An 11-mile walk is enough to get the heart pumping, but being greeted by random punctuation is guaranteed to raise blood pressure

HARDLY an ambition, but something we'd often wanted to do, she and I hoofed on Saturday the 11-mile round-trip between Langdon Beck, in Teesdale, and St John's Chapel, in Weardale. In the entire arduous exercise there may not be 50 continuous yards of flat road.

Once the Tour of Britain biked that breakneck way, hard riders only. It may explain why the sign warning that the weather can at any time turn venomous is addressed only to cyclists. Don't we walkers get wet?

Precious few others pass that way. Those who do, appear only to throw cans and other garbage from their motor cars, rubbish begetting rubbish.

Though the Ordnance Survey map measures only in metres - the metric martyrs should be chaining themselves to the grid outside OS headquarters in Southampton - the summit is close to 2,000ft. It may be the highest public metalled road in England (and others may offer yet higher education).

Once there were lead mines up there, more recently ski slopes, too. Globally warmed, the ski poles are now about as much use as the black and white snow poles which line the route, a wholly conspicuous sign of the times.

Our last ascent - early January, admittedly - had been aborted because of the sort of fearful, fretful weather about which the yellow and black signs warn.

Saturday was altogether different, the hills were alive with lambs and with curlews, with lapwings and with larrikins. It was good, very good, to be alive with them.

For most of the time it was so wondrously quiet that it was tempting simply to stand still, lest footfall disturb the solitude.

Right on the top, where Weardale and Teesdale stumble exhausted one upon the other, there's a sign offering thanks for visiting one without a word of welcome to t'other and another sign, hand painted.

"Caution," it says, "lamb's on road for three mile's."

While helping ensure that sheep may safely graze, it's also guaranteed to induce high blood pressure - 2,000ft high blood pressure - in those of us who protest, wherever it may be located, about the aberrant apostrophe.

The map identifies the area as Harthope Moss. Shouldn't it be the Heights of Ignorance, instead?

THE following day up in Wensleydale, rather easier going, where the Upper Wensleydale Newsletter records that this Friday's full moon will be one of two in June - rare enough, says the Newsletter, to be the origin of the phrase about "once in a blue moon".

So it is, though months with two full moons aren't that uncommon - about 41 a century, it's reckoned.

The expression is thought to be from medieval times, the Bishop of Chichester using it in a learned treatise in 1528: "Yf they saye the mone is belewe, we must beleve that it is true."

"Blue" moons have also been seen because of volcanic eruptions or unusual weather conditions. In true blue Wensleydale, they await June 30.

IAN Forsyth in Durham finds himself irritated by the reckless overuse of the single quotation mark, close kin to the apostrophe, in the city council's glossy, 12-page newsletter. Italics, too.

Everything from 'Canterbury Cathedral' to 'Kew Gardens', and 'Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Band' to 'Lulu' comes in for the treatment. So do 'Durham School', 'Durham University' and 'Durham Amateur Rowing Club'.

Ian recalls the familiar greengrocers' apostrophe. "They may have some excuse. The city public relations department does not."

TWO conversations last week, one with a couple planning to catch a scheduled flight to Warsaw. Fare from Newcastle to Poland: 49p. The other was with a feller planning to catch the last bus from Evenwood to Ramshaw - a mile, downhill. Fare, 90p.

THE note in last week's column about that very popular author Anon reminded Keith Nicholson in West Boldon, near Sunderland, of the honours board at Sedgefield Racecourse, which lists all the winners of the Durham National. "It would seem that a very resilient animal called Meeting Abandoned has won about ten of these races over a period of 35 years," says Keith."What a horse."