After another gourmet breakfast, we set off for Durham at 09:45 arriving just after 10:15.
Tour coaches aren’t allow in the city centre, but the coach drop off point near the river was served by a city bus-route to the cathedral, so no problem at all.
The tickets are a mere £1.20 each and they were day tickets so could be used throughout the day on “cathedral” services. The driver was such a surprise. She told us how the services worked, where we should go/talk to/see as we drove there and lots of other small details that made life easier.
The Cathedral is magnificent (and we’ve seen a few, maybe too many). Rather like Alnwick Castle, there were plentiful volunteers at hand to direct, advise or provide information. Following the bus driver’s advice, we visited the on-site café where they served scones with more cream in them than an industrious cow could produce in a day! (Margaret… seventh heaven. In fact, it was so large she couldn’t quite finish it!!!)
We decided to stroll back down to the river via the town and Market Square. The route was so very steep, we blessed Durham Council for the bus service we’d used to travel up to the Cathedral.
The Market area was delightful, decorated with beautiful floral displays. Plenty of independent shops as well as some of the national chains. There was a very large old-style covered market hall with hundreds of stalls selling almost anything and everything you could imagine.
Continuing our downhill route we came across a Wetherspoons in a vaguely scenic spot and stopped to rest the legs and “hire a table”. Maybe things are cheaper here, but £3.95 for a pint of Doom Bar AND a cup tea…
It turned out that, following the directions of a helpful lady walking her dog, we were barely 5 minutes away from our riverside pick-up point and Rees turned up with the coach, exactly as promised at 14:30.
On the journey back we made a photo-stop at “The Angel of the North”. It’s impressive on TV; close up it’s spectacular.
Back at the Hotel just before 16:00 we’d enjoyed another first class day.
