County Durham (wild, windy and wonderful!)
County Durham can feel like two places at once. One minute you’re on open moorland with nothing but sky and heather, then you’re down in a quiet valley with a river and a stone bridge. Drive east and the air turns salty, with cliff paths and wide, empty beaches.
It’s also a county that stays cold and windy longer than you might expect. Even on a bright day, the breeze can bite. That isn’t a problem, though, as long as you plan for it. In fact, the weather is part of what makes the views feel so clean and sharp.
County Durham is a wild quite isolated county. If you like your weather cold and windy, and your nature dramatic and stormy, Durham’s your man! Home to a hilly city, and like Yorkshire, has its own Dales.
The coastline runs from Durham’s coastline runs from Seaham to Crimdon (where miners would take their holidays in the 1920s – it’s now home to breeding little terns, so never disturb them).
West Durham is home to Hamsterley Forest, 2000 acres of marked trails with lovely views, and summer wildflower meadows.
Always follow the Countryside Code to keep all creatures safe. Keep dogs away from steep banks, mushrooms (and toxic plants/trees) and on leads near birds, barnyard friends and wild ponies.
If at the coast, keep away from nesting birds and never walk on sand dunes. Learn how to keep dogs safe by the seaside (check beach bans before travel).
Join the campaign to ban flying rings, to help local seals.
How to upright an overturned sheep
Pregnant sheep (and sometimes due to wool waterlogged from rain) can sometimes roll over onto their backs, and can’t get back upright, due to having four stomach chambers (so will die if not turned back upright).
If you see a sheep on its back, just firmly right it back, then stay with it, until rain has drained off, so it won’t happen again. Then inform your local farmer.
Durham City: A Hilly Place with a Cathedral View
Durham City is easy to sum up, at least at first. It’s small, it’s steep, and almost everywhere you turn there’s some sort of view that leads back to the cathedral. That sounds simple, and in a way it is. Still, the place has a habit of feeling bigger than its size suggests.
Part of that comes from the shape of it. The city folds around the River Wear, rises and dips without much warning, and keeps giving you these brief, clear scenes of stone, water, trees, towers. Because of that, Durham often feels less like a spread-out city and more like a place gathered tightly around a few strong ideas.
Durham Cathedral dominates the city in the plainest, most literal sense. You see it from bridges, hills, lanes, and bits of open ground that seem placed there only so you can catch sight of it again. Because it stands high above the river loop, it gives Durham a fixed centre.
That matters more than it might in a larger place. In Durham, the cathedral isn’t background scenery. It shapes how the city feels from street level. The old stone, the height, the weight of the building, all of it brings a kind of steadiness.
Inside, the columns, the vaulting, the long lines of stone create a strong sense of age without needing much explanation. You don’t have to know every detail of Norman architecture to feel the force of the place.
A steep city built on seven hills (like Rome!)
Durham is very hilly, so best for fit people! Durham Pointers has notes on accessible places for seniors, disabled travellers and people in wheelchairs.
Each hill even has its own name and shape:
- Cathedral Hill (Palace Green): Includes the castle
- Windy Hill: Known for its sweeping outlooks across the city
- Mount Joy: A leafy rise, popular with students and walkers
- Whinney Hill: Edged by college buildings and family homes
- Claypath Hill: Where the old main road leads into town
- Gilesgate: Now a busy suburb, once a key entry into Durham
- Crossgate: Old streets lining the slopes across from the castle
Durham Cathedral and the story of St Cuthbert
Even if you’re not religious, Durham Cathedral tends to win people over. The outside has a solid, guarded look, a key example of Romanesque architecture. This means stone, round arches, and a sense of weight. The massive pillars and round arches dominate the space, with carved patterns and a strong sense of scale.
St Cuthbert was a revered northern saint, remembered for his life as a monk and bishop. He was also known as the ‘first environmentalist saint’ who campaigned for the welfare of eider ducks whilst living on the Farne Islands (there is a legend that otters used to dry his skin with their fur, after he had gone wild swimming!)
And that he became a monk after witnessing angels carrying St Aidan (the monastery’s abbot) to Heaven. After he died, St Cuthbert’s body was taken back to Lindisfarne, where the many claimed miracles at people who prayed by his grave, led to him being declared a saint.
He is buried in Durham cathedral, which is why it remains a pilgrimage destination today for many Roman Catholics and those on the Northern Saints trail.
Durham and the roots of English mustard
This popular condiment was created in Durham City, by Mrs Clements. When she decided to grind mustard seeds into flour, at a mill on Sadler Street in 1720.
In the early 18th century, Durham became the site of the first mustard mill in England. Before this, mustard was sold in rough, whole seeds, which people ground at home.
Durham in hard times (the great depression)
Like many places in the North, in the 1930s people in Durham suffered during the Great Depression when the coal industry slumped, wages shrank and jobs disappeared almost overnight. Families lived very close to each other in terraced small houses, sharing what they had, to make ends meet.
Refusing to give up hope, people looked out for each other. Local churches and clubs became lifelines, handing out cups of tea, or running clubs for children with struggling parents. Simple comforts (a loaf of bread, a borrowed book, a warm fire) got families through this difficult time.
Durham University: Life and Pulse of the City
With over 20,000 students, Durham is a main draw to this city, with colleges lining narrow lanes and leafy hills. Cafés brim with students swapping ideas over laptops, theatres put on student plays, and bookshops serve both locals and scholars.
Although Tony Blair was born in Scotland, his family moved to Durham when he was five. As an adult, he returned from Oxford University and living elsewhere, to represent a new constituency, where he became an MP and then Prime Minister.
Of course since then controversy ensued, due to it later been found that there were not weapons of mass destruction, meaning the war with Iraq (not authorised by a United Nations Security Council resolution) violated the UN charter. He now advises governments with his own foundation.
