Durham

I had been promised a visit to Durham for a long time, years in fact. I had been promised by my wife, repeatedly, in the build up to visiting her parents in the north eastern town of Hartlepool. Hartlepool itself doesn't have much going for it (sorry, in-laws); the last time I was there I did my usual walk around the marina and along the coast and whilst dodging a downpour I took refuge in the Museum of Hartlepool. Even this couldn't muster much to say about the town other than its peak was well over half a millennium ago. Today, it's probably only known outside of the region as the place that hanged a monkey thinking it was a Frenchman and for being the home town of that canoe guy who pretended he was dead. In fact I think my in-laws were once considering buying the house next door to him.

So, with this in prospect the carrot of Durham was frequently dangled in front of me and last March we finally got to go. Sadly the weather started out pretty awfully; low cloud and heavy showers left us dashing between buildings to avoid the worst of it but it did eventually improve.

About half way along its journey to Sunderland the river Wear makes a strange little kink around a large, raised peninsular and it is at the summit of this that the cathedral was built in the 11th century. The first phase of building was completed within 40 years, which is actually quite fast for a Gothic cathedral; even the newest phases of building were completed some 600 years ago. It was to this amazing feat of architecture that I had been so keen to get to.

We started to the north west of the promontory and walked south to a bridge where we could cross over to the steep, gorge-like sides of the cathedral's home. As we climbed it was easy to see why this was once as much of a military stronghold for the prince-bishops as it was a place of worship. By the time we were inside we had all got pretty wet and were welcome of the refuge, but there was certainly more on offer there than somewhere to dry off. The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St. Cuthbert of Durham, to give it its full name, has several interesting features. It was originally set up to worship the aforementioned St. Cuthbert but can also claim to have the remains of the Venerable Bede, three copies of the Magna Carta, some of the first books to ever be printed in England and, as if that wasn't enough, the head of some guy called St. Oswald of Northumbria. Oh, it also doubled up as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from time to time.

Bede was a monk born in the 7th century who, amongst other things, was a chronicler of the history of the British people; Cuthbert was one of his disciples. I love that, even more than one thousand years ago, we had a strong and rich history that was worth writing down.

Together with the cathedral, Durham Castle forms part of a UNESCO  World Heritage Site

As with most cathedrals there is, if you're willing to pay for it, the opportunity to climb to the summit of the tower via an increasingly precipitous spiral staircase. I love going up these. It's a mixture of ingenious engineering, function playing second fiddle to form, the mild peril involved when you have to pass another climber and the always spectacular views from the top that combine to give a special experience every time.

The cathedral is possibly the most complete Norman building in the country and the eastern portion of the interior has a very different feel about it from most other cathedrals in the country. The great antiquity of the structure comes at a significant cost; literally. It takes about £40,000 per week to keep the cathedral in a decent state of repair, mostly in the form of wages for the six stonemasons, three joiners, two maintenance technicians and four gardeners employed in its upkeep, as well as a resident archaeologist that records and oversees much of this work.

The eastern façade

Once we had explored the cathedral it was time for lunch and we did well to find some excellent fish and chips, which always goes down well. By this time the sun had come out and our walk along the river back around the peninsula was a very different affair to our first encounter. The water was very still which gave me the chance to get some good reflections as can be seen in my first picture in this post.

So, I got to go to Durham; but this begs the question: how will I be enticed to make the trek north from now on? A visit to Whitby? Walking on the north Yorkshire Moors? Who knows, frankly.

Looking up at Durham cathedral from the river Wear