Coastwalk

North Sands, Hartlepool → Seaham

Distance: 13.53 miles
Ascent: 367 metres
Duration: 4 hours 43 minutes

Durham
« Port Clarence | South Shields »

Today we walked nearly an entire county's coastline. (The north border is just a mile or two from where we stopped.)

After taking a poorly marked path across a golf course, we soon reached the southern end of the Durham Coast Path.

The Coast Path is well waymarked, with frequent informative boards and interesting sculptures. Most of the path is across scrub land, with former colliery villages just inland. Sadly there's no immediately obvious evidence to support our growing suspicion that we were walking across land that just thirty years ago would've been teeming with working coal mines.

This really is a missed opportunity. We knew bits of the stories of the Easington and Blackhall Colliery villages, but it would have been wonderful to have some scene-setting here on the cliff tops. There was one board that appeared to discuss the mines, but it had long since faded beyond the point of legibility. It was as if all evidence of the coal industry has been systematically eradicated, with only films such as Billy Elliot (whose fictional setting of Everington was based on Easington Colliery) left to point the way.

Instead of discussing the rich industrial heritage we walked on thinking about the words we could see - those on our map - and considered the local topographical vocabulary of gill, dene and hive.

Coastwalk

Port Clarence → North Sands, Hartlepool

Distance: 15.24 miles
Ascent: 90 metres
Duration: 4 hours 33 minutes

Looking for something better
« Middlesbrough | Seaham »

This area of the north-east is looking for something better.

We started walking in Port Clarence, just across the River Tees from Middlesbrough. Houses here change hands for as little as £14,000, typically by open auction with a starting price of less than a thousand. House after house is boarded up and the Station Hotel offers bed and breakfast for £75 a week. But this is also where the Transporter Bridge lands and the immediate vicinity is extremely pleasant, with newly refurbished street furniture and pristine pavements. I imagine those who live around the corner in the village are hoping investment might spread into their estate too.

Sadly, we didn't cross the river on the Transporter today. It had loomed large in our minds as we planned this walk, but only this morning we found out that it closed a couple of days ago for eight weeks while it's being repainted. We will return to glide across the Tees another day.

Three miles of road-walking followed, past access roads to heavy industry. One yard here was famous a few years ago for breaking up toxic ships; they're now building oil rigs — an employer adapting as time requires? The nuclear power station will need a change too as it reaches the end of its life in the next five years.

In amongst this industry we saw a colony of seals stretched out on a muddy bank in Greatham Creek. What is it about this place that drew them here?

Next up was Seaton Carew. I imagine few would have heard of the place were it not for John and Anne Darwin's dreams of a better life in Panama, and the fraudulent means by which they tried to realise them.

Beyond Seaton is Hartlepool where regeneration is well underway. Or at least, in parts of the town. The marina and central harbour has been beautifully modernised, but beyond their immediate precincts is wasteland and struggling industry.

On the north side of town the settlement of The Headland felt as if it remained authentic to its roots but was hanging on by a thread. As we left the village we reached the atmospheric old cemetery and beyond it, newly cleared industrial land at North Sands. Planning permission has been granted for five hundred new homes here; the beginning of something new for another part of the town.

The big question is whether this is the start of something new for the area, or whether those moving in will just end up dreaming of something better again.

Greenbelt , Music

Fat and Frantic

Over the course of a few brief hours on Monday, I travelled back in time over twenty years.

Fat and Frantic were a phenomenon in my early student years, and I saw them play to packed out audiences at the grungiest of London clubs. It was wonderful to see them play again this weekend — they seemed to be having the time of their lives, with Jim Harris the happiest man on site.

Instantly I was back in the original Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, the Marquee Club, the Town & Country Club and various other venues of my youth, amused by the UV lighting and worrying about catching the last tube home.

What I'd forgotten is just how much their songs influenced me though. They'll always be remembered for the zany and off-the-wall, but amongst them are some real gems: tales of injustice and struggle, alongside simple exuberance and joy.

When I laugh
it shatters my day into bits that I like and can cope with more easily
...
I wish that I did that more often

A thousand times: yes.

Greenbelt

In search of joy

What a fantastic festival!

Considering the slightly frustrated mood I was in on Thursday, things turned around very quickly come Friday afternoon. (It's amazing what a bit of sun can do!)

We may have camped alone, but we were amongst dozens of good friends.

"Joy is so much more elusive than melancholy," lamented Linford Detweiler at Greenbelt some years ago. I am determined to find more joy.

Greenbelt

Three, two, one

This year's Greenbelt is the third festival that I'm not a Trustee. It's the second that I'm having a take-away curry at home on the Thursday night instead of at the Everest, and the first year I don't get a credit in the Festival Guide. The slow disconnect continues.

It's also the first year in a long time that the large group of friends who always used to come to Greenbelt aren't heading over. That last thought is the saddest one.

The run-up to the festival's been rather stressful: in addition to the iOS Festival Guide app (which I've written for the past six years now), I've also developed a new Android app and users familiar with the old one aren't entirely happy with the change. This is curious since both apps seemed to go down well at Solas.

Still, at least the weather forecast looks significantly better than last year's.

Coastwalk

The Plan, update 2

Our walking year began badly, with no miles of coastline completed in the first three months of the year.

April through June fared much better, so that at the halfway point through the year with 282 miles under our belts we had pretty much regained our target of 50 miles a month.

Then the summer came.

Two months later we're still at 282 miles. Will we finish England by February? I hope so, but we'll have to be a bit more determined to do it.

The plan for the remainder of the calendar year is to complete the three west coast gaps that have been hanging over us since the first year of this three year plan, as well as push a bit further on the north-east.

With any luck we'll go into January with only 100 miles of Northumberland left.

We've some great walks ahead. I hope we can enjoy them rather than just focus on the goal of finishing England within fifteen years of starting.

[Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011]