c2c 2011/ Stamina-building Tour of County Durham 3: Into The Langley Park/Bearpark Triangle

For week three, I ventured off in another direction, toward Langley Park, an ex-mining village about 5 miles out of Durham.

This had two things going for it. The first was the quasi-mythical Diggerland, an adventure park devoted to, yep, industrial diggers.
This place had been mentioned in dispatches by Nigel from Half Man Half Biscuit, when they played Durham in December 2010. The band had appparently set off for a visit earlier in the day, despite the snow, only to find it shut.

They clearly do as much research as me.

Indeed, regular readers will have already guessed the revelation that's coming about my visit: yep, it was shut when I got there, too.
Bizarrely, it looks from a Google search like it may even be a franchise operation, as there are four of them (ours appears to be run by H.E. Services next door).

Part of me fondly, though probably forlornly, imagines that these blog write-ups have the spirit of the Biscuits coursing, if not through them, then passing quite close by since, like many of their lyrics, these bike trips have taken on a wilfully obscure travelogue feel to them. Put simply, I'm venturing to places I've never been, and would ordinarily have no reason to visit, but I've found some mildly diverting stuff everywhere so far.

The other attraction in Langley Park was my good mate Guy, who works nearby (on the same road as Diggerland!) for his mate's online vintage clothing emporium, Savvy Row for the discerning gentleman (wasted on me, therefore). Guy took me into Langley Park itself, to the pub known as, well, The Langley Park, and we had a champion pint of, well, Champion Ale. (In all the excitement, I forgot to take the important commemorative photo of said pint.) He too has now joined the C2C Quest, and we pencilled in a weekend in early summer for it.

Heading off after the pint, I tackled the biggish hill that forms Langley Park high street (the photo with my bike overlooking the town is taken from halfway up). Along the way, I spotted these homes specially for 'aged miners'. Of course, this is the heart of the County Durham Coal Belt, and indeed I found some more later on, in another village, Bearpark, overlooking the dales.
It's startling how quickly you can be in the middle of lovely countryside onyl 15 minutes out of the city. A restful and lovely bike trip.

Next week: Brancepth and Willington.

C2C 2011/ Stamina-building Tour of County Durham 2 - Chester Moor and Beyond...

This week I headed off in the other direction, to Chester Moor, about 6 miles away from our house, and where, again, I thought there were at least two pubs by way of a final destination. I knew I'd pass by Plawsorth, with its farm where you can pick soft fruit, advertised on the main road with a gigantic plastic strawberry. Ideal photo opportunity.

As is now threatening to become typical of this tour of County Durham, it's not there anymore.

So I carried on, and as I'd over-estimated the distance to Chester Moor and the gradient of the hill (modest), when I got there after about 20 minutes I thought that wasn't much of a trip, so I carried on toward Chester-le-Street. And that's when the day got (marginally) more interesting...

I spotted out of the corner of my eye down a dirt path a sign that looked very much like one for an amateur football club. Naturally curious, I pedalled down to find out more... ... and it was indeed an ad for Chester-le-Street Town, but with some disconcerting features: 1) The forthcoming fixture was for last August and, 2) The next match would require an early-morning kick-off - what, on police advice?! I know it's Birtley (suburb of Gateshead/Newcastle), but still...

So I cycled further down the path, in search of a football stadium that, possibly, had been last used in the previous summer. And I encountered a decrepit, seemingly derelict 'ghost ground', as if it had been abandoned and left for Nature to reclaim.

Well, that's what I thought, but a cursory Google search reveals - come on, admit it, you're curious - that they won 2-0 at home last week (by the looks of it, the boy Davison is in a rich vein of form), in front of a crowd of 48.

At first I thought they might play elsewhere - could they have grown out of this stadium? Not with crowds like that! - and so I was intrigued when the link about their ground was being "updated", but the "getting there" link does place them squarely in this field behind a pub off a main road.

So, what's with the spectacularly out-of-date noticeboard? Weird, but slightly disappointing, to be honest - I preferred the 'ghost ground' story. Ah well, up the Cestrians.

I continued down the main road to Chester-le-Street, to Riverside Park which, as the sign makes clear, is more than a park, it's the "Gateway to the Great North Forest", an apparently astounding wilderness that had hitherto escaped my attention for five entire years, and wasn't obviously in the immediate vicinity. The park does have an excellent play area for kids, though.

Meandering around the park's perimeter I came upon a subway with the intriguing title... ... and when I cycled in, I found an excellent set of murals obviously painted by some local kids (possibly from St Leonards Catholic school), under the guidance of the region's NHS Trust, the County Council and a mental health charity for kids.

Impressive artwork, and of course wholly admirable and sensible sentiments (the "Get some sleep" one made me laugh out loud, too), but descending into the tunnel surrounded by all this intense anxiety was somewhat alarming.

Eee, it were simpler in our day (we had The Smiths for starters).

And this is life in the frenzied heaving metropolis of Chester-le-Street. Who knows what would be on Council-sponsored murals in south London?

Onward into the town itself, and to a pub - any pub. I settled o The Butchers Arms, down a side-road off the main high street, where I was only the 2nd customer in, and I had a bog-standard pub lunch ('seasonal vegetables' turned out to mean boiled carrots and cabbage!), and a creditable pint. Then back home...

So - ghostly football grounds and teenage nightmares in Chester-le-Street. Next week - Langley Park.

Coast to Coast (C2C) 2011 - The Stamina-building Tour of County Durham 1

This year, in a nod to my own mortality and - more pressingly - burgeoning belly blubber, and inspired by two mates [Stuart and Liam] who've run the London Marathon, I've resolved to attempt the Coast-to-Coast bike ride.

I'm planning on the Whitehaven to Sunderland route (click on the map above to see it in all its glory/horror): 135 miles in all, from sea to shining/freezing sea, o'er dale and hill, all on my faithful 21-gear friend here.


To which, I need to get fit. Presently, my only real exercise is as follows:
- The 2-mile bike ride to work and back (when it isn't raining/ too cold/ I know for a fact the wonderful #21 bus will be passing by our house in 5 minutes)
- A weekly kickabout with members of University staff
- Playfights with Liam (which, as his Oedipal complex hardens into a full-blown neurosis, have taken on a more frenzied, and thus knackering, quality of late).

I recognised - and more to the point so did Valeria - that this regime would be hopelessly inadequate prep for four days of cycling, and so I have to build up my stamina, as well as get into the zone, maaaaaaaan, of long cycle journeys.

I've set aside Thursday lunchtimes for a weekly, long-ish bike ride from Our-House to Somewhere-Reasonably-Far-Away-in-County-Durham, and pencilled in some nearby destinations on successive weeks... The plan is a deceptively simple one: set off to arrive for lunchtime, find a local pub, have a pint, cycle back.

First stop: a village I vaguely recalled from a family trip into the countryside a while ago, called Hett. About 7 miles away, up what I knew would be a bugger of a hill (into Croxdale, the preceding village), but surely do-able. And I remembered there was a pub on the village green to slake my thirst on arrival...


I arrived 45 minutes after setting off, and I'm quite chuffed to say I managed to get up the bloody big long hill in one go, with no stops to admire the view/ be revived by trained paramedics.

Hett is a typical country village, with an endearingly, almost stereotypically inadequate focal point in its village hall (note my plan to take a commemorative picture of my bike at the end of my journey)...

BUT, when I got to the pub, the Hett Arms, IT WAS SHUT! Bloody CLOSED DOWN two months earlier!

In retrospect, perhaps I should have researched a bit more, but then, as I cycled back down the long lane leading to Hett, I decided that that would only take the potential for ultimate calamity out of the whole effort - and where was the fun in that?


So I headed back down the hill to Croxdale, to avail myself of one of its two pubs, the Daleside Arms.

Also shut (it's weird entering an open but not serving pub, as the silence and absence of life is eerie, like entering a murder scene).

But someone from the wonderful Franks Carpets did turn up - click on the picture to check out their carefully considered focus-grouped-to-death branding catchphrase - so I could hardly protest... (The pub opens at 5pm weekdays, apparently.)

I cycled back toward Durham, and had my first C2C pint at The Honest Lawyer, a pub/hotel... and reasonable enough it was, too.

Pausing only en route to take a picture
of the amusingly titled, and iconic, roundabout at the top of Durham itself, I got back home in reasonably good shape.

Next journey - Chester Moor.