Property News · January 17, 2014

Let's move to Teesdale and Weardale, County Durham


It’s as remote and rugged as you can get in England, with tiny market towns that deserve to be in a Sunday night period dramaWhat’s going for it? Remoteness. The kind of true remoteness you have to travel far, far north to experience in England. The dales of the rivers Tees and Wear descend from their source high on the Pennines, almost kiss at Chapel Fell, and become lusher and less wild until, past Wolsingham and Cotherstone (smashing cheese), they enter the real, humdrum world. But until then, what glories. This is a lost world of hill farmers, politeness and tiny market towns that, were they discovered by a holidaying TV exec, would be fast-tracked as a location for a nostalgic Sunday night drama about lead miners, sheep drovers and lords of the manor, and thereby ruined. For now, these dales are that dread word, unspoilt. So remote that rare species such as the spring gentian and the Teesdale violet cling on here. Coming upon them is like Stanley unearthing a lost valley in the deepest Congo, only a bit west of Darlington.The case against Remote, rugged, windswept: not for the fragile, or those requiring civilisation. They’re made of sturdy stuff here, as an afternoon at Stanhope’s open-air swimming pool will prove. Mind you, the water’s heated to 30C, the softies. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Let’s move to Teesdale and Weardale, County Durham

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