The North East Again - Bishops, Pitmen and Romans

I’d originally planned to spend time in Bishop Auckland itself on Monday but then found the Wensleydale Railway was operating the full line so plans changed and I went today. Some things I’d visited before, some were new, and some had a different perspective. 

After a coffee in the town hall cafe and buying my pass the first visit was to the Faith Museum (one of the new attractions), this was partly because I was advised it was a good time between school parties. It tells the story of religion in Britain from the prehistoric through to the present day, obviously with a Christian focus but not neglecting other faiths. There are some interesting artefacts and they do a good job bringing things to life. The only area I didn’t really entirely get was the modern art section - a lot of surrealism that defies the stated meaning to me. 

After negotiating my way back to the main entrance I toured round the Castle itself, the former Palace of the Prince Bishops of Durham. 

It’s spectacular in many places but I struggle to see the relevance of much of the artwork. I did have a discussion about this with one of the guides, an art expert, and in the end we agreed there are two sides to the argument but we both couldn’t help thinking the money could have been much better spent elsewhere, on the other hand it’s now bringing in tourists and is instrumental to the regeneration of the town (it was the proposed sale of the art collection by the Church that started the Auckland Project). 

The stained glass windows tell the story of St Cuthbert. His remains were carried from Lindisfarne by the monks after the Vikings sacked the monastery, here they’re planning the building of Durham Cathedral.

The next visit was to the Mining Art Gallery which I think has improved and expanded since my last visit. As it’s in what is basically a house getting the scooter round was tricky in places but I managed. Most of the pictures were produced by miners, often painting after work as part of Workers Educational Association classes such as the Ashington Group, known as The Pitmen Painters. The pictures in the gallery are probably the best examples, certainly some I’ve seen elsewhere are much more naive. As I’m changing pictures at home I came away with a print which will be framed and hung when I get back. 

After a sandwich for lunch I loaded the scooter back in the car and drove the short distance to Binchester Roman Fort; this was run by the County Council but was absorbed into the Project this year. The Fort’s claim to fame is that it was substantially larger than both Housesteads and Vindolanda, however a lot less still remains. The bathhouse is the best preserved building, with some fairly intact hypocaust, it was worth going but there’s some repairs and improvement needed. 

Underfloor heating - Roman style!

Throughout the day, and indeed all week, I’ve had a lot of assistance from the staff and volunteers at the various venues - I have sent an email to The Auckland Project saying thank you, I realise my bigger scooter is really on the limits for some places size wise, and I’ve had to get off and lift the back end round a couple of times, but I know I’d have really struggled to do everything with the smaller one.

The North East Again - Not a Lot!

With a dodgy weather forecast I decided today would be a good day to go into Newcastle. The original plan had been to go through on the Metro but whilst I could have done so with the small mobility scooter, which folds, I can’t take the large one on so I had to drive. For simplicity I parked in the Eldon Square multi-storey, and found a disabled space right by the entrance to the shops which made life easy, the only problem was it wasn’t a very long space so I had to park in forwards and unload the scooter in the roadway. 

The two objectives were a revisit to the Discovery Museum and to check out the revamped Grainger Market. Once I actually got into the former (there’s building works going on and it’s not very well signposted) I spent a couple of hours just browsing round the displays starting with Turbinia - I first saw the ship back in 1982 when she was sat in a building on the Town Moor by where we were canoeing. 

This was the first turbine powered steamship, built by Charles Parsons in 1894 as an experiment. She was the fastest ship in the world at the time and was famously demonstrated, without an invite, at the 1897 Spithead Review; by 1905 the Admiralty decided all future Navy ships would be turbine powered, and in 1906 The Dreadnought became the first such warship - the turbine continues to this day driving nuclear submarines. 

It’s not often you see a signal lever frame with the safety locking on view and described on the information board.

The Grainger Market, back in the 1980’s when I shopped there, was a busy, and noisy, retail hub with everything from fresh meat and veg to tools and underwear (it’s got the oldest surviving M&S branch). Last time I visited it was mainly full of vape shops and second hand record stores with just a few of the original stalls left but recently it’s been reinvented as a street food venue, still with a couple of butchers and greengrocers and several other stalls. I ended up having Mac and Cheese Carbonara for lunch but could have chosen food from five continents if I’d wished (there were no kangaroo burgers 😀). 

I was proved right on the weather, it started raining just as I left the museum and stopped just as I drove out of the car park! It was so bad at one point I considered getting the anorak out of the scooter bag but that would have meant admitting to being a southern softy - when in Newcastle…

The North East Again - Lots of Trains

The weather forecast and some places I want to visit not being open some days has prompted a revision of which days I go where, so today I went to Hopetown in Darlington on my journey to Sunderland. 

Last time I visited Darlington it was to the North Road Station Museum but some years ago this was expanded with the addition of the adjacent goods shed and carriage works. I took time on the way to stop off at the Brick Train sculpture so arrived just as things opened. 

My first port of call was the A1 Locomotive Trust’s workshop, this is the other side of the railway but there’s a wheelchair lift to the bridge across; I was having a few problems as the door kept trying to swing closed but one of the site maintenance people came over, held the door for me, then dashed up the stairs and made sure I was ok getting out! I got cannier going down and reversed in but the spring was still making it difficult to fully open the door to exit. Although Tornado wasn’t in residence their second new loco build, P2 - Prince of Wales is underway. This class would have been Britain’s most powerful passenger steam locos but unresolved problems meant they were rebuilt as Pacifics, the hope is that with modern engineering they can fix the issues. 

From there I visited the carriage works, an exhibition space, which was closed, and the museum’s artefacts store which you can browse around. I did spot this platform sign which must be from Monkwearmouth Station, I suspect dating from around 1925 when Brockley Whins was renamed Boldon Colliery, hence the painted out name. It reverted to the old name in 1991 before being incorporated into the Metro system in 2002. 

The main museum building is a bit tight to get around as the main hall is literally two of the platforms with infilling between the stock. It’s changed a little since my last visit, but not all that much! I was constantly dodging little kids as I think mum’s had taken the chance to visit now the older ones are back at school but I managed to avoid running any of them over. 

Once I’d had a good look round and had a coffee and teacake and another wander I headed off to Sunderland and the Seaburn Inn. There are two signs you’re nearly there when approaching from the South, the first sight of Penshaw Monument and Houghton Cut - the latter, now on the A690, was first dug in around 1815 to provide a road between Sunderland and Houghton Le Spring and has been progressively deepened and widened ever since. 

The North East Again - More Trains

I’m thinking of starting a campaign, PAH! - Pacers Aren’t Heritage! Today was the second one I’ve travelled on this trip, this time on the Weardale Railway. I do understand their reasons for using them, and in this case their heritage DMU is only a single unit so with it being a bank holiday they’ll have wanted the longer two car train, but they’re not great and I believe they could well reduce passenger numbers. 

Most people visit heritage railways for nostalgia, even the older diesels can evoke memories but I’m afraid Pacers were hated from when they were launched. There’s only one reason I’d visit the Weardale again, the delightful old fashioned tea room! It’s nothing fancy but the service is excellent and my lunch, a slice of Weardale Potato Cake, which is actually a bacon and potato pie, was delicious; the coffee came with a proper ginger nut biscuit as well, not one of those fancy Biscoff ones. 😀 As a bonus, the family who were in had come well prepared with felt pens and colouring in books for the kids who were having fun quietly. 

After lunch I indulged in a bit of nostalgia, crossing the watershed between Weardale and Teesdale to Middleton. I stopped for a while to visit the community bookshop, I didn’t buy anything this time but I’ve picked up a railway book or two there in the past. I also had a look round the Kirkcarrion Gallery, a relatively new artists’ collective, as I’m in the process of changing out some of the pictures at home. 

The gallery is in what used to be Bob Raine’s TV shop, back in the 60’s he had three holiday caravans in the back courtyard, one of which we hired twice for a couple of my earliest holidays. I didn’t buy anything in the end, there were a couple of pictures I could have lived with but they didn’t really grab my attention. 

From Middleton I wandered back to the hotel, I might have called in at Barnard Castle but my back had had enough walking for the day (all of a couple of hundred yards) and it wouldn’t have been worth offloading the scooter. 

Looking at the weather forecast for later in the week I might move plans around a bit - rain all day on Wednesday isn’t ideal for a prolonged trundle round Sunderland but would be OK if I go to Newcastle as that will mainly be indoors. 

A quick note on photos in the blog, I don’t edit these in any way, they’re straight off the camera, better versions may appear elsewhere later. 

As a further aside it’s taken three days for my accent to change back to confused North East (a combination of being born in Sunderland and spending three years at Newcastle Uni!) 

The North East Again - It’s a Small World

Today was definitely a bucket list tick off, a visit to Ryhope Engines Museum, near Sunderland, on a steaming day - my previous visits up here have never been at the right time. Getting the scooter round even the lower levels was tricky, they do have a platform lift but the access to that is tight, and I still had to park up for the stairs to the upper levels - it was well worth it though! 

The station was built in the 1860’s to provide water for domestic and industrial use in the nearby pit villages and in Sunderland. There are two beam engines, with 4 pumps (water is pumped up around 250ft in two stages to keep the system balanced and there are two separate wells), steam is provided by 3 Lancashire type boilers, although only one is normally fired as they’re not actually pumping water so don’t need as much pressure. The engines are two cylinder compound condensing which means they’re very economical to run. 

Not quite what we normally think of as starting handles! They set the various valves manually for starting the engine.

A combination of a lowering water table, which increased the risk of brackish water from the sea entering the system, the hardness of the water and reservoirs such as Derwent and Kielder being built led to the closure in the 1960’s after just on a century of work. 

The small world part of the title comes from a conversation I had with one of the blacksmiths working on site, both he and his father worked at Doxfords Shipyard in Sunderland, as did my Dad and Grandpa. Even more coincidentally his Dad and my Dad both served their time in the engine works and as they’re now 91 and 90 respectively must have been there at the same time. We’re both going to ask our respective parents if they recall the other although after 70 years or so that’s unlikely. 

I ended the visit with a mug of coffee and a slab (and I mean a slab, not a slice) of homemade fruit loaf with butter, for the princely sum of £3! 

The second port of call (pun intended) was Seaham Harbour to visit the East Durham Heritage Centre and photograph a couple of sculptures. Oddly the car park above the harbour, by the Tommy sculpture, has a mixture of free and chargeable spaces, and I was fortunate to get one of the free ones. 

The less well known Coxswain sculpture, also by Ray Lonsdale.

The Heritage Centre’s main attraction is the George Elmy lifeboat, which has a fairly tragic story attached. We hear  quite a lot about the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster of 1981 when 16 people lost their lives after the Solomon Browne tried to rescue the crew of the Union Star but the Seaham Disaster of 1962 is less well known. Five lifeboatmen and four crew of the Coble Economy were drowned with just one of the Coble’s crew surviving after the lifeboat was overwhelmed by a freak wave within yards of reaching safety. 

The restored George Elmy.

The lifeboat itself was washed up, retrieved and after extensive repairs used as a relief boat elsewhere for a number of years before being sold off and converted to a fishing boat. By chance a Seaham local noticed her advertised for sale and the Heritage Group were able to purchase and restore her. Seaham lifeboat station closed in 1979 as larger and faster boats came into service and could better cover the area from elsewhere.

As the hotel I’m stopping at don’t do Sunday evening meals I’d booked a table at a gastro pub the other side of the town (which is basically shut in a Sunday evening!) Sadly it turned out to be very underwhelming as neither the Black Pudding and Chorizo Scotch Egg or the Classic Parmo (breaded chicken in cheese sauce) had a lot of flavour, which takes some skill with those ingredients! Throw in the fact the place was noisy and I was quite happy the service was quick and I could get back to the hotel. 

The North East Again - Wow!

In fact, wow, wow and thrice wow! 

Today was my long awaited visit to Kynren, a fantastic history show, and largely run by volunteers - it stretches further though as it’s an Arts, Education and Conservation charity allied to Auckland Project. I could go on for a long time about this but please look it up if interested. 

The evening show has been running since 2016 but this year the first four daytime shows have opened, Land of the Vikings, The Lost Feather, The Trusty Steed and Legend of the Wear. I won’t go into too many details, and I’ve respected the request to not photograph the shows, as it could spoil things for anyone else who visits. 

The choreography in the Viking show was excellent and the fight scenes were probably a lot more accurate than often portrayed, short, sharp and brutal, with grappling, not the long drawn out fancy swordplay you usually see. Throw in some acrobatics, music, flames and a good story line and it was superb. 

The Feather show is birds, lots and lots of birds, and they’re up close - having a huge great vulture fly a few feet over your head is magnificent, and just a little scary. This is where part of their conservation work comes in, with breeding programmes for rare species. 

The Trusty Steed is, obviously, about horses. This show is set in the Medieval and includes jousting, all with another good backstory. Of course the good peasant triumphs over the evil baron in the end! 

There’s only really one legend associated with the River Wear that they could tell, although this was a different version it still involved river monsters, a witch and a hero called John! Some of the acrobatics in high places looked a bit iffy to me but a strategically hidden crash mat took care of the deliberate falls and at one point our hero paused to clip on his fall arrest before climbing a lighthouse. 

After a break and some OK food I parked up the scooter in the designated area and found my seat. Unfortunately, whilst the forecast rain had held off most of the day there had been a shower and the seats were somewhat wet. ☹️ Never mind, there’s a heated towel rail in my hotel bathroom so I can dry my shorts out. The evening show is a multimedia spectacular history of England, and particularly of the North East (although they missed out shipbuilding) from Roman times to the end of the Second World War. There were some very dodgy fire arrows from Harold Godwinson’s archers but there was very little to complain about. 😊

I managed a reasonably quick getaway, partly ‘cause I chose a seat right by an exit, and I’ve just about got the knack of stowing the scooter so I’m now sat sitting with a pint in the hotel bar. 

Overall an excellent day - It’s not cheap and there’s quite a bit of time spent hanging around between performances but that’s OK.

And just in case you thought you’d escaped trains…

Locomotion at Kynren Station, which is based on Stanhope where I’ll be on Monday.

The North East Again - Getting There

My last holiday of the year is back to North East England, firstly just outside Bishop Auckland then on to my birthplace of Seaburn. Due to family commitments I’d planned to visit late September but as the bank holiday is as late as it can be I decided to come up earlier which is allowing me to tick off some bucket list items (more on these over the next few days). 

On the way up I revisited the Wensleydale Railway, catching the first train meant an early start from home but I was awake anyway. It’s several years since I last rode the line, my last visit was to a model railway show while I was camping nearby and it was too busy to bother with a journey. Unfortunately they’ve now abandoned steam altogether due to finances which is a shame, I had hoped we’d at least get the Heritage DMU (a designation that encompasses the 1st generation diesel mechanical railcars) but instead it was the Pacer. ☹️ These units were built as a stopgap using bus body and interior parts on a railway chassis, as they were all withdrawn a few years ago I guess they are “heritage” in their own way but they are one of the worst vehicles ever to grace Britain’s railways and are definitely not ideal for back pain sufferers. This one came from the West Wales network - I know ‘cause they haven’t changed the prerecorded announcements. 😀

The Wensleydale Railway has long been one of my favourites, partly because they’re always so friendly. Having arrived a bit early I was given a personal tour of the Station Master’s House, which is attached to the business part of Leeming Bar station, nothing much I haven’t seen before but interesting that it was definitely high status, it even had an attached washroom complete with copper (but still an outside toilet!) Whilst sitting at Leyburn one of the railway staff wandered through offering his services to take pictures of people sitting on the train - no interest to me but a few people handed him their phones.  

More trains followed as I stopped off at Locomotion in Shildon on my way to the hotel. Again I’ve been before but the Flying Scotsman was on show and they were doing rides behind the replica Rocket, although I didn’t bother with either it presented photo opportunities. After a coffee and ginger cake, ostensibly made to Mrs Stevenson’s own recipe, it was time to head to the hotel and check in. The rooms are around a courtyard, shades of the recent trip to Warners, but are well appointed. 

I didn’t take a lot of photos as they’re places I’ve been before but here’s a few:

The Flying Scotsman

The Pacer, the most uncomfortable train to run in Britain…

…since these went out of fashion in the 1800s!