The end of our visit – back to the North

Our final few weeks in the UK were spent with Nigel’s parents in Tudhoe and despite the less than tropical summer weather we managed to fit in a number of good walks, explore some new areas and catch up with old friends.

Teesdale

Teesdale and Weardale are the two go to areas for Eric and Christine. They have been exploring the two valleys since just after the glaciers receded. Perhaps a slight exaggeration but Eric did recount a camping trip to High Force with his brother that involved several bus rides and a night sleeping under the table in a working mens club after the last bus had dropped them short of their intended camping site and torrential rain forced them to seek shelter. Probably in the 1940’s.

This time we chose to walk along the River Tees from Middleton-in-Teesdale to Low Force, a section of the river that we had not walked together and one that Nigel had not walked in over 50 years!

Eric and Christine dropped us in the village of St John’s Chapel and then drove ‘up the dale’ to enjoy the views overlooking Cow Green Reservoir followed by a coffee at the Langdon Beck Hotel (a highly recommended lunch stop) before heading back down the valley to collect us from Low Force just before the rain started.

The first collection of images is entitled ‘Miles of smiles on styles‘. Unfortunately we did not think to start photographing the styles until we were well into the walk and so missed some of the most impressive. I guess we will just have to go back again.

If you are fans of the Netflix series ‘The Witcher’ you may recognise Low Force water fall in the last few images. This where Yennifer and Siri need to cross the river but the rope bridge has collapsed. No sign of the rope bridge when we were there!

The Weardale Way

The Weardale Way stretches from the village of Cowshill, where the Killhope Burn patiently tumbles down the valley collecting more tributary streams until, at Wearhead, it is finally christened the River Wear, 74 miles to the coast at Sunderland. We have done so many parts of the walk over the years that we have decided that it is an entirely reasonable goal to have walked its entirety – so a few more walks for next year are planned.

Page Bank to Bishop Auckland

The River Wear passes close to Tudhoe Village so we regularly walk between Sunderland Bridge and Page Bank and from Sunderland Bridge into Durham City. This time we opted to walk from Tudhoe Village through familiar woodland to Page Bank and then follow the river upstream to Jubilee Park (a section that we had walked previously) and then on to the outskirts of Bishop Auckland. This turned out to be an epic 9 mile hike so we were pleasantly surprised to find that our return route along a disused railway line (which we had also walked several times before) was only just over half the distance.

The last few images were taken in another Jubilee Park, this one in Spennymoor, where the railway line walk ended and we once again found our way through local woodland to return to Tudhoe. The display features the work of local artist Norman Cornish who spent most of his working life below ground in the nearby coal pits. The text below the images described his first day at work on Boxing Day 1933. He was 14 and the colliery at Ferryhill was known as the Butcher’s Shop owing to the number of accidents there. Each of Nigel’s grandfathers would have known it well.

St John’s Chapel to Westgate

Last time we were here, our long suffering taxi drivers dropped us at Cowshill and we walked downstream to St John’s Chapel. This time we did a very leisurely section from St John’s Chapel to Westgate. Eric and Christine enjoyed tea and scones at the Killhope Lead Mine tea room while we enjoyed more lovely Weardale scenery and some wonderful quirky art features like the miniature farmhouse with bridge – it even had its own ‘derelict’ outbuilding.

Out of the dales into the dales

When not exploring the dales of the Tees and the Wear, the next go to destination is probably the Yorkshire Dales.

Eric and Christine’s love of the region has clearly been passed on to Sue and John who are hoping to sell their current house and move to the lovely market town of Richmond which is a perfect gateway to many, many walks and scenic drives throughout the Yorkshire Dales. Hannah, the partner of Sue’s son, Andrew, is from this area. To Eric, who invariably forgets her name, she is ‘the bonnie lass from the dales’.

Sue and John took us for a day out in Richmond so that we could see why they have fallen in love with the place.

More catch-up time

We have lost track of when we last caught up with David and Donna Gittens. Nigel went to school with David and we knew them as a couple when we were were all university students in the early 80’s.

David is a lifetime Newcastle United fan and season ticket holder. A Sunday home game meant that they had travelled from their home in Stoke-on-Trent to stay in a hotel on the coast near Newcastle at North Shields. So we arranged to meet on the Monday.

Donna thought that lunch at a beach restaurant where you are actually seated on deckchairs on the sand would be perfect. Nigel, who had spent much of his childhood on north eastern beaches was somewhat sceptical. This was the Messenger exchange…

Of course Donna was right. It was a fabulous venue and it was a great lunch.

Things did get off to a slightly awkward start though … Newcastle had played Liverpool the day before (and, of course, Sue is a lifelong Liverpool supporter). Despite being 1-0 down and playing with only 10 players for most of the match, Liverpool managed to equalise late in the game and then score the winning goal during injury time. The Messenger exchange once again…

The area was new to us. We had sailed out of Tynemouth on a ferry crossing to Ijmuiden (Amsterdam) many years ago and we were familiar the coast from Whitley Bay north. So it was great to discover these lovely beaches.

We couldn’t resist photographing these signposts to pay homage to Dire Straits. Unfortunately we missed photographing the places themselves so we have included a few wikipedia images to help make sense of the lyrics….

Tunnel of Love

And now I’m searching through
these carousels and carnival arcades
Searching everywhere
from Steeplechase to Palisades
And any shooting gallery
where promises are made
To Rockaway, Rockaway
Rockaway, Rockaway
From Cullercoats and Whitley Bay
Out to Rockaway.
And girl it looks so pretty to me
Like it always did
Like the Spanish City to me
When we were kids.

 — Dire Straits, 1980

And then it was time to head home

Three months has flown by. We arrived to an impressive display of spring blossom and now there is an equally impressive autumn display of wild fruits, drupes, nuts and seeds (*word snob Sue added ‘drupes’ etc, Nigel added the link for anyone as ignorant as him).

There is a limit to how much blackberry and apple crumble we can eat – although Nigel has made a serious effort to discover just what that limit is – so on Monday 4th September we are on a train (several trains and the London Underground) to Heathrow Airport.

Next stop Singapore then Auckland, overnight with Graeme and Siobhan before finally arriving home on Thursday.