Sunday 17th March 2024 Stats at a Glance Distance 204 km/127 miles | Height Gain 3428 m/11246 ft | Maximum Elevation 531 m/1755 ft (Cowgill Head) | Surface Metalled roads | Start/Finish St Mary’s Centre, Clitheroe, Lancs | Grade (AAA) 3.25 (Hilly) | Time 09:48:09 For the last couple of months, me and ‘the moosus’ […]
Delightful Dales Audax Read More »
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
Woodhorn Mining Museum Read More »
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
Tour of Bedlingtonshire Read More »
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
What’s Up With Doddington? Read More »
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
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
Two for One: Royal Navy & Hartlepool Museums Read More »
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
A Woodland Walk to High Force Waterfall Read More »
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,
John Martin Heritage Trail Read More »
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
No Doorman at the Dorman Read More »
26th February 2023 Despite the promise of Spring, the weather had taken a slight turn for the worse and with me nursing a hopefully minor knee injury we decided to have a weekend ‘off’ and visit Shildon’s Locomotion Railway Museum – somewhere I’ve never been, have wanted to go for years but somehow never managed.
Do the Locomotion! Read More »
