Day Five – Monday 21st May – Durham to Darlington

Breakfast in the Great Hall. That’s what you get when you spend a night in Durham Castle. Just remember if you are looking to spend a night here, if its term time you need to book well ahead as you will be using student accommodation.

We had a puncture to mend before we left the castle and one of the students was very helpful in lending us a track pump. It also gave him the opportunity to tell us about a C2C he had done himself, over 4000 miles across the USA in 60 days. If only I had the time.

Finding our way out of Durham was easy – down to the river, onto NCN14 and then follow the signs for Sunderland. Anthony who was staying in Durham for the day came down to the river with us before bidding us farewell.

NCN14 goes east on a mixture of riverside paths and quiet lanes with the tower of Durham Cathedral gradually disappearing over the horizon behind us. We go through the suburbs of Durham, the village of Sherburn before finally turning south on NCN1 just past Haswell. NCN1 at this point is another disused railway and as a result Niki decides that she’d rather take a road route to Darlington as she suffered a couple of punctures on the rail paths we have used so far. Ray, who was coming down with the same cold that I now have, decided to go with Niki. Stephen had to return to Durham because GNER wouldn’t  let him transfer his cycle booking to Darlington even though he’d be getting on the same train just a little further down the track. Madness.

That left me and Teri to take the rail path. I love these paths. They’re traffic free, quiet, secluded, rise and fall gently and are covered in broken glass. Well the broken glass element isn’t typical but at the northern end of this path where it is crossed by footbridges the locals had obviously been having a great time throwing anything off that would break. We thought it prudent to walk through these sections and glanced nervously up to see if anything else was about to come crashing down.

The problem with the glass was over as we moved south of Shotton Colliery. At Peterlee a helpful local proved unhelpful by misdirecting us onto NCN14 which would have taken us to Hartlepool. Within half a mile we realised we were heading in the wrong direction and returned the way we had come to meet our now apologetic local. Several people we met couldn’t quite understand why we were taking this route to Darlington – maybe its one of those things you have to do to know the reason why, anyway it seemed like a nice way to go to me and Teri said that it had made several years of Sustrans membership seem very worthwhile. That’s a £100+ endorsement.

At Station Town we cross the B1280 and past Hurworth Burn Reservoir NCN1 takes the name Castle Eden Walkway. A very nice cycle/footbridge takes care of crossing the busy A689 and just before leaving the cycleway at Thorpe Thewles we find a very nice old station converted into a tea shop and visitor centre. If you want anything more substantial than a packet of crisps don’t visit on Mondays or Tuesdays. Anyway we spent a pleasant hour in the sun resting and eating crisps and ice cream.

Back on the roads now and we went through Thorpe Thewles, Carlton, Redmarshall, Bishopton and Great Burden to get to Darlington.

We were at the station quite early and Teri decided she was going to chance getting on the train that came in an hour earlier than the one she had a ticket for but as she jumped into a carriage midway down the train, almost instantaneously a voice came over the station tannoy asking her to move to the part of the train that had the cycle storage. Then a frantic ride down the platform saw her turned back by the friendly but intransigent guard. There was no getting around these GNER guys. We met up with Ray and Niki in the café.

Because my ticket with the cycle reservation was an hour later than the others I decided I would make an effort to get on the earlier train. I actually had two tickets, one for the 16.26 with no cycle reservation and one for the 17:25 with a cycle reservation. As the 16:26 rolled in and I tried to get my bike on board a member of the GNER staff came rushing down the platform to frantically explain that he could only let 3 bikes onto the train. Although there were only 3 designated places for bikes in the van it would have been easy to get a couple more bikes in there. There was definitely no way around these GNER guys.

Alone on the train home there was time to reflect on a really enjoyable trip.

31 miles