be used now as a ‘lovers’ lane’ of some sort, though that might be a misperception on my part. There were beer cans and water bottles strewn about along its edge. There was also a gate right across the road, about half way down, presumably to prevent people driving up and down and joining the A689 which I could hear again ahead of me.

About three quarters of the way down the old road there was a footpath to the left, which I was to take. A dog set up barking as I approached and ran at the gate as I passed. I continued past the farmhouse and between two barns following the only path, until I came to a gate – which was chained and firmly locked with a shiny new padlock. So much for ‘public’ footpaths then. Having tramped a good couple of miles down the A177, I was in no mood for arguing. I knew where the old road came out, which was a couple of hundred yards from the motel on the corner. I turned to backtrack through the farmyard and back onto the old road, but now between me and the end of the path stood the barking dog. Fortunately it was timid as well as noisy and ran away as I approached. Reading the instructions, I was meant to cross the A689 at the motel on the corner and cross a field, which after only a short distance joined the road into Sedgefield. It seemed pretty pointless walking 200 yards along the A689 to cross the road to walk through a field for such a short distance, so instead I crossed the main road where it met the old road, directly opposite the road into Sedgefield and walked the last half mile or so back to where I had left the car.

One thing I had discovered was no matter where you were, surrounded by fields and trees, there was constant noise from the roads. First there was the sound of the roads through the village itself; that was soon replaced by the noise from the A689. As the noise decreased from that, the noise from the A177 took over. It was never quiet on the entire walk. It didn’t help that I had to walk as far as I did along a very busy dual carriageway. Lesson learned – when you realise you have gone wrong, return the way you came till you reach the last place you knew where you were. Another lesson learned: don’t rely on the guide book alone; always carry the relevant map. Having never had a problem with the Cicerone guides before, it was something of a surprise how imprecise this particular walk’s description was – rather like the author had walked it a couple of weeks before writing it up and had forgotten some of the detail. It would have been helpful to know which way to turn when reaching the road to the right of the church, for instance, or some idea of which of the several paths to take where they turned 90 degrees to left or right. Still, I managed to get home without mishap, somewhat later and having walked rather further than I had anticipated.

[Photos to follow]