A missing year

Its been almost exactly a year since I last posted on here. Twelve months ago, I had a physical breakdown. I thought it was Multiple Sclerosis, but after a year of hospitals, tests, uncertainty, and general anxiety, I have been given a diagnosis of M.E. or, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 

 

I am still getting to grips with it, but my head feels alot clearer. In fact, I feel like I am surfacing from a year long stupor. I am finally awake, after a year of struggling to walk more thatn a few feet. I have ditched the wheelchair, and I am using my own two feet. I shuffle along like an old man, but at least I am vertical and not horizontal – which is where I have been for most of the last year.

 

I will post further on this in the future…. and about other things, of course.

 

We’ve lots to catch up on…

Multiple Sclerosis

Well, it’s been a while since I last posted on here, but I have been busy working my way towards my PGCE.  Unfortunately, I will now have plenty of time to post, as I have been forced to leave the course for medical reasons. (Not my gimpy foot, for those of you who have been here before) Last Friday I woke up and my legs wouldn’t work. My arms were weak and I could barely move. Since then, my situation has gotten progressively worse. I suspect MS, but will have to wait and see what my MRI shows. (In 7 WEEKS!)

 

My mother has MS and I know what the symptoms are. At the moment I am as weak as a kitten. I woke up last night and I was completely paralysed. It was the strangest sensation. It was like I was tensing every muscle in my body. It gradually softened up over an hour or so, but it was a scary experience.

 

I have managed to arrange an MRI in a private hospital later today. Its for a different reason (an insurance claim for a car accident I had a year ago,) and will concentrate on my spine and shoulder, but I am hoping the doctor might be able to see if there are any signs of MS.

I will no doubt go into things a little more in the next few weeks, but for the moment, I am tired…

Seaham Blast…part two

Seaham Colliery was commenced in 1843 by the Hetton Coal Company. Fully operational by April 1846, it was a very extensive colliery, employing between 3,900 in 1914 and 493 in 1980. Notable disasters at the pit occurred in 1871, when an explosion caused 26 deaths and in 1880 when a larger explosion caused 164 deaths. It closed for good in 1988.

Dawdon (From John Davies 1983 series Durham Coalfields)

As Seaham Colliery’s workings pushed out to the south-east it became increasingly costly to work these reserves from the old pit’s shafts, and the decision was made to sink new shafts at a rocky promontory known as Noses Point at the edge of the North Sea. Close by was the settlement of Dawdon, once a hamlet of 83 houses, it was extended to accommodate the rapidly rising workforce and by 1910 3,300 miners were producing one million tons of coal a year. (Source: Durham Mining Museum)

Noses Point

The beach below Nose’s Point is coequally called The Blast, and is well know in these parts for its brief cameo in the 1991 film Alien 3. It is also sometimes confused for the location for the ending scene in Get Carter, which actually took place at Blackhall Rocks eight miles to the south. It was also once considered as a location for the 1998 Saving Private Ryan (thanks Wikipedia.) While we are on the subject, Billy Elliot was filmed in the nearby town of Easington Colliery. I also seem to remember some grumblings a few years ago about a state of the art film studio being built on the cliff tops, but I will believe that when I see it.

Seaham Blast

I grew up in Washington, a few miles inland, and was first  inspired to take a closer look at The Blast precisely because of its involvement in the Alien Film, although it was very different twenty years ago when I paid my first visit. The pit had only been closed a few years previously and it was still pretty much an industrial wasteland. The current bypass didn’t exist, and the access roads from the old colliery were still here. I remember many a happy afternoon, stumbling around on the old slag beach in my late teens, pickling through the detritus of the old mine workings. All of that is gone now, as the beach slowly returns to a semi-natural state.

Sitting Man (Don’t worry, I chatted with him to make sure he was ok…)

This beach, and the wider East Durham coastline really is a hidden gem. Its such a beautiful place and an amazing resource that is totally ignored by the local council who seem so preoccupied with regenerating the coastline to a pre-industrial state, that they can’t see the potential for some kind of commercial/tourist attraction. I’m not talking about a garish amusement park or giant car park, but there is definitely the scope for some kind of development, maybe start with a decent access path and then create a reason for people to visit, like a museum or environmental visitors centre. Over the last ten years, millions have been spent above the cliffs on a new bypass, The Byron Shopping Centre, and Seaham Hall Resort Hotel, but none of that investment has dribbled over the cliffs onto what I think is a world class coastline.

Rock Face

One of the problems I have with the beach is precisely that it is so isolated and inaccessible, to the extent that it makes visiting it a very a difficult and sometimes intimidating experience. This could be more to do with my own feelings of vulnerability following my accident, but you can’t help but feel you are actively being discouraged from using the beach, which is a shame, because it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Noses Point

That being said, one of the things I like about The Blast is its rawness and the way in which its history is slowly seeping through the ground. Although it might not look it, there are remnants of the colliery everywhere you look, and like dust and detritus brushed under a carpet, it is slowly remerging.

Scrap

I love using my camera to explore this kind of stuff. For me photography has always been a way of navigating the world, giving me a reason to visit all manner of strange locations. When I was still doing my PhD, I spent days wandering around new towns photographing subways and roundabouts. Always I was led by my camera, as it found its own way through the nooks and crannies of these eccentric towns and villages, and here I am again today, using my camera like some sort of visual diving rod, seeking out the scraps left over when the mining industry collapsed.

South Hetton Coal Company

Like this brick still with the ‘South Hetton Coal Company’ initials embolden on it. SHCC operated pits at both South Hetton and Murton. Originally a wagon-way was to be built to connect South Hetton and Hawthorn Dene, however these plans were later abandoned when it became impractical and the wagon-way was built to the new town and port at Seaham Harbour instead. (sources: England’s North East.)

The railway was designed by George Stephenson and utilised cables and gravity to transport the coal to Seaham: when the fully laden coal trucks were released at South Hetton they would drag empty wagons up the three mile incline back to South Hetton. It seems like so much effort was invested in the design and construction of the infrastructure that supported the mining industry, but now that industry is gone, its remnants are slowlybeing absorbed back into the strata. I am fascinated by this kind of man made object, things that once had a purpose and a reason for being, but are now worthless and forgotten. Someone made this, they fashioned it with their hands for a specific reason, but now it is lost to the sea. I wish I could know the faces of the men who made these objects. I want to know their names and how he lived.

Red Lake

Another well known section of the beach is the blood red pond close to the cliffs. According to local photographer Brenda Burrell, People often say this is pollution. In fact it’s iron ore deposits in that part of the cliff leaching out into a pond created from water running down the cliffs at Fisherman’s Steps. Same stuff that made Teeside so wealthy (Eston Hills iron ore mining) and creates the red colour in ordinary house bricks.

Red Lake

The lake is certainly very beautiful, especially if you are lucky enough to get the light, which I was able to do a few months ago in the autumn when I took these images.

Red Lake Detail

Close to the Red Lake is this curious cave, complete with retaining wall and fire pit, which put me in mind of a post I wrote last week about Hawthorn Dene. In that post I spoke, (rambled,) a little about the pre-history of the Easington Coast, which now seemed particularly prescient as I came across this contemporary hide built by fisherman: According to Keys to the Past A large number of prehistoric flint tools have been found along the Easington coast. Most of these are thought to be Mesolithic in date (6,000 – 10,00 years old.) These are all that survive of the simple temporary camps used by early settlers that camped near the shore so that they could collect food, such as shellfish and sea weeds from the beach, as well as catch fish offshore.

How little things have changed in 10,000 years, you could almost imagine you were back in Mesolithic, were it not for the  remnants of past industrial activity that litter the beach; tiny little scraps of man made objects lying hidden among the rocks and pebbles. Eventually this legacy will be gone, completely absorbed into the environment with the rest of humanity’s detritus, perhaps to become part of the mile thick strata future archaeologists will use to identify the lost human race, but for now  they are still just visible as tiny splashes of colour in the corner of your eye.

The Red Lake, Seaham Blast

Fancy a dip?

Hawthorn Dene, East Durham

I am trying to get into better shape in time for my teacher training course in September, so I have been trying a few short walks. I haven’t gone to far, as my foot is still not capable, but I have been meaning to investigate Hawthorn Dene for a while now, so after dropping Oscar off at School on Friday, and stopping off at Dalton Park for a coffee, I decided to take a look. Hawthorn Dene lies on the coast about a mile north of Easington, and is owned by the National Trust. Hawthorn itself was historically a farming village and not a mining community, the Hawthorn mine was actually three miles in South Hetton. The coastline at Hawthorn was used as a dumping ground however.

The past owners of Hawthorn Dene were the Pemberton family, industrialists involved in the development of Monkwearmouth Colliery at Sunderland, as well as The South Hetton & Murton pits. In 1820s Colonel Thomas Braddyll planned to sink a new colliery at ‘South Hetton’ and connect it by a waggonway to a new coaling port at Hawthorn Hive. This, combined with the limestone quarrying already in progress, would have overwhelmed Hawthorn Dene. Braddyll however abandoned his plans when it became impractical and the waggonway was built to Lord Londonderry’s new town and port at Seaham Harbour via Cold Hesledon instead, preserving the Dene as the idyllic landscape it remains today. (sources : England’s North East)

I can’t believe that there is such beautiful landscape less than 3 miles from my house and I have never bothered to visit it before. It really is stunningly. I have only passed two people since I parked my car at a lay-by adjacent a small modern looking bungalow at the start of the footpath.

Not only is it deserted, but it is very, very quiet. The trees form a lovely canopy over the road, shielding me from the sun – its only 9am, but its already hot, and I feel a million miles away from civilisation.

I only have my iPhone with me today, so the pictures aren’t going to be anything spectacular, but I like to keep some kind of record of the places I go, and perhaps if there is anything worth re-photographing, I can return with my proper camera at a later date.

Halfway to Hawthorn Hive (the name given to the beach) there is this handily sited log, which shows looks to be a regular stopping point for people passing by. There are the remnants of a small fire and some names carved into the trunk. There are no other signs of humanity here – other than the managed fields and road obviously – but there are no structures, no human detritus, and no signs of modernity, (no electricity Pylons!). It really could be any time in the last 200 years.

As the path gets closer to the coast the dene closes in and the dirt track road becomes a simple footpath, the trees forming a somewhat foreboding tunnel. As I walk, a man staggers past me grinning broadly as he holds a large transistor radio to the side of his head, playing some sort of classic rock. Its a strange thing to see at 9:30am. We exchange pleasantries, but I can’t really understand a word he is saying. After he passes I glance over my shoulder, but inexplicably he is already out of sight.

Having previously followed the north bank of the Dene, as the path gets closer to the sea it twist and turns as it takes you deeper into the Dene itself. My foot is really starting to throb now. This is the longest distance I have walked since my accident and I am beginning to regret coming this far. I should turn back, but I have come this far and I really want to see the Hive, so I take an extra couple of Codeine tablets and continue.

The wood is managed with a light touch and fallen trees are left to rot. The sign asks you to avoid fires and camping, but it does not prohibit them outright. At the head of the path, the woods open out onto a beautiful meadow. It’s empty now, but in 1787 a structure known as Sailor’s Hall was constructed on the edge of the north side of the Meadow by Admiral Milbanke, relative of Sir Ralph Milbanke of Seaham Hall (father-in-law of Lord Byron), as a summer retreat.

The Admiral died in 1805 and the building fell into ruin. Later a Major George Anderson of Newcastle bought the land and erected a Gothic-style 30 room mansion called Hawthorn Cottage. He also built the two-storey look-out house on Kinley Hill which bears the name ‘Anderson’s Folly’. This mock mediaeval tower was inhabited until well into the 20th. Century.

Major Anderson died in 1831 but his widow Lucy lived on for many more years with a large retinue of servants. When she died in the late 1850s the estate was bought by the Pemberton family, who were first mentioned in the 1861 census. It was then renamed Hawthorn Towers. The Pembertons were in residence until about 1910.

Various people involved in mining lived in the house over the next couple of decades, and in 1930 the Newcastle Battallion of the Boys’ Brigade rented the Towers for week-end camps. During World War II it was used by the military and the Home Guard. After the war the Pemberton family returned briefly. It was bought in 1949 by a South Shields man and, decrepit by then, changed hands several times over the next few years.

Its last owner was a Mr. Kenneth Wilson of Hart who bought it in the late 1950s. Vandals set fire to it three times, destroying much of the structure, and he was obliged to demolish the rest in 1969 after part collapsed and killed a man. (Source: Durham Records Online)

That this inexplicable mansion was allowed to simply disappear into the earth seems such a waste, but it is perhaps testament to the ability of nature to completely obliterate the remnants of man that I had no clue it had even existed until after I retuned from my walk, even though I had stood slap bang in the middle of it to take the above photo!

Uncovering the brief history of Hawthorn Towers really brought home the significance of this place and the wider East Durham coastline. It is overlooked and forgotten now, but this is not just some old field in the middle of nowhere. This scrap of land a long with the surrounding towns of the East Durham Coalfield represent the powerhouse that drove the industrial revolution. The families that parcelled up this land and dug their shafts provided the raw power and industrial expertise that would spread around the world like a wildfire. This forgotten beach and neighbouring towns were the fuse paper that lit the fire at the heart of modern culture.

It all started here in the North of England. Ground zero for all of the technologies that would follow. The coal that was dug from this ground was put into the fireboxes of the first locomotives ever built thirty miles away in Stockton/Darlington. Trains that would travel around the world at the speed of light.

All of that is gone now of course. The mines have been exhausted, the refineries and shipyards have moved to more economical countries. Focus has shifted, priorities have changed, and no one really cares any more about this coastline and the part it played in the development of our society, and all that remain are a few half buried bricks and some salvaged iron and concrete, put to other use

Leaving the meadow behind I hobble hurriedly across the rail tracks, feeling like some kind of delinquent for trespassing on the railway, anxious to finally reach the coast, and Hawthorn Hive – graveyard to many a ship, only to be confronted by the steepest set of steps I have ever seen in my life. This iPhone picture can not do justice to the sheer verticality of the steps cut into the cliff side. How they are even allowed to exist in our culture of risk assessments and health and safety inspectors is beyond me. They are simply terrifying!

The view of the bay from the top of the cliffs is simply breathtaking. It is easy to see why this stretch of the Durham Coastline has been declared a SSSI, (Site of Special Scientific Interest.)

Having balked at the horrendous vertical steps leading down into the bay, I seek an easier route and is rewarded by the most beautiful gully hidden away under the viaduct at the head of the Dene, (My phone gave up the ghost just as I was getting to the interesting bit, so I couldn’t take any more pictures.)

It seems like there has always been a human presence here: from the Mesolithic fishermen that first colonised the country, following the prehistoric land bridge that once connected us to the rest of Europe and then spreading northwards along the coastlines as the icesheet retreated to reveal a rich and verdant landscape. In prehistoric times a large area of what is now County Durham formed part of a glacial lake which during a melting period cut its way through the limestone escarpment of the Durham coast to form the Denes at Crimdon, Castle Eden, Easington, Hawthorn, Dawdon, Seaham and Ryhope. (Source: Durham Heritage Coast)

According to Keys to the Past A large number of prehistoric flint tools have been found along the Easington coast. Most of these are thought to be Mesolithic in date (6,000 – 10,00 years old.) These are all that survive of the simple temporary camps used by early settlers that camped near the shore so that they could collect food, such as shellfish and sea weeds from the beach, as well as catch fish offshore. They would also have hunted wild animals and gathered wild plants inland. These settlers would have been able to reach the coast, despite the cliffs along the coast, by following the course of the burn that runs through the Deane.

There have been recent finds of flint tools and weapons in the area which are important for understanding human activity in the North East and the Durham Coast is the only location within County Durham to yield a large collection of flints. Significant Mesolithic finds include a hearth identified at Crimdon Dene, such finds indicate substantial exploitation activity at this time and are concentrated near sheltered Dene, and although there is little evidence of Bronze Age (2000 B.C. -750 A.D.) activity within the Heritage Coast, there is speculation that Bronze Age burial sites may exist. An assessment in 1998 by the University of Durham found considerable evidence for the Bronze age in the coastal hinterland with many finds of food vessels between Seaham and Sunderland and burial barrows between Seaham and Peterlee. (Source: Durham Heritage Coast)

I like the thought that there were people eking out an existence here even before the first cultures began to rise from the deserts of the Middle East, and it sends a tingle down my spine to think that I am following in the footsteps of hunter gatherers who would have passed this exact spot almost 10,000 years ago. I imagine the view remains pretty much unchanged, except of course for the Victorian viaduct and contemporary handrails along the footpath, but the limestone cliffs and the ancient woodland that give way to the rocky beaches of the north sea would have looked exactly as they do today. And perhaps it’s just as well I don’t have my camera, I don’t think I could adequately convey the importance and beauty of this small forgotten gully with a tool as blunt as a simple iPhone.

Making my way back to the car I am struck by the solitude of this place. My foot is killing me and I hate that I have so far to walk to get back to the car, but I am glad that there isn’t easy access or a visitors car park for dog walkers. I am glad that it is secret and hidden away place, because it is special and deserves to be preserved just as it is…

Washington Old Hall

P Spooner

Making me feel old…

P Spooner

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal

The Blast, Seaham

Easington 2010

Now I have officially quit my PhD I can relax about taking pictures for the first time in years and finally get back to taking pictures for myself.  A project I have been thinking about for the last year or so is ‘The Final Five’ a project looking at the final five mines on the Durham Coalfield, which all happen to be within about five miles of my house, so not only is it interesting, it is doable, which makes it different on both counts from my PhD thesis.

My Final Five are

Dawdon: (1907 – 1991)

Murton: ( 1843 – 1991)

South Hetton / Hawthorn Combined: (1833 – 1992)

Seaham/Vane Tempest: (1849 – 1993)

Easington: (1899 – 1993)

I have done a bit of research and taken a handful of pictures, but nothing concrete as yet. In fact most of the research so far has been done with Google maps, so this morning after dropping Oscar off at nursery, it was such a beautiful day, I decided to try and shake some of the narcotic fug I seem to exist in lately (the legal prescription kind) and go for a walk along the cliffs at Easington.

The car park sits on the site of the old colliery, more or less in the centre of this scene, photographed in 1983 by John Davies:

There is a choice of two paths, one to the North, which takes you uphill and the other to the south, which takes you under a rail bridge and down to the cliff tops. My favorite walk is the later, but as today I am looking at the Colliery and not the beach, and I have poorly chosen footwear (dress shoes – my trainers have given up the ghost) I take the uphill section. It’s been a while since I walked this path. The last time was with Oscar as a baby and two dogs that have subsequently gone to live on the proverbial farm. I have also not walked this particular path here since before my accident, so I don’t know how I am going to get on with my gimpy foot.

At the head of the path I come across the first marker and a brief outline of the trail and what the various signposts mean. It’s been a decade since this 17.5 mile stretch of coastline has been redeveloped by ‘Turning the Tide’ an initiative set up by Durham County Council to renovate foot paths and tidy up beaches along the old Durham coalfield. The whole area has since returned to a kind of pre-glacial tundra.

The beaches along here are beautiful, melancholy, places. I’ve photographed the coastline before and every time I have been here with a ‘proper camera’, I have been approached by one of the forlorn figures that patrol the beaches in this area: embittered ex miners with an axe to grind about one thing or another. The remnants of the coalmining industry themselves are barely visible as they are slowly eroded by the sea: a long shelf of iron slag jutting out from the beach, bits and pieces of machinery poking through the sand, old tyres, boots, gloves, all mired into the clay-like sand.

I remember the last time I was here in particular: a man started talking to me after a stray dog jumped all over us. He thought it was mine and I thought it was his. He told me about the history of the colliery, its geology and workings, and how the government destroyed mining 25 years ago. He talked about the abandonment of the beaches by Durham County Council and how they have just left nature to clean up all the old chemicals that seep up through the sands. He told me about how he likes to walk here every day, sometimes for up to eight hours, up and down a six mile stretch, dodging the tide, searching for interesting fossils and old bits of junk.

It was quite poignant to hear him speak about his past, even more so because I had almost the exact same conversation with another old miner just four days before. After he left I noticed several older men shuffling along the beach, gazing out to sea and kicking their boots into the slag filled sand as if searching for something lost.  I remember wondering at the time what it was they were looking for as they wandered aimlessly backwards and forwards along ground so desolate that looks more like the surface of Mars than a beach, a purpose, an identity…

There are no ex-miners patrolling today, not above the cliffs at any rate, and besides, I only have my iPhone as a camera, so I won’t be attracting any attention. The ‘Tags’ have been spaced out along the path in the fashion of a timeline, spaced out to signify the amount of time between each event. It’s a good idea, but I doubt it gets read much. I go up the path I read the tags detailing the various events in the history of the colliery.

It really is a beautiful place, subtly managed to give the appearance of a natural landscape, but there are markers everywhere of its industrial heritage, hidden in the long grass, or poking out from the dry rocky ground.

There sound of birds is deafening and the area is rich in insect life. Halfway up the hill there is a pond. I remember it was one of my old dog Sam’s favorite spots for a swim. There is abundant frogspawn in the shallow water, and very little sign of humans – apart from the managed landscape that is, but there is no litter. I don’t suppose the winds that scour the hill during less pleasant days leaves much lying around. It is beautifully and sunny this morning, but I can image this hillside is a very different place on a harsh winters evening. Exposed as it is to North Sea, it must get a battering. No wonder the only thing living on its exposed flanks are grasses and wild flowers. It must have been a bleak place to work in the winter.

Another sign tells me that the south shaft of the colliery was 1586 feet (483 metres) deep. It was the main entrance for miners who would reach its bottom in just over a minute riding a three-tier pit cage, an example of which has been erected here. Splendidly incongruous, the only visible remainder of the heavy industry that once covered this landscape; it weighs almost 12 tonnes and was re-instated a decade ago as part of the ‘Turning The Tide’ project. Legend has it that the cage has within it a time capsule.

I love that this massive obelisk is here. It’s a much more interesting reminder of the industrial heritage that the pit wheels that you find in abundance in this area. It stares out towards the sea in what the projects managers no doubt imagined is a poignant way. And it is beautiful; punctuating the beautifully coffered grasslands like a slap in the face might punctuate an argument. It is arresting and immediate. It demands that you stop and think about not just the old mines, but the act of mining itself, of going underground and picking at the earth with your bare hands. Beautiful.

The cage is a great photo-frame, which is perhaps the starting point for a project… I could photograph through the frame over the seasons, years, hours, who knows. There is also a great symmetry with a classic Who album cover, (Who’s Next) shot on this very beach in 1971.

Clearly somebody has found a use for it, as evidenced by this fire ring. You see a lot of these on the beaches around here, but not so many this far in land. It is a great place for a fire. I can just imaging sitting here on a summer evening, poking at the fire with a stick and looking out to sea. (In the winter time it would be a different experience of course.)

The walk back to the car is uneventful. I walk down a hill, cross a road bridge, and follow a footpath running parallel to the East Coast Main Line. As I walk along my mind wanders and I imagine this environment as it would have been thirty years ago covered in machinery and men toiling away. East Durham is a strange place. All of these little towns will be forever tied to the collieries that created them, but it is a complex relationship. The older generation of miners is growing smaller and smaller, but still they yearn for the old collieries, but those that did go underground in the past are far too old to do so again, should the mines miraculously reappear one morning.

And I can say with some certainty that if through some temporal trickery the colliery did reappear today, it would be closed in a matter of days due to lack of enthusiasm for such work. That’s not a reflection on Easington in particular, (although it does have a myriad of problems concerning its younger generations,) but in society in general. No one of my generation living and working in the UK today would go within a million miles of that kind of work. I know I wouldn’t.

Even if the workforce were willing, there simply aren’t the numbers required to run a pit anymore. All of these ex mining villages have shrunk back to the quick. South Hetton, where I have lived for the last eight years, went from a population of 263 in 1833 to 3,981 in 1843 a decade after The South Hetton Coal Company sank its first shaft. Today there are about 2,500 people living here, which means that along with the colliery buildings, homes for almost 4,000 people have since disappeared. It’s a similar story here in Easington, although its population has stayed relatively high at around the 5,000 mark.

But, life moves on, as it must, and I am not nostalgic for the old days. I am just interested in landscape and how it changes over time. I am particularly interested in the old mining communities because they represent a landscape that has been completely obliterated. Pit heads demolished, slag heaps flattened to create a network of hollowed out communities strung around the old coalfield like pearls along a necklace.

I don’t yearn for the return of the pits, but I am fascinated by the disparity between the visual and the memory. All of these towns have changed completely. Their former profiles in the landscape completely redrawn, and yet the memories of coke filled skies live on in many people’s minds, even those who have never even seen a working pit head, like me.

I am also drawn to the ghosts of buildings and how many of these former colliery sites have been cleared, but still lie unused and dormant. South Hetton, Easington, Dawdon, three of the last five Durham collieries closed in the 1990’s and all sitting empty, providing a kind of blank canvas on which to imagine former glories and ghostly silhouettes of long demolished buildings.

The only place there has been any redevelopment is Seaham and Murton, where retail parks and housing estates have sprung up in the last five years. It is almost as if the sites need to undergo a period of mourning before people are prepared to build on them. 20 years of emptiness, before someone is prepared to start afresh.

There are a few remnants of the old colliery here, not of the tourist information kind, but actual remnants overlooked by the bulldozers.  Like this rusting old girder, the last remaining part of an old cable car system that would take coal and slag and dump it on the beach below.  I like that this is here, overlooked and forgotten, because although I think the Turning The Tide project is in essence a good project, I prefer the un-sanitized view of history, not the risk assessed  health and safety complaint version.

My walk is almost finished, not very far at all I’m afraid, what with my gimpy leg and my ill fitting shoes, I’m lucky I got this far without an air-sea rescue… I pass a few people walking their dogs, who give me somewhat quizzical looks for my lack of K9 companion, as if there would be no other reason to be in this part of the landscape.  I stop under the bridge for a moment for a brief conversation with an old man I find chatting animatedly to an old terrier. He isn’t ancient, but just old enough to call me Son, something that brings a smile to my lips the day after my 36 the birthday…

“Nice day” I offer.

“Aye Son, you can’t even get vexed”

“No, mate, you can’t”