Stockton and Darlington Sunday

[shewhomust]

('Darlington and Stockton' would be more accurate, but doesn't roll off the tongue as smoothly...)

On Sunday morning we went to Darlington to talk to the conference of the Crime Writers' Association about their website: conference being in Darlington, just half an hour from here, was too good an opportunity to miss. We were scheduled at the very end of the conference, just before lunch on Sunday, and we knew that inevitably the people who most need to attend a session on what the website can do for you are the people least likely to turn up, and so it was. But we had a respectably audience, and some very useful feedback, and were able to put faces to people we knew only by e-mail. So it was worth the trip, even before Tom Harper, retiring Chair of the CWA, got up and made a very nice speech of thanks, which he ended by presenting us with a Red Herring. This is the CWA's internal award, and a thing of legend, and we are quite thrilled with it (and I've written a bit more background in the company blog, complete with picture).

After this, we were pretty hyper, and it was a bright blowy April day, so since we were in Darlington we decided to go and look at the train:

We had it to ourselves, and thought it was looking good, not overgrown or neglected as I had feared, barrelling out of its hillside in a great cloud of redbrick steam. There were cowslips on the grassy banks below it, and all was generally satisfactory.

Then off to Stockton in search of lunch. One summer long ago we walked the length of the Tees from mouth to source, but when we parked by the riverside in Stockton we found ourselves in completely unfamiliar territory (I took a whole lot of pictures, and I'm in the process of sorting and uploading them). They built the Tees barrage, for one thing (it was opened in 1995), and transformed a dirty, industrial tidal river into a great sheet of gleaming water (possibly the sun wasn't shining on our last visit). Development has followed: bijou housing in the old docks, and a shiny new campus of Durham University, the whole linked with walkways and water and pedestrian bridges, and the occasional view downstream to the distinctive silhouettes of the Newport Bridge and Roseberry Topping.

It probably doesn't qualify as going walking (I hadn't brought my boots) but we ended up walking from the Millennium Bridge to the barrage and back, with a detour to the replica of the Endeavour, and came home windblown and well entertained.

Comments

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

The train (Mallard?) looks a little paler than the last time I saw it. Obviously with almost no industry in the area any more there isn't so much pollution. The changes to Stockton/Thornaby are an improvement if only because nothing could be meaner or more dispiriting that Stockton town centre and riverside used to be. Maybe they'll move on to Middlesbrough next. I'm sure the government has a nuclear device going cheap.

Do I hate Teesside? Yes. With a passion.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

The train (Mallard?)...

Yes, according to Public Sculpture of North East England: based on an earlier sculpture by Mach, which was in turn based on the Mallard. And the pallor may just be the light / my edit...

Maybe they'll move on to Middlesbrough next.

What, set up a modern art gallery (http://www.visitmima.com/) and a big Oldenburg sculpture in Middlebrough? Surely not...

Do I hate Teesside? Yes. With a passion.

So I see. Any particular reason, or just the partisan view from the north?

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I had the misfortune to move to Middlesbrough when I was 15 (actually to Acklam, which is a pleasant area, even now) It was raining the day we moved, leaving all my friends behind, and in my mind it was raining until I left to go to university (only to return for the weekend and be afflicted with transverse mielitis, which put my studies back a year and lost me all my friends again) In my mind, Middlesbrough no longer has any reason to exist and nobody would really miss it if it didn't. Yes, some people are trying to improve it and good luck to them (the existing art galleries had their interests, at least while I was there, and I saw some decent theatre at the Pavilion - a cracking Volpone stayed in my mind) but Boro was chav central before anyone knew the word. I don't like the people, and that they should allow themselves to be fooled by the fraud who is Robocop is evidence why. YMMV, and I do know people who love the place.

My reasons for hating Teeside even more than I hate London are personal but real to me. Am I prejudiced or right? Doesn't really matter, seeing as it is my opinion and worthwhile only to me. All I can say is that I felt a burden left from my shoulders when I no longer had to go there to visit my parents.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. It seems perfectly reasonable to hate a place because bad things happened to you there.

Boro was chav central before anyone knew the word

This, yes, but it's as much its misfortune as its crime. (I'm not saying I'd want to live there, you understand, and you've certainly understood the note of surprise in this post, that this should be Teesside. But those aren't reasons to hate a place...)

And I do know Tynesiders who hate Teesside as they do Sunderland, just for not being Tyneside.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I'm a Northumbrian who has lived here, in Middlesbrough, Leeds, Bracknell, London, Douglas, Cambridge and back here again. I don't hate anyone for not being the same as me. That's absurd. I don't even really hate Teesiders - they're just ordinary people trying to make the best of the hand they've been dealt and making as good/bad a job of it as everyone else. (and I don't think they've been dealt much of a hand, either - Yorkshire doesn't want them and they're not really part of the North East)

Don't get me started about Southerners, though. I'll give you my whole spiel about the Angel and its significance. And, yes, m'beloved is a Southerner, and my eldest son has just married a wonderful woman from Norton. I suppose I'm just glad I don't live in either place any more.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

That's an amazing piece of art! Thanks so much for sharing.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Mazel tov on being Red Herring'd!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I love the brick clouds of steam!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/she_who_must/5592866501/)

So do I!

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I tabbed this post back when you posted it (like I do all of yours that I don't reply to straightaway). And re-reading it now, with the accumulated comments, is even better I think than reading it without.

And I love this:

We had it to ourselves, and thought it was looking good, not overgrown or neglected as I had feared, barrelling out of its hillside in a great cloud of redbrick steam. There were cowslips on the grassy banks below it, and all was generally satisfactory.

Because this passage, to me, reads like a wonderful English novel. Make of that what you will. ;-)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Make of that what you will. ;-)

I make a compliment of it, flattering if undeserved, and I thank you for it.

I don't know whether we're having a particularly good spring, or whether I'm in the right mood for it, or whether it's you who are making me pay attention, but each time I notice something about the spring (the lilacs are out; we waited for the bus last night in great wafts of scent. And the hawthorn is just beginning to flower, the hedges are dotted with little round buds, tiny white spots on the fresh green) I think of you.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

D'awww. That's so kind. ;-)

And today I posted a different sort of pictorial journey. Possibly not as inspiring as ancient churches and lovely meadows, but it has lots of pretty spring colors. ;-D