Bowburn to Sunderland Bridge – 12 November 2022
This is the first time we have made a visit to old Durham Town although it is actually a city now. For those old enough to remember, Roger Whittaker released a record, an actual plastic 45rpm recording of the song Durham Town in 1969. It spent 18 weeks in the UK singles chart and hit number 12 in the charts. Roger was originally using the words Newcastle Town in the chorus but the main chorus using the words, I’ve got to leave old Newcastle Town, repeated several times did not sound right so the line was changed to, I’ve got to leave old Durham Town. However, in the original version of the song, in the second verse the line, Sitting on the banks of the River Tyne was left in.
This was confusing because the River Tyne runs through Newcastle and the River Wear runs through Durham. In later versions of the song that line was changed to, Sitting on the banks of the river side. This hopefully clears everything up except the song originally appeared on Roger Whittaker’s 1969 album release called, This is… Roger Whittaker and the song was called, The Leaver. It wasn’t until October 1969 that the song came out as a single release with its change of name.
If you think that is confusing just wait until you find out where we are going. On the walking programme, it has Durham to Sunderland Bridge for the 12 November. However, if you look above it has Bowburn to Sunderland Bridge. Wait, there’s more, we are all getting off in Bowburn which is south of Durham, just off the A1 road at junction 61 and two of the routes are walking through Durham but we are not finishing at Sunderland Bridge. Which you would think would be close to Sunderland but is in fact an old road bridge south of Durham on the A167 road. No, we are finishing at the Honest Lawyer Hotel which is also on the A167 road and close to Sunderland Bridge.
So we have an 8.5-mile route and a 10-mile route which both head west to pick up the Weardale Way which goes north into the city of Durham. Once the routes have gone past the Catherdral they leave the Weardale Way and head south out of the city back into the countryside and head along the River Wear to finish at the Hotel. The 10.5-mile route does not go into Durham but heads south and west to pick up the Weardale Way and follows it along the River Wear before turning back towards Sunderland Bridge and the finish.
It is going to be one of those journeys that will take us out of Tyneside into Durham but back before the dark nights begin to close in. So if you fancy a visit close to old Durham Town and be back in time for tea and Strickly, yes I know who you are, you can get in touch with us from our Contact Page and you can download the walk descriptions below and the GPS routes here.
The image for this post was taken on a walk into Durham from Sunderland Bridge after we came out of lockdown in 2020. Hopefully, the weather will be similar to what it was on that day.
