Lanchester to Ebchester - Farm shops, steel and stark plantations

We don't often get to travel to the far north for our Chester walks, so it was with no small sense of excitement that we boarded the train at King's Cross station, destination Durham, a healthy three hours train ride from London on the East Coast line.  This was our second walk in County Durham, the first one being Chester-le-Street back in September 2011.

County Durham has to be one of Britain's most undiscovered counties, as it tends to be ignored in favour of the more dramatically scenic areas of Northumberland and the North Yorkshire moors.  The great thing about this series of Chester walks is that it brings us to undiscovered areas and places we would normally by-pass which have a beauty and merit all of their own.

Lodgings and victuals

This was another 'double whammy' Chester walk, as we managed to get two Chesters for the price of one.  We'd initially drawn Ebchester using our random selection app, but when we realised that we could walk there from Lanchester, we decided to stay overnight in that larger town, as it had more accommodation options.

Lanchester Village Street Map

Lanchester is a nice enough place and we were really lucky to stay in The Old Post Office, a newly-opened B&B on Lanchester's Front Street.  It's funny how the name for the central street of a town has regional variations in England - it took me a while to get used to the term High Street for what we call (in Ireland) Main Street.  Front Street seems to be the North-East equivalent and suggests a place along a roadside, where carriages would stop on their long journey to Edinburgh.

Lanchester Front Street

We had dinner at Crinnion's bar and restaurant, next door to the B&B and caught up on our respective lives, as we always do on these weekend walks!

Lanchester to Knitsley Farm Shop (2.9 miles/4.7 kilometres)

This was a really easy walk, in the sense that we were able to follow an old railway path the entire way.  Whilst it's sad, in many ways, that many of England's railways have fallen out of use, particularly in former industrial areas like the Lanchester and Derwent Valleys, it's good that they have been transformed into cycling routes, which anyone can access if they want to get a break from the nearby cities of Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland.

Lanchester Valley railway path

Lanchester was a stop on the Durham to Consett branch line, which closed in the 1960's. The path felt quite remote and windswept as we made our way out of Lanchester village and along the western ridge of the Lanchester valley.  This part of County Durham has rich farmland and the great industrial cities of the North-East felt very far away, although they're only twenty or so miles distant.

View over Lanchester Valley

At Hurbuck Farm we dipped down into the valley and met our first paved roadway, the Humberhill Lane. From there, it was a short walk to Knitsley Farm shop, a really lovely place to buy some fresh farm produce or have a bit of lunch.

Hurbuck Farm

Cows and calves in West Knitsley Grange

Knitsley Farm shop and cafe

Knitsley Farm Shop to Consett (3.5 miles/5.6 kilometres)

From the farm shop, we followed the Lanchester Valley Railway path to the outskirts of Consett. Meeting a junction of cycle paths and footpaths, we ended up taking the wrong one - having been distracted by a bright red disused railway carriage, we missed the more direct path into Consett and were seduced by the more prominent Consett and Sunderland Railway path, which took us slightly off course, as it tried to convince us to walk all the way to Sunderland!

Red train near Consett

The Consett and Sunderland Railway path follows yet another former railway line, the Stanhope and Tyne Railway. It's 26 miles from Consett to Sunderland, so doable in two days, if you're interested in walking this route.  This path is part of the much longer Sea to Sea cycle path, one of Britain's most popular cycling routes, which runs from Whitehaven in Cumbria and finishes 140 miles later in Sunderland.  It's great to get so much off-road cycling/walking and it's much less dangerous walking or cycling on these former railway lines than on country lanes.

The Consett and Sunderland railway path

One of the main benefits of our detour, was that we saw an amazing public art installation called Terris Novalis by the Liverpudlian sculptor, Tony Cragg.  Consett had a very proud tradition as one of Britain's main centres for high-quality iron and steel production.  Even until the late 1970's, the Consett steelworks was profitable and provided hundreds of jobs locally but, in what seemed to be an ideological attack on an area famed for industrial action and strikes, Margaret Thatcher's government closed the Consett steelworks in 1980, making more than 3,000 people unemployed.

Terris Novalis sculpture detail

Terris Novalis sculpture by Tony Cragg

Consett has a quietly demure feeling about it these days and it's hard to get a sense of what has happened in those intervening years.  There's very little left of its former industrial heritage, apart from public works of art. The landscape is now dominated by the hospital building at Shotley Bridge rather than the Steelworks, an apt symbol of 21st-century Britain, in many ways!  We found an interesting blog post about the Terris Novalis sculpture - well worth a read.

Consett had a long history of steel-making

Public seating where the steelworks used to be

Consett

Consett to Ebchester (2.3 miles/3.7 kilometres)

We'd originally intended to finish our walk at Ebchester, but things were going so swimmingly on the relatively easy railway paths (no being chased by cows or stung to death by nettles) that we made a decision, quite early on in the day to push ahead as far as time would permit us to go, considering it would be a bus journey back to civilisation and the 7pm train from Newcastle to London!

Derwent walk leaving Consett

It was a nice walk from Consett to Ebchester and fairly busy with cyclists, dog-walkers and even a couple of people carrying their shopping on mobility scooters!  Whilst it was tempting to stick to the railway path along the ridge of the Derwent valley, we felt it would only be right to descend into the valley and visit Ebchester, our second 'chester' of the day!

Ebchester village

Known as Vindomora in Roman times, Ebchester was founded as a Roman fort on Dere Street, the main Roman road from York to the north.  I'd say it was a pretty miserable outpost, back in the day, but nowadays it's a very pretty little village that looked peaceful in the late afternoon sunshine.  We debated the origin of the suffix vin- related to wine (BAM's theory) or wind (my theory) - actually it's more likely to be a word of Celtic origin meaning white, like the modern Irish modern bán.

St Ebba's Church in Ebchester

The useful map in this photograph shows Binchester as well, a place we haven't yet visited, but one which is firmly on our list.

Durham in Roman times

Ebchester to Lintzford (3.5 miles/5.7 kilometres)

From Ebchester we followed Shaw Lane and then a public footpath out of the village and back up to the ridge and the railway path.  From there on in, it was a pretty dreamy walk, feeling miles away from anywhere, as we skirted along the Derwent valley with the villages of Hamsterley and Hamsterley Mill barely impinging on our rural idyll!

The Derwent Valley

The only distraction along the way was the red deadnettle which I spotted and identified using my flower app, as I'm trying to learn the names of British wild flowers.  It's called a dead nettle because it doesn't sting.

The red deadnettle

We also walked through the curiously-named Make-me-Rich plantation.  I couldn't help but wonder, as we passed the sternly watchful trees, whether or not someone did get rich from the plantation?

Stern trees in the Make-me-Rich plantation

With a close eye on the time, we decided to end our walk at a pretty little roadside village called Lintzford, where we caught the 45 bus on to Newcastle and the long journey home.

The River Derwent at Lintzford

Access for wheelchair users:

Because this walk mostly followed disused railway lines, I could recommend any part of this walk for wheelchair users. The only bit that wouldn't be accessible is the footpath from the railway path to Lintzford, so you might want to consider coming off the railway path at one of the villages, or continuing to Rowlands Gill

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me, please feel free to reuse, under the Creative Commons license:

- Attribution (especially to this blog post)
- Share alike

- Non-commercial