It’s a little known fact that the North Pennines are home to many reservoirs which welcome walkers. After our visit to Hury Reservoir last year, we’d vowed to visit a few more in the area, however as is always the case these plans got derailed by having many other places on our ‘to visit’ list. This Spring, Sam was working close to Middleton-in-Teesdale on the late May bank holiday, and suggested meeting up for a walk nearby when he was finished. A perfect opportunity to visit a local reservoir! Even if it was more than a year after our last visit…
Grassholme Reservoir was the closest to where Sam was working, so we decided to do a lap of the shore here. After a slight miscommunication over which of the two car parks we were meeting in (and no mobile signal in the one I was in), we set off from the smaller free car park close to the dam. Unlike Thruscross and Grimwith reservoirs in North Yorkshire, the paths around Grassholme are pretty rough and indistinct. It’s also surprisingly hard work, with the route being very undulating and with very little flat.
There are nice views across the reservoir and of the surrounding hills, including a nice look back over the bridge where we parked at the start. Despite doing this walk on the May bank holiday we found this route to be extremely quiet, just seeing one other couple walking in the opposite direction to us. This might not be the case later in the year when the visitor centre and cafe at the main car park are open!
Usually navigation around a reservoir is pretty straight forward (just keep the water on the same side), however, with the paths here being so indistinct and the reservoir sometimes being hidden from sight, I was glad we’d downloaded the OS maps app to keep us straight. We quite often ended up losing the path and having to haul ourselves up a steep bank to get back to the main track after being fooled into following a sheep trod.
Dog friendly rating – 3/5. This is a quiet, stile free walk, but there are signs up asking for dogs to be kept on leads (many sheep and water birds) and there is a short stretch along a quiet road at the end. The paths are covered in sheep and bird poo (somewhat unsurprisingly given how many of them there are), which meant that by the time we got back to the car I was getting to the end of my tether with Merry constantly launching himself at it to snack on/roll in. Coal on the other hand was an angel and Sam had a much pleasanter walk!
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