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

Chester-le-Street - Concangis

This was the first time our Chester trip brought us to the North East of England.  Chester-le-Street is a market town in County Durham, just to the south of Newcastle, it lies on the Roman road which ran up the east coast of England to Wallsend.  This trip certainly had a very different feel to it and I think it's fair to say that myself and BAM are now thoroughly familiar with the east coast route, due to the delays and difficulties we had getting there and back! 

Lodging and victuals

Tribley Farm near The Moorings

We might have arrived in Chester-le-Street two hours later than we'd expected, but our accommodation at the Moorings Hotel in Hett Hills, just outside the town, more than made up for the long journey to get there.  Unfortunately, because of the delay, we didn't get a chance to eat at the hotel restaurant, the Prime Rib, which has great reviews.  Apparently, it's a really popular spot for Sunday lunch and people drive there from miles around to sample their famous Yorkshire pudding! 

We'd found it hard to get accommodation in the town itself and we now know this was because of the one-day International between England and India at Chester-le-Street's Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground.  That would explain why every room in the town was booked out!  By all accounts, tickets for the match had sold out in December of last year!  We couldn't have ended up in a better place than The Moorings and I'd recommend it, if you're ever up Durham-way. 

The Moorings Hotel to Edmondsley (2 miles)

Horses at Tribley Farm

Weird sculpture on the ground

We didn't intend to visit Edmondsley on this walk!  Whilst we have, on occasion, got a little bit lost in previous Chester walks, this time we got spectacularly lost and somehow walked in completely the wrong direction, away from Chester-le-Street rather than towards it!  In our defense, I have to note that the landscape between the Moorings hotel and Congburn plantation looks completely different to what you see on the map.  It feels as though they have been tearing chunks out of the surrounding fields and re-creating the landscape to turn it into something else.  There were lots of eerie pieces of wooden sculpture, like the one in the photograph, which seemed to have been run over by a digger. 

Congburn Plantation

The myriad of paths through Congburn plantation are also partly to blame, as well as the interesting conversation we were having about hostage-taking, which led us to take that fateful right turn, when we should have gone left!  In case you're not already aware of it, I have a sister blog to this one called Learning about the World, which recounts my armchair travels to different parts of the world.  I'm currently blogging about Yemen, which is why we were talking about hostages in the first place!  I guess the path to Edmondsley had taken us hostage and, although it seemed like a nice enough place, we were keen to get to Chester-le-Street and back on the track of our intended walk. 

Place of the horse people

I'd managed to convince myself, before this trip, that, in true English fashion, Chester-le-Street should be pronounced something like Chester-l'Estrey or something equally pretentious, but no, in true North East fashion it's just Chester-le-Street!  The accent in this part of Durham is fascinating - not quite Geordie, definitely not Yorkshire, but somewhere in between. 

Front Street, Chester-le-Street

After all of our Chester walks in the south of England, the North East was suddenly very exotic, like being in a different country - the place names are very different - Ouston, Birtley, Kibblesworth, Nettlesworth - definitely not southern English names.  Then there were curious names, like No Place and Pity Me and North American names like Washington, Canada, Philadelphia and Quebec, as though the Americans had colonised England and not the other way about!

The Romans called Chester-le-Street Concangis, which was their approximation of the original Celtic place name, which meant something like 'place of the horse people'.  It's also the name of the small river Cong which runs through Chester-le-Street and the plantation where we got lost!  Interestingly, the Russian word for horse is also конь kon'.  The name Chester-le-Street was used to differentiate this Chester from all the other Chesters in England, ie. this was the one on the Roman road (or street) to Wallsend.  Chester-le-Street's Roman history isn't very visible these days, because the town was built on top of the Roman fort, so everything Roman is underground. 

The Pilgrim's Way

St Mary and St Cuthbert's

Signpost for Cuddy's Corse

We restarted our walk on the main street, which is called Front Street, with a view of St Mary and St Cuthbert's, Chester-le-Street's main church.  St Cuthbert seems to have been phenomenally popular in the north of England and his body rested in Chester-le-Street for 112 years in the 9th/10th century, before being moved further south to Durham cathedral.  It turns out that the walk we did from Chester-le-Street is actually part of a pilgrim's route known as Cuddy's Corse (ie. the path that they carried St Cuthbert (Cuddy's) body (corse).  The route runs from the Farne Islands (north of Newcastle) to Durham, but it's not exactly a direct path, as it goes via Edinburgh and Carlisle in a highly circuitous loop. 

Chester-le-Street seems to be a popular stopping off point on the way from North to South and it was also the first stop on the famous Jarrow March of the 1930's, when 207 protestors marched from Jarrow in South Shields to Westminster Palace in London, to highlight the extreme poverty and unemployment faced by people in the North East at that time. 

Chester-le-Street to Great Lumley (2 miles)

England v India at the Emirate Durham ICG

The first two miles of our walk took us past the Emirates Durham ICG where we could hear the cheers of 75,000 spectators and we could see the stadium draped in English and Indian flags.  As we were passing, the weather was fine and everything was going well, but I heard on the news later that they had to call the match off because of the rain which fell at around 3pm.  We crossed Lumley Bridge, then turned right onto the Weardale Way, passing the magnificent Lumley Castle Hotel (rooms starting at 185 GBP for a twin.  Hmmm, maybe next time!) The way followed the River Wear for a little bit, then turned left to pass Lumley Riding, skirting a hedgerow and wheat fields which brought us to Great Lumley. 

Horse at Lumley Ridings

Front Street, Great Lumley

All of this land was once part of the Lumley estate, the Lumleys being a prestigious local family of Anglo-Saxon origin.  Great Lumley was also known for its coal mines in the 19th century.  Intriguingly, we spotted a pub on Great Lumley's Front Street called The Warriors Arms. 

Fields outside Great Lumley

We often hear the sound of gun shots on our walks through the country, usually a regular sound created by machines to scare away birds.  This time we heard real gunshots, down towards the river and it reminded me of a great Spanish movie I've seen recently called El rey de la montaña. If you've seen the movie, then you'll know why. If you haven't seen it (and you like thrillers) then it's well worth watching!

Inside Finchale Priory

Great Lumley to Finchale Priory (1.4 miles)

The entrance to Finchale Priory

We continued following the Weardale way, through some fields and onto a small country road called Cocken Lane, which brought us back to the river, crossing a pedestrian footbridge to reach the ruins of Finchale Priory.  This one is pronounced differently than it's spelled, so it's pronounced Finkle not Finchale.  The priory is really beautiful and reminded me of Bolton Abbey.  Like Bolton Abbey the priory was abandoned during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.  Walking around the ruins, I couldn't help but feel appalled at the ruination of such a wonderful site.  It's now managed by English Heritage and maintains an atmosphere of dignified contemplation. 

Finchale Priory to Brasside (1.1 miles)

The lonely road to Brasside

Finchale Priory lies at the end of a very lonely road, which brings you down to the village of Brasside, the location of two Category A prisons, Low Newton womens' prison and Frankland mens' prison.  We've seen a few fortified buildings on our walks, notably Fort Nelson in Portchester, but nothing as frightening and impressive as the prisons at Brasside.  The Weardale way, rather nonchalantly, goes right between the two prisons and we crept along, in awe of the prison walls, as the clouds burst suddenly and the rain pelted us angrily.  I've found out since our walk that Rosemary West is currently being held at Low Newton and that Frankland holds the child-murderer, Ian Huntley.  It makes me shiver just thinking about how close we were to such evil minds!

Brasside to Durham (2.3 miles)

View of Durham cathedral

The rest of the walk to Durham was pleasant enough, despite the rain, and we could see Durham cathedral in the distance, romantically lounging in the mist on top of the hill.  I'd never been to Durham before this walk, but I'd heard a lot about it and it certainly lived up to my expectations.  We arrived with about an hour to spare before our train, so we walked around the city, through Market Place and up Saddler Street and Owengate to Durham Cathedral.  The cathedral is a fantastic structure and we walked around inside, listening to the choir singing and reading about the history of the building.  We also visited the shrine to St Cuthbert, thereby ending a pilgrimage that we didn't know we'd started!  

Access for Wheelchairs users

Durham castle

The part of this walk that I would recommend for wheelchair users is the Weardale way from Finchale Abbey to Durham.  If you don't mind wheelchairing through a prison(!), this part of the route is fairly accessible, with a few bumpy bits coming down Frankland Lane and a slightly steep slope down from Frankland Farm.  Durham has a new pedestrian bridge which is wheelchair-accessible and will bring you to Market Place via the Gala Theatre.  Alternatively, you could get an elevator to street-level in the Gates Shopping Centre and cross the bridge at Leazes Road, just as we did. 

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to use them under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share alike
Non-commercial