Clennel Street & Wholehope Cottage!! Traditional Geocache
Clennel Street & Wholehope Cottage!!
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A pleasant walk up an old drove road. The terrain rating is for the Copper Snout return route.
Clennell Street has been used for centuries. In Old English 'street' meant road, and this particular one must have been popular because in the main it follows the tops of the ridges avoiding the steep drops into, and climbs out of, the many valleys. Clennell Street runs for 19km from Alwinton to Cocklawfoot at the head of the River Bowmont in Scotland. Border Reivers, smugglers, pedlars and drovers have all passed this way in their time.
On the left is Castle Hill with a prehistoric, probably Iron Age, hill fort on its summit. There is another one on Clennell Hill, to the right above the valley of the River Alwin. Lord's Seat the hill to the north of the Hosedon Burn gullies are traces of cultivation of four different periods.
On the eastern side of Clennell Street as it curves to the left around Uplaw Knowe show traces of Romano/British settlements. They are not easy to see, but point to the fact the area was inhabited long, long ago and perhaps carried a greater population than it does now.
Wholehope Cottage was once a Youth Hostel but was found to be too far off the beaten track to be properly managed, so was abandond. It is nothing more than a pile of rubble now and one piece of wall. There is a make shift hut here that can be used for shelter from the incesant wind and a good place for a lunch break.
From here you have a choice of three return routes the first being an obvious back track. The second to carry on for 0.75 miles and then take the track to the left, over Copper Snout to Shillmoor and then across and over Pass Peth back to Alwinton.
The last is to carry on to the forest road, about 300 yards and turn right to Kidlandlee then down to the floor of the River Alwin valley and follow the road back, past Clennel Hall to Alwinton.
The cache is one of my pots, as usual! and contains the usual nick nacks and some of my keyfobs.
You can park at Alwinton carpark. 55°21.057'N, 2°07.693'W (NT 91968 06335)
Remember that these may be small hills but unforgiving. In cold weather, as it was when I planted the cache, everything was frozen, the wind bitting. In summer there are areas that are little more than bog. On that the majority of the tracks are good.
Enjoy.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Orarvgu gur boivbhf ynetr fyno jvguva gur pbasvarf bs gur pbggntr.