Gainford to Barnard Castle – 16 April 2022
Can you see Barnard Castle from Newcastle? Probably not unless you have very good eyesight. Barnard Castle’s latest claim to fame was back in May 2020 when the then chief advisor of the British Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, was discovered to have driven to the town with his family during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following media allegations that he had broken lockdown regulations by driving to the town, he told how he drove there to test his eyesight to reassure his wife that he was able to drive them back to London the next day. By the way, it’s approximately 52 miles from Barnard Castle to Newcastle so poor old Dominic might have been better off heading there.
We have finished in Barnard Castle six times before, not all of them starting from Gainford, but we last did the Gainford routes as our first walk back in January 2019 when there was a choice of four routes.
We have three routes heading out this time around and apart from the odd diversion for much of the time they all walk along the Teesdale Way. The 10-mile route gets off the coach at Gainford and just follows the Teesdale Way all the way to Barnard Castle. The 11-mile route gets off the coach just to the east of Gainford and walks the Teesdale Way almost the whole length to Barnard Castle but leaves the route at Abbey Bridge to follow the footpath along to the ruins of Egglestone Abbey then along the south side of the river before crossing the bridge and doing the uphill walk through the town. The 12.5-mile route gets off at Carlbury and walks down to the river at Piercebridge to pick up the Teesdale Way to Gainford and then follows the 10-mile route.
So if you fancy a spring walk along the River Tees with the flowers out and the trees starting to get their leaves you might like to join us for a walk. You can get in touch with us using the Contact Page of our website and you can also download the walk descriptions below and the GPX routes here.
Although we did the Gainford to Barnard Castle routes back in 2019 the image shown for this post is when we went to Barnard Castle via Staindrop in 2017 and it shows one of the groups down by the River Tees.
