It was a morning of chilly winds over Co Durham, and a weather forecast of spitting showers followed by proper rain. It wasn’t really conducive, the thought of pulling on all the rain gear and setting out through a dank and dripping Hamsterley Forest, but in the end we were glad that we did.
“Oh, it can get a bit clarty up there in the forest,” said the jolly young ranger in the visitor centre. We hadn’t heard that local word, meaning “mucky”. And a bit clarty it turned out to be, once we had got off the hard-surfaced tracks.
We had a look at the ranger’s map and decided on the Three Becks Walk, thoroughly waymarked and well laid out. The Bedburn Beck, charged
