Town & country
Swap streets for stiles midway through a weekend in County Durham. If world-class heritage doesn’t ‘do it’ for you, wide Pennine vistas will.
Swap streets for stiles in a beautiful bit of the Pennines.
Brighton and the South downs. Bath and the Cotswolds. Sheffield and the Peak district. three vibrant cities with first-rate rural fringes. they’re destinations which prove you can easily combine an urban break and country escape in one weekend on foot. the first city in Britain to boast a World heritage Site, durham is our nominee for a town and country weekend. once you’ve sampled the medieval marvels of this eminent county town, day two delivers a contrasting walk in the unpeopled hills of the north Pennines. Saturday: City sights ‘Faith, Foresight and industry’ is durham’s motto. it’s a venerable city of pilgrimage and academia, in a part of england which fuelled the industrial revolution. and it’s best explored on foot. Few other cities can brag so many green dashes and diamonds threading around their centre on an ordnance survey map.
the conduit for durham’s paths and trails is the river Wear, which loops a hairpin bend around the city’s medieval kernel. having started life in the Pennines, the Wear brings a leafy sliver of the countryside into this small, well-appointed city. But for most visitors, the foliage is just window dressing. on board trains pulling into durham’s hillside station, all eyes are drawn to the three austere towers of the gothic cathedral. the castle keep gets second billing. Wrapped in trees, they dominate the city’s skyline, as they have done for centuries. You won’t like durham if you’re not at least mildly awed by 1000 years of history.
Make your way down north street to Framwellgate Bridge – the oldest crossing point into medieval durham. But before you mosey over its 15th-century arches into the market square, leave the inflow of people and slink down a flight of steps to the uncrowded riverbank path. here, it’s clear why durham’s founders picked its location. Flanked by a deep river gorge on three sides, the city occupies a naturally defensible peninsula. Crane your neck upwards to see the castle’s crenulations peeping above the treetops. Work started on it in 1072 on the orders of William the Conqueror, eager to stamp his authority over england’s rebellious north. since then, this motte and bailey castle has undergone various upgrades and renovations. But durham’s beginnings predate norman times.
according to legend, a long-deceased st Cuthbert chose it as his final resting place in 995. Monks from Lindisfarne abbey were wandering northumbria with his miraculously unputrefied corpse, along with other valuable relics they were keeping safe from Viking raiders. Yet somewhere south of
Sunderland, St Cuthbert’s casket refused to budge any further. After three days of fasting and prayer, the saint appeared to a monk called Eadmer, giving instructions that his body should be taken to some place called ‘Dun Holm’. Eadmer’s boss, Bishop Aldhun, hadn’t heard of it. But fortuitously, they went on to meet a milkmaid missing a ‘dun’ ( brownish-grey) cow, last seen at Dun Holm. Following this divine sign, they set up a monastery there, where Aldhun became the first Bishop of Durham.
When the Normans turn up, they set about rebuilding the cathedral in 1093, laying foundations for the grand Gothic edifice looming over the River Wear today. Until Thomas Becket was martyred at Canterbury, St Cuthbert’s bling-encrusted shrine remained England’s principal site of pilgrimage, attracting the faithful from across the kingdom. St Oswald’s head and the bones of the Venerable Bede joined St Cuthbert in Durham, and draw Christian pilgrims to this a day. For spiritual walkers, a circumambulation of the old city seems all the more fitting a way to admire it.
Heading upstream under thick-set branches, you pass the old corn and fulling mills at the ends of a diagonal weir straddling the river. The river’s toffee waters are briefly whipped into excitement by the two-foot drop. Further upriver, they’re crossed by the elegant Georgian spans of Prebends Bridge. The newest of the stone arch bridges into the city, it was built as a private road for the Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral.
From Durham’s earliest days, its bishops wielded political power in northern England. Titled ‘Prince Bishops’, they ruled the County Palatinate of Durham like monarchs, raising taxes and rallying armies to defend England against Scottish invaders. Whereas the cathedral was the seat of their religious authority, the castle was their court and palace. But in 1832, Durham’s last Prince Bishop vacated the castle to make way for the students of Durham University’s first college.
Once around kink in the river, you’re confronted with the concrete brutalism of Kingsgate Bridge, at odds with almost everything else around it. Linking the old city with an equally bold 1960s student union, it shares Grade 1 listed status with its aged forbears. Joining a throng of city-bound scholars,
it takes you to the opposite bank of the river, hugged by the Weardale Way. The trail skulks downstream under the old city walls.
Turning up and along a narrow passage brings you onto Palace Green – a breathing space between the castle and cathedral. It was a market in medieval times and is now the centre of Durham’s World Heritage Site. It’s superbly situated for lingering and marvelling in the quirks of the old buildings on every side. And it’s perfect for picnics.
Leaving by the northeast corner, you’re squeezed down cobbled streets, where Durham’s traders sell their wares today. Every shop is a curiosity shop in Durham, but if you’re serious about sightseeing, retail therapy must wait for another time. Durham’s second medieval bridge slopes east out of the city. Elvet Bridge once had a chapel at each end, only one of which survives, and no-one is sure how many arches it once had, or indeed still has. At either end, higgledy-piggledy buildings cling to it like limpets.
Walking upriver, the Weardale Way leads under Pelaw Wood and through the university’s playing fields on the city’s outskirts. Footpaths wrap themselves around wooded earthworks of Maiden Castle – an Iron Age hillfort abandoned long before St Cuthbert showed up in these parts. They lead up onto Whinney Hill, where a pair of gypsy nags are happy to share stonking sunset views over the city. In the opposite direction, you’ll glimpse the River Wear, lit up gold as it sidles its way down from the hills.
Sunday: Country air
‘GO WEST,’ URGED Neil Tennant in a 1993 cover single by the Pet Shop Boys, ‘ life is peaceful there’. Go west from Durham and track the twisting River Wear 25 miles upstream (or half that distance if you’re an airborne crow). On the far side of the Durham Coalfield you’ll reach Wolsingham. Aptly, life here must have seemed peaceful for Tyneside’s synth-pop superstar, as this is where he bought a plush pad. It’s a gateway to the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: 770 square miles of high, heather-cloaked moorland carved up by broad dales and countless gurgling burns.
Hereon in lies Upper Weardale, invitingly sprinkled with blue symbols on an OS map: pubs, parking and nature reserves. In days of yore, this was the Prince Bishops’ hunting forest. During the Middle Ages, it was second only in size to the New Forest. Here, Durham’s bloodthirsty chief clerics decamped for R&R, taking off their mitres to chase down terrified deer. Further west, the names of Frosterly, Westgate and Eastgate testify to the dale’s ‘tally-ho’ days.
Wolsingham itself is a market town with medieval pedigree, but fewer than 3000 residents, lending it the cosy personality of a large village. Home of England’s oldest agricultural show, it’s a place that wants you to go for a walk. A large map detailing every right of way in the parish is displayed outside the old Town Hall; pick a path and go. For those drawn to higher ground, there are routes leading uphill in every direction – away from town, across the fields and up onto the moors. It doesn’t take long to reach a gaspand-wonder vantage point.
A mile-and-a-half to the southeast, Knitsley Fell ranks among the lower knolls ranged around the dale. But it’s an easy and enticing objective if you’re only here for a day. Though far from being the loftiest top in the neighbourhood, the Ordnance Survey deemed it worthy of a trig point – a concrete guarantee of a good view. Crossing over to the south bank of the River Wear will reacquaint you with the Weardale Way beside Wolsingham’s ornate Victorian station, setting you on a path to the summit.
Once across Weardale’s heritage railway and over cattle-grazed valley meadows, the trail brings you within toe-dipping distance of the River Wear. There’s a peaty tint to the water, still fresh from the moors and churning its way east, eventually bound for the North Sea. The riverbank brims with broadleaf woodland – oak and beech. Underfoot, the trail turns delightfully mulchy. Rising away from the river, the Weardale Way twists uphill through regimented conifers. A diverging path doglegs up forestry tracks and cuts through brittle heather onto Knitsley Fell.
Quarrying left Knitsley Fell dogeared around one edge, but you wouldn’t know it from the top. This triangular pocket of open country is a taste of the brooding uplands out west. More hummock than hilltop, it scrapes under 1000 feet. To the east, Pennine gritstone slumps down to meet County Durham’s rumpled coal measures. Facing west, you pry deeper into the dale – a lawn-green corridor coursing through rust-brown moors. Stanhope and a string of ex-lead mining villages line the road up to Killhope Cross – a 2057-foot high pass into Cumbria. The North Pennines may be County Durham at their most rural, but these moors and dales once quaked with industry. From 1864, Weardale coal stoked Wolsingham’s ironworks, turning locally-mined iron ore into steel castings for Tyne-built ships.