The Grey Panthers

Outdoor Leisure Map OL31, - North Pennines, Teesdale & Weardale

This walk is a figure-of-eight walk centred on Barnard Cattle.
One part of the walk goes from the Bowes Museum along Green Lane and returns to the Museum via Mount Eff Lane. This part of the walk provides views to the South over the Tees valley.
The other part of the walk goes from the Bowes Museum to Abbey Bridge, and then onwards to Egglestone Abbey. This building is always worth a visit.
Then using filed footpaths the route goes to the isolated village of Boldron.
Navigation is fairly straightforward, though a 1 : 25,000 map is very useful in checking field boundaries.
The major difficulty of this walk was with several field stiles which were in a very poor state of repair. One needs to be fairly agile to cross these stiles.
The walk from Egglestone Abbey to Boldron is fully described in "Walking in Teesdale" by Keven Shevels, and this book is recommended.

For a Memory Map overlay of the walk described, please select the above link.
(Overlay made with Version 5 of Memory Map)

Some new mapping software is now available which you may want to try, - QUO mapping. You can download the software for free from the link below, complete with demonstration maps. Having installed QUO, you can import and export Memory Map overlays. Thus YOU DON'T NEED Memory Map to use any of the overlays provided on the Grey Panthers web site, - just use QUO!!

Start from the parking area on Barnard Castle's Demesne (NZ05050 16021).
From the parking area, walk North Eastwards up the grassy slope to the footpath to the Bowes Museum.
Turn left inside the entrance gates of the Museum and follow the "Woodland Walk" footpath to the gates in the North West corner of the Museum grounds.
Turn right in the street and walk to Kalafat Street. Here turn left, then take the footpath to Bartlemere Road. At the top of Bartlemere Road turn right into Green Lane.
Walk along Green Lane to Mount Eff Road. Turn right in Mount Eff Road, then right into Mount Eff Lane. Follow the lane back to the Bowes Museum.
From the Museum, take the Lane Southwards and where it emerges into open ground take the footpath South Eastwards. This footpath takes you across Rugby Football pitches used by Barnard Castle School. If the pitches are in use, there is an alternative footpath just to the North of this field.
From the kissing gate on the other side of the playing field, follow the field footpath until it is nearly at the minor (though busy) road. Here the footpath descends to follow the Teesdale Way footpath to Abbey Bridge.
Cross Abbey Bridge (CARE : traffic) and turn right to take the minor road to Egglestone Abbey.
From the Abbey, head towards the farm. Immediately before the main farm buildings, there is a bridleway on the left (where the bridleway sign is somewhat hidden). Follow the bridleway past a farm gate, then turn left to take footpath that follows the hedge-line in a South Westerly direction.
Turn right when the footpath reaches the end of the hedge-line, and after a few yards turn left over a small bridge.
Walk along the edge of the plantation until you come to a stile on your right.
At first sight this stile is barely recognisable as being a stile, and some care is needed in using it.
Continue Westwards along the edge of the plantation, until you come to a field. Cross this field diagonally in a South Westerly direction (there are no footpath markers).
At the edge of this field where the footpath ends, there is another stile. This is quite hard to find, as at first sight it doesn't appear to be a stile as it is in such a bad state of repair. Again, some agility is needed to cross the stile and small beck.
Continue South Westwards over the next field to meet a very well maintained pair of stiles that lead you to a minor road.
Cross the road and take the bridleway past the small plantation, then across fields to Boldron.
In Boldron, take the footpath that is found on your right just before the picnic benches (and the quoits pitch).
Follow this footpath Plenty of waymarkers to help you) to the Boldron-Startforth road, then follow the road into Startforth.
Turn right in Startforth to walk past the Primary School and then the Church.
From the Church, take the footpath down to the river-side. Cross the river by the footbridge to return to the parking area.