Stanhope

C2C - Route 7

Route Section: Alston > Consett

From Start: 155km (97m) | From Finish: 69km (43m)

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Distances

Consett 18km (11m)

Newcastle 46km (29m)

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Directions

Out of Standhope

• The B6278 hives off to the left at the Grey Bull, before you get to the centre of Stanhope.

• This is a 2 mile climb, the hardest on the route.

• But once you have reached Parkhead Station at Mile Marker 100 it is all downhill to the end.

So clearly, if you have come into Stanhope you need to go back out the way you came in and turn right onto the B6278.

About Stanhope

This was a sleepy backwater that reaped the rail reward from the zinc, lead and silver mines previously mentioned. Originally a Bronze Age settlement, it was a tiny village around a cobbled market square until the Stanhope & Tyne Railway was built to transport the industrial produce to Consett and Cleveland along the Waskerley Way.

Before the railways, all raw materials were transported by pack horses. Teams of tough little Galloway horses would pick their way over the Pennines and then down into the valleys, the lead horse often having a bell attached to its harness to guide the following horses across the mist-cloaked moors.

Things to do

Durham Dales Visitor Centre Delightful café. 01388 527 650.

Castle Gardens.

Fossilised tree at St Thomas's Church 350 mil ion years old, found in 1914 in an Edmundbyers mine.

St Thomas's Church 12th century origins complete with Roman altar and Saxon font.