Iâve done some fairly interesting things this month, and had planned to write posts for each of them
â but, for whatever reason, none of them provided that particular spark to me. Maybe they just
didnât seem that interesting to explain to you, the reader, or maybe i didnât know what to say about
them except the obvious.
Nonetheless, it would be a shame for these events to pass into the annals of my journal without
telling you about them. So! Hereâs a brief summary of my unblogged July thus far.
I toddled off to Shildon to visit Locomotion, the local
branch of the national railway museum. Itâs the birthday of the railways, and thus boasts a
disproportionate selection of anorak arcana â alas, you canât go in the trains, but you get
a pretty good look at the inside of Queen Alexandraâs royal train car, the erstwhile Birmingham
maglev, and, most proudly, Stephensonâs Rocket.
Locomotion also provides a lot to geek out about for any heraldry nerds.
Beamish1
has been newly crowned
Museum of the Year, so there was no better time to check it out. I hadnât properly explored their new fifties town
yet â the chippie and the old houses are wonderful, but the record store, crammed up the stairs,
across an anachronistically modern mezzanine, and down a grey corridor, leaves much to be desired.
Nitpicks about balcony design aside, itâs as great as ever, and, somehow, well worth the ÂŁ33(!!!!!)
asking price.
Finally, just yesterday, i went off to an Elbow concert hosted in a ruined mediĂŚval priory by the
sea. Belting out âOne Day Like Thisâ in the fading dusk light with five thousand other people
standing on the same hallowed ground where monks tried to figure out where baby eels came from is a
top-ten human experience.
Washington1, a town in urban County Durham long since incorporated into Sunderland, is not a place where one
expects much nature. The palatinateâs chirping woods and rolling Pennine moors are not so far away,
and the path i took to get to todayâs attraction led not through winding country roads but broad,
grey industrial arteries, designed to ferry thousands to and from Nissanâs immense factory.
But at the end of the road, down by the river Wear, there lies a wee patch of idyll: the
Washington Wetland Centre.
On a hilltop in the distance: the previously covered
Penshaw Monument.
Iâd come on a good day for it, clearly, as the first thing i saw coming out of reception was the
staff corralling all the ducks together for their annual vaccination, by means of a ramshackle
assemblage of mesh fences. (Crowd control for birds!) The littlest one kept trying to escape his jab
like an ornithological Bobby Kennedy.
Most fabulous of all creatures of the air on offer are the eiders, the diva-est ducks in the world,
emitting a chorus of sassy coos as they revel in their status as undisputed kings of the pond.
(Youâll have to take my word for it, as i neglected to take a video, erring towards the side of it
being better to live in the moment than through a phone camera. I was yet to realise what good
blog-fodder the visit would make.)
As apologies for the lack of Eider Content, please accept this invasive rodent instead.
On the other side of the preserve a viewing area juts out to overlook the Wear â still salty and
tidal this close to the sea â and an artificial
saline lagoon, built to provide a home for those creatures who prefer a more brackish milieu. The signs tell me
that, rare as they historically have been, more and more European otters have made their home along
the wear, and the lucky visitor might hope to see one⌠if only the centre were open at dawn or at
dusk, when they come out.
The signâs not joking â Asian small-clawedsâ bite force is enough to break your bones.
Not to worry, for the centre are also very proud of their main mammal enclosure: a family of
utterly2
adorable Asian small-clawed otters. Theyâre a lot less squeaky than the ones at Northumberland Zoo,
and wondering why, two theories popped into my head.
First, that itâs the Northumbriansâ fault. Their northern sibs were greater in number, a family of
four to Durhamâs two, and they were, by all accounts, masters of putting on a show. They appeared in
an orderly fashion when their circadian rhythms told them it was feeding time, pipped and squeaked
incessantly at the keeper until they got their fish, performed some cuteness, and then went back
inside when their bellies were full. They knew exactly what they were doing, methinks.
Second, that the Washingtonian otters were grieving. I said there were two, the younger Buster and
the elder Musa, and you might be hard-pressed to call that a family. But until this month, there
were three.
Mimi, the clanâs matriarch and a
scamp who bonked so much they had to give her a lutrine IUD, passed of
old age at fourteen (a good innings by her speciesâ standards, no doubt). When she went, they had to
put her corpse back in the enclosure so the others would understand.
They were still otters. Still playful. But something about them seemed⌠morose. Maybe, in between
the fish and the scampering and the puzzle feeders, they were still thinking about her.
On the way out, i passed a tiny observatory, cleverly named âCygnusâ for the constellation of the
swan, used by night for the
Sunderland Astronomical Society. I donât know if itâs
of much use this far into the zone of light pollution, but they certainly seem to enjoy it, so
perhaps my relatively sky-privileged Northumbrian self shouldnât play the lecturer. Perhaps that
fateful night that Mimi died, a star in the sky began to twinkle a little brighter.
I have to assume this has been here since at least last Christmas.
I think this used to be(?) a centre for birds of prey. Not sure why it was done up like an old
west town, if thatâs the caseâŚ
I started hearing old-timey fairground music in the distance and it took me far,
far too long to realise that it was coming from the old-timey fairground Beamish has.
For fifteen minutes i was the most confused i had ever been in my whole life.
Feeling really quite glum over the news of
far-right riots near here yesterday.
I just keep coming back to the question⌠why Sunderland, of all places?
Not that it would be okay in any situation, but itâs not Leicester, where you have sectarian
tensions flaring up. Itâs not Southport, where you just had a mass stabbing. Itâs not even somewhere
with a properly substantial Muslim or immigrant population, like a Birmingham or a Boston. Itâs
Sunderland. Why here, in what is, pardon my bluntness, the White British1
working-class capital of the UK?
I donât know. I guess i thought it couldnât happen here. That we were nicer up north. Or that the
scenery was too nice for people to get angry. Or that we were too left-wing even though Reform beat
the Tories in every constituency. Or maybe that we were too deprived, and that we didnât
have anyone to scapegoat, because we knew itâd be shit no matter what.
Ach. History will trundle on as always, and in due time iâm sure the internet shit-stirrers and
fundie imams will be joining hands and complaining about all those filthy undersea neo-post-BahĂĄâĂ
immigrants from Atlantis taking our jobs. Maybe we can set up a football rivalry for everyone to
redirect their hate into like they did in Glasgow. Who knows.
Ushaw Hallâs website plays coy about itself. You can learn that
guide dogs are welcome, theyâll be exhibiting interactive âHumanimalâ sculptures next month, and
that they're very proud of the pun âUshaw inâ, but curiously little about what the place actually is
(or was). I went anyway.
To spoil the fun, itâs an old Roman Catholic seminary that was turned into a museum when people
stopped being religious enough to care. The entrance makes that well clear; walking up from the car
park, the curious visitor is flanked by an ostentatious neo-Gothic chapel on their left and
modernist student housing on their right. (The latter remains unmuseumified, too boring to make much
out of.)
Right from reception thereâs an interesting historical tidbit with a bust of Abraham Lincoln
himself, who a helpful volunteer told me once attended Ushaw before he decided a more secular
political career was right for him. (It was that or boxing, i suppose.) Upstairs is the Presidentsâ
Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â so never mind that, and letâs
instead turn right.1
This takes us down a series of winding hallways with wibbly tiled floor â as of now, an exhibition
has lined them with wedding dresses old and new, including replicas of those worn by the royal
family, creepy mannequin heads and all.2
More importantly and more permanently, these are the chapels of Ushaw Hall.
I neglected to take pictures in this part, so this oneâs
Š Ushaw themselves.
They are beautiful, and have seen better days. The paint peels from a dimly-lit mural in a nook i
presume is for choirists. In others, light dances in vibrant oranges and blues through expository
stained glass. The brightest of them all, seen here to the right, invites its visitors to pray for
Ukraine in a solemn reminder of the times.
These smaller shrines have an intimacy to them that reflects the houseâs hush-hush history. First
exiled from England, the Catholics settled in the small town of Douai, in the north of France â only
to be forced out again by the secular fervour of the French Revolution. Even then, they struggled to
find welcome in a staunchly Protestant Georgian England, until a sympathetic aristocrat sold them
land in Durhamâs secluded hills. The hall itself was built with the façade of an unseeming terrace,
only showing its religious nature to those within.
Onwards, then, into the star of the show â the main chapel. Pews upon pews span the long gap between
the entrance and the colossal tabernacle, behind which the walls are adorned with what first looks
like simple ornament but reveals itself to be tightly-packed black-lettered Latin. You can tell itâs
Catholic by the eagle in the middle, the Vatican having never quite given up its attachment to its
Roman roots.
âŚUpstairs is the Presidentsâ Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â
so never mind that, and letâs instead turn left. Winding at right angles around the central court we
first arrive at the library, or what little you can access of it. Management and the university are
promising big things⌠eventually⌠once they restore everything⌠and catalogue it⌠and⌠oh, sod this,
letâs go to the cafĂŠ.
[One hot chocolate laterâŚ]
This is a wholly unrelated bookstore found elsewhere on church grounds. Behind the camera is a
fireplace. Yes, i am kicking myself for not photographing that instead.
As we were. Further along we find find the mess hall, where aspiring clergy once ate in silence,
with only the wet sopping of a hundred English breakfasts reverberating back and forth across the
walls. These days itâs used for noisier conferences and school trips, fitted with identikit metal
and plastic tables and seats which donât do much to complement the nineteenth-century dĂŠcor.
Some time later, past the temporary exhibition of inkjet printouts of old maps3, our trip comes full circle. As i walk home through the well-kempt garden and around the reedy old
pond, i might not have been convinced by the seminaryâs faith, but i have been convinced of their
taste in interior decoration.
Hello. Iâve been to Consett. I thought you might like to hear about it. (Gosh, iâve missed writing
that.)
Itâs been
a miserable year
so far weather-wise, so wind-swept, cold-nipped, and rain-soaked that it took until April for me to
look outside and go, ah, not a bad day, letâs go for a jaunt.
The plan was simple: get a bus into Consett and head straight for the nearest hill. A short and
sweet saunter through woods and farmland; short compared to some of my previous odysseys from
Newcastle to the Wansbeck, sweet compared to the scenery in the more populous parts of the
palatinate. (It was not to be.)
Iâm at the bubble tea / Iâm at the tanning salon / Iâm at the combination bubble tea and tanning
salon
We start in the centre of town, a humble lower-middle-class affair whose high street would strike
southerners as horrifyingly dilapidated and northerners as above average â nice enough, at least,
for the areaâs local MP to choose it as his base of operations. Around
the corner from the cinema1, the pedestrianised and sensibly named Middle Street plays host to (in decreasing order of
classiness) a provider of musical instruments, an independent sweet shopâgift shopâpet shop, a
building society, a Greggs, a Superdrug, an animal rescue shelter, a frozen food emporium, a Turkish
barber, Ladbrokes, a vape shop, another vape shop which also sells computer parts and
repairs your phone (my lawyers say i canât call it a mob front), and Barryâs Bargain Superstore.
This dumps us onto a crossing onto Parliament Street, where the Galileanically
inclined can attend the charming parish church (with âmessy churchâ every month for the tots). I
follow it down its procession of historic terraces, in a rather literal sense: Briton Terrace, Saxon
Terrace, Norman Terrace, and then to spite me they finish it off with the pattern-breaking Tudor
Terrace. I suppose it could have been a later addition, going with Stuart Court across the road, as
well as Georgia and Edwardia Courts, two small cul-de-sacs i only noticed on Google Earth after the
fact⌠but that sequence gets thrown off yet again by the road whence those two branch off, Romany
Drive, which unless they meant to write âRomanâ but hired a dyslexic cartographer has sod all to do
with the other streets.
A path bearing at its mouth a welcoming sign (all caps,
âno part of this land is dedicated to the public, any use of this land is entirely at the
userâs own risk, et cetera, et ceteraâ) marks a liberating end to our onomastic confusion, funneling us down a sloping green crescent of
parkland into a reclaimed steelworks. (Itâs always a reclaimed steelworks.)
Finally, we reach the end of the funnel, where the light pours from the sky, the buildings abruptly
stop, and any wayward ramblers are left with only a gorgeous view of Durhamâs rolling hills
stretching out before them. This exact moment, this exact view â this is why i get out. To sit on
the edge of a hill, the dull traces of modernity firmly behind you, and see the country not devoid
of manâs presence, but shaped by it, over hundreds and thousands of years, from hunting-grounds to
cleared forest to farmland to steelworks to grass for grassâs sake, a place where, like the terraces
of Parliament Street, you can hear Englandâs history sing in your veins.
Anyway then thereâs a really steep path downhill where i almost slipped and fell like Super Mario
going down a slide.
Traipsing down steps iâm not 100% sure were public and over a road made of more pothole than asphalt
i wind up following a burn to the River Derwent. This is where our routeâs industrial past makes
itself seen. Every few yards a worn sign pops up warning of a âdrainageditchâ, or a graffiti-blanketed pipe crosses the rain-cleaved dene;
at the very end, a picnic table by a former pump house grants me some respite.
I take stock of myself. My phoneâs battery, always surprising me with innovative ways to run out, is
in danger of crossing the ten-percent mark. Itâs the first nice day of the year, but that also means
iâm out of shape and out of practice: i wonât be able to make it all the way.
Equally, iâd be a fool to clamber back up all that. I keep walking. The rushing burn has become a
tranquil river, its waters still enough to see your reflection. I think to myself that if youâre
going to name a pencil company after a river, this oneâs not a bad choice.2
Civilisation creeps back in with the tell-tale sounds of power tools. This is
Allensford Holiday Park, a modest gathering of caravans proudly advertising itself as ânear the outstanding Northumberland
National Parkâ. (It isnât.) When i get there itâs thronged by teen schoolboys freshly out,
chattering about video games and lining up for ice cream. (Something, something, nature is healing.)
Checking Google Maps with what power i have left reveals my worst fear: thereâs nowhere to go but
up.
The distance is short, but the slope is grueling. I convince my legs to heave themselves up along
the side of pavementless roads, ducking into fallow fields and passing places wherever i
can find them. It gets worse the further i get. By the first field, iâm a little out of it. By the
Catholic boarding school, iâm utterly exhausted. When i climb what i think is the final hill, only
for perspective to cruelly show yet more around the corner, i wonder if this is what hell is like.
But i make it â sweating and breathless, hydrating myself sip by sip, i make it to the bus stop, and
wait. The driver, when he comes, must think iâm a zombie, but iâm glad to be on my way home. Note to
self: donât take that big a break again.
Hello. Iâve been to the Bowes Museum. I thought i might
tell you about it.
Housed in a gloriously incongruous French mansion in the small town of
Barnard Castle1, it was built to house the art collections of the noble Bowes-Lyons â a family lucky enough to
count the Queen Mother herself among their members.
Its collection lies largely parallel to the âmainâ visual arts: ceramics, fashion, textiles,
furniture, and other such things which must account for function as much as form. Most of it plunges
headfirst into the latter, a bit frilly even for my often anti-modernist tastes, but i did like this
caduceus-adorned wooden cabinet:
The star of the show here is the Silver Swan, a gorgeous eighteenth-century automaton which preens
and sways on a bed of glass water. Unfortunately, itâs broken, and the closest youâll get to see it
is its dismembered corpse awaiting restoration, so [raspberry noise]. You can,
however, see their exhibition on its legacy, which houses a wonderful collection of modern
animatronics made by crafters and tinkerers from all over the world, like this 10/10 pianist:
There are a few items which donât fit into the above. Theyâve managed to snag some real Goyas,
Canalettos, and El Grecos. (Los Grecos?) They even have Charles Babbageâs Difference Engine, somehow
â i assume itâs on loan from London?
On a hilltop in County Durham sits the
Penshawi monument, a nineteenth-century folly built to commemorate the late Earl of Durham. Itâs always been on my
bucket list, but itâs a bit of a pain to get to via public transport, and iâd never found the time â
last week, though, i found myself with some time off and decided to make the trip. Iâll let the
pictures do the talking from hereâŚ
A view of the monument from the nearby country park. As you can see, there was a motorbike race
on at the time, which somewhat dampened the otherwise-peaceful atmosphere. Tut tut.
The monument was based on Athens'
temple to HephĂŚstos, though in a rather scaled-down format (see the lack of any kind of roof).
We werenât allowed inside the naos, as they were busy setting it up for that nightâs
Lumiere festival.ii
(They did let some of the people walking their bulldogs up â perhaps because they were too
scared?)
The country park also has this neat little henge, with viewfinders pointing towards some
well-known County Durham sites â that little black square you can make out is Durham Cathedral.
Information for visitors
Address:
Chester Rd, Penshaw, Houghton le SpringDH4 7NJ
.
Accessibility: Getting up to the monument requires a steep hike up a hill; if
you have impaired mobility, you may want to think twice before going.
Getting there: The hill is served by the A183 road
and the 2, 2A, and 78 buses. The nearest train station is
Chester-le-Street, five miles away.
Verborgen tussen de heidevelden en Penninsche pieken van County Durham ligt de machtigste waterval
in Engeland. Het water van
High Force tuimelt over 22 meter en 300
miljoen jaar rots naar het poel beneden. De waterval is ontstaan waar de rivier de Tees de
Whin Sill kruist, een harde plaat van
stollingsgesteente die een groot deel van het noorden van Engeland bedekt.
Als het waterpeil hoog genoeg is splitst de kracht zich in twee stromen, waarvan er een de andere
kant op gaat rond de rotsenâââna stormen kan het zelfs het hele plateau overstromen. Helaas, mijn
groep had niet zoveel geluk, ondanks recente regenbuien.
De familie Raby, de eigenaars van het landgoed, vragen ÂŁ5 om het uitzicht vanaf de voet van de
waterval te mogen bewonderen. De waterval torent boven degene die durft naar beneden te gaan⌠en die
niet zal missen dat er enkele mensen staan boven aan de rotsen. Die hebben helemaal niets betaald,
want zij wandelde langs de gratis
Penninische Weg. Verdorie.
Informatie voor bezoekers
Adres:
High Force, Forest-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, County Durham,
DL12 0XH, Verenigd Koninkrijk.
Bereikbaarheid: Openbaar vervoer is schaars in dit deel van het land, dus u
kunt het beste een schilderachtige autorit maken door de Pennines en het negentiende-eeuwse dorp
Middleton-in-Teesdale.
Prijs: Het Raby landgoed rekent ÂŁ5 voor toegang via de bodem, maar de top is
gratis toegankelijk door een wandeling langs de Penninische Weg.
ToeÂganÂkeÂlijkÂheid en faciliteiten: Het pad is, voor zover ik weet, niet
rolÂstoelÂtoeÂganÂkeÂlijk. De familie Raby houden toiletten en een hotel voor wie wil
overnachten.
Nestled amongst County Durhamâs moors and Pennine peaks lies Englandâs mightiest waterfall. The
waters of High Force tumble over 22
metres and 300 million years of stone, down into the plunge pool below. The falls were formed where
the river Tees meets the Great Whin Sill, a
tough slab of igneous rock covering much of the north of England.
When the water level is high enough, the force splits into two streams, one going the other way
around the rocksâââafter storms, it can even overflow the plateau entirely. Alas, despite recent
showers, my group were not so lucky.
The Raby family, owners of the estate, charge ÂŁ2 to see the view from the base of the falls. The
falls tower over any mere human who dares navigate down, demanding oneâs respect and attention⌠and
making it unmissable that, at the top of the falls, there are several people who walked their on
their own via the
Pennine Way, not having to
pay a single dime. Drat.
Information for visitors
Address:
High Force, Forest-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, County Durham,
DL12 0XH.
Getting there: Public transit connections are few and far between this far into
the countryside, so your best bet is to take a scenic drive via car through the Pennines and the
nineteenth-century village of Middleton-in-Teesdale.
Price: The Raby estate charges ÂŁ2 to access via the bottom, but the top can be
freely accessed by a hike along the Pennine Way.
Opening times: 10:00â16:00.
Accessibility and facilities: The trail is not, to my knowledge,
wheelchair-accessible. The site contains toilets and a hotel for anyone wanting to stay the
night.
