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GUIDE TO ROOKHOPE BURN NAME OF RIVER: Rookhope Burn. WHERE IS IT?: Tributary of the River Wear, flows through Eastgate in Weardale. PUT-INS/ TAKE-OUTS: Once in Eastgate cross Rookhope Burn over stone bridge. Immediately after crossing bridge (going up Weardale) turn right and drive past caravan site to your right. Drive up this road until you see a wooden footbridge spanning the beck to your right, next to a layby. Get on here. Get off near the caravan site, before the road bridge or at crosskeys pub by road bridge at Eastgate APPROX LENGTH: 1.5 miles. TIME NEEDED: 1 hour. ACCESS SITUATION: Unknown but the gentleman in the caravan park at the get-out was very friendly when we did it and seemed pleased to see people enjoying the river. Parking at pub can be problematic. WATER LEVEL INDICATORS: A small pipe spans the river just upstream of the road bridge in Eastgate. For the conditions described one could probably have paddled under the pipe without any great difficulties. Grading unknown for higher levels. Richie (19/2/01) ... look at water eastgate road if you can run it go to top and get on for a no bum scraps run GRADING: Grade 3 (4). MAJOR HAZARDS/ FALLS: 4m natural fall turned into gauging weir with a concrete blob - semicircular plunge pool with suspect hydraulic. When run (winter '98) a wire fence spanned one of the main rapids. Unknown plunge pool depth on final fall. GENERAL DESCRIPTION: A fun little spate run with a few falls and some strange rapids. Some sections are very shallow and at times we got out and carried some bottom-scraping sections. This is not a hugely continuous section but does contain some fun bits. Due to being dragged out early on a sunday morning to paddle this I make no claims that this write up is in perfect order! There are a couple of main rapids on the section (grade 3) where the bed consists of channels in the bed rock and the route down necessitates dropping sideways into strange slots and stoppers, all whilst pointing downstream(?!!?!). As mentioned one of these rapids had a wire fence spanning it which was navigable but not visible - one of our party saw the fence at the last minute, eddied out and held it up. In higher water, if there, the fence would not be pleasant. After a couple of rapids an obvious horizon line is seen. Easy eddies on river right allow inspection of 2m fall which boofs nicely. From here nothing of note is reached until the caravan site on river right. We got out just after a 0.5m angled rock ledge at the upstream limit of the caravan site, so the rest of this guide is based on inspection only. Below here there is a 4m fall which, as mentioned above, has been altered to create a gauging station. Look at it yourselves and decide whether to run it or not - the hole at the bottom looked a tad unfriendly and may re-circulate swimmers or boats. Video of Chris Parker running the fall in high water - 750 kb, Windows Media Player format The final fall on the river is a wide 3 - 3.5m fall. None of us could be bothered scrambling down the bank with a boat to assess the plunge pool depth but it looked to be shallow close to the base and possibly deeper further out. Due to a very shallow lip boofing could prove tricky, hence this one was left for another day. Bob Evans adds...'I am reliably informed the last two falls run OK at levels which the whole river can be paddled. The biggest of the falls looks bigger to me than the 4 metres described, I would rate it as a fun looking 5+ metres. OTHER NOTES: Richie (19/2/01) has paddled the length of this burn to
the confluence with the River Wear and notes 4 hazards: Fast tight g3/ g4. drops. Fun and lots of it!' CONTRIBUTED BY: Mike Redding, Bob Evans and Richie (Durham Pirates CC). |
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