Weather: Misty, overcast but
mild.
Distance:
28 km (17.4 miles) Total Distance: 3052 miles
This
turned out to be a more pleasurable day than I thought it was going to be. I
parked on the seafront in Seaham. A mile
along street / promenade, a mile or so on the beach then cut up onto a cliff
top.
On the way into Sunderland things
got pretty depressing. I actually ended up in some railway sidings and was
concerned I wouldn’t be able to get out again. I saw a man and dog ahead so
realised there must be a way out somewhere!
I ended up crossing the lines and hopping over a wall into an industrial
estate area which was quiet at this time on a Sunday morning.
Half a mile though this type of scenery and
then into a park and out the other side to get to the start of Sunderland
docklands. The road swung around to the
west and gave good views down to the Wear.
The road dropped down to riverside and a path took me upstream until it
became obvious that the bridge over the river was high above the river. A zigzag path / road climbed upward to the
main road and then over the impressive bridge.
On the other side of the bridge I descended a steep path down to the
riverbank again. This side had been newly modernised with some great
sculptures of massive nuts and bolts presumably to commemorate the ship
building years.
Sunderland University
occupied this bank and overlooked the river. Not a bad setting for a
University. I wandered in and had a
look around the glass museum – impressive but the only thing was the coffee
shop wasn't open. It was then into
marina land. The only frustrating thing being that the path meandered though
adding to the distance. I stopped at a
coffee shop that was pretty busy and had coffee and cake.
Around
the headland and onto the coast proper again and I was able to walk the
beach. I had been to Sunderland some 15
year’s earlier to a friend's wedding but couldn’t recognise the hotel we
had stayed at.
Near
Whitburn I was no sooner pleased to be back on a cliff top path than I saw the
bane of any coastal path walker's dream – red flags flying at a firing
range. I strode forward anyway and a
friendly civilian popped out of the sentry box and told me I would have to walk
inland up to the main road. This meant
cutting through a housing estate, along a main road for a mile and then back
through another housing estate and onto the coast again. I took it in my stride.
The next 5-mile stretch was a great
surprise. It was a stunning cliff-top
walk; stunning for this part of the world anyway. The cliffs were packed with nesting sea birds
and picturesque lighthouses and hollows in the rocks. I certainly hadn’t been
expecting this around Sunderland and Newcastle. I had wrongly assumed I would
be a bit of a grim experience.
As I neared South Shields it was more like I was expecting, seaside
amusements and car parks. I was determined
to make it to the mouth of the River Tyne.
I rounded the head near a new hotel – one that I would be taken to for
lunch a month later, with sculptures of round bottomed individuals in small
groups, all rather pleasant actually.
I
rounded the headland and aimed for the nearest point to the town and presumable
the bus station. I ended up going past
the fire training college that a colleague used to work at and then cut up
to the town along an old railway line. I
asked a lady where to catch a bus and it wasn’t too far away. I caught the first bus to Sunderland that
came in and jumped on even though the driver warned me it was the slow bus. He
wasn’t wrong. It took over an hour to get there! I then got another bus which unfortunately
only went to the western outskirts of Seaham (West Lea) and was then left with
another couple of miles of walking down onto the seafront. This must have made it a 20-mile day all
together so I was pretty tired at the end of it – and had a long drive
home!
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