Sunday 21st May 2023 In the industrial history of North East of England one of the most persistent themes involves the extraction of raw materials – particularly coal. However, since the last deep mine closed in 2005 most of the infrastructure has disappeared, making it difficulty to appreciate the industry as it really was. A …
Thursday 11th May 2023 I probably wouldn’t have thought about putting this relatively gentle cycling route together if it wasn’t for its fascinating historical context explained below. Because there are lengthy urban sections however, it’s advisable to avoid rush hours and school runs. Living in Durham, I chose to start closest to home, on the …
Sunday 7th May 2023 You should be able to spot Doddington easily on an OS map of North Northumberland: towering over the Milfield Plain, a few kilometres north-east of the historic market town of Wooler, it’s covered in the black gothic script used by the Ordnance Survey to indicate sites of antiquity. In an area …
Thursday 4th May 2023 There was a time when being in the North Pennines around Alston Moor would mean hard toil and long hours – sometimes in the face of the most extreme English weather. Today any physical hardship is likely to be self-imposed, purely recreational and timed carefully to fit in with the good …
Sunday 16th April 2023 With the knowledge that there are years of change facing the final few miles of the Teesdale Way I’d been thinking for some time about doing an ‘official’ review of the situation. So on a quiet Sunday with nothing better to do, and with the weather set fair, I packed my …
Tuesday 28th March 2023 A couple of weeks ago we made a long-anticipated visit to the National Museum of the Royal Navy Hartlepool located at the historic quay within the town’s marina. The museum’s showpiece is the frigate HMS Trincomalee which lies moored, rigged and seemingly ready to sail, alongside a busy quay painstakingly recreated …
Sunday 26th March 2023 On the day the clocks went forward, with spring very much in the air, we decided to drive over to Teesdale to visit High Force, England’s largest waterfall. Primarily, it was in the hope of photographing the Tees spilling into the secondary, northern, falls – an event that has so far …
I think we might have to face it: the Rookhope Inn has been closed for a couple of years now and doesn’t look like it’s about to open any time soon. When I was last up there (18/03/23) there was no activity; in fact it appeared to be derelict to all intents and purposes. I’m …
Mothering Sunday, 19th March 2023 For those who may not know (and I recently counted myself as such) John Martin was a popular painter and polymath of the early c19th (1789-1854) who led an impressively productive life among contemporaries such as Turner, Constable and Ruskin. He lies buried in Douglas, on the Isle of Man, …
4th March 2023 On a cold Saturday morning in early March, as part of our ongoing project to acquaint, or in some cases re-acquaint, ourselves with centres of local heritage, we drove down to Middlesbrough to visit the Dorman Museum, a place I’ve always wanted to go but had never got around to. With the …
