Back to my routes

I really hit the ground running when I got back. Straight to my folks' house demanding lunch, despite it being almost 5pm, and although it's their fault for living so close to the airport, it did occur to me that I'd been entirely spoilt by everyone back in Spain. Maybe it's a(nother) cultural thing (and no reflection on me Mam's hospitality) that it really does feel like I couldn't have expected such treatment when visiting England in years gone by. I'd never dream of just turning up as I did last week, without arranging anywhere to stay, no itinerary to speak of, a load of presents in one bag (felicidades to Anita, Liza, Gabe, Ruby for Saturday and – lest we forget (!) – Elly for Tuesday) and far too many pairs of shorts in the other. I remember the Spanish spring being much warmer; by the end of April the last of the heating oil's usually gone, excursions to Vilanova nudie beach start in earnest, sandals get dusted off and thermal vests & long pants get shelved. Not this year. It was so chilly, I returned to England in the same single pair of long pants I'd left in and worn for the entire trip. Yesterday we finally cornered them and forced them into the washing machine. Ever since I landed, it's been warm and sunny here, even hitting 20-odd degrees last Monday. The world's all upside down.

It was spring bank holiday on Monday, and although the forecast wasn't great (as is traditional on bank holidays) it did look good further north. I'd been to Ingram Valley once, as a teenager over 20 years ago ('hem) and couldn't remember it at all, not the place itself nor the first idea how to get there. The main thing was that it's waay up north, close to the Cheviot hills on the Scottish border, and there's only one main road up there, so it was hard to go wrong and the sun would likely be out. While the A1 heads straight off up the coast and gets increasingly boring, the A697 is a lovely, winding, picturesque route through the best of the Northumbrian countryside. Ingram village is a tiny little place and the river there is just idyllic; shallow and stony, fast-running and stained red with iron deposits – not, as I joked to Elly once I'd persuaded her to taste it, due to the area's vast sheep population. There's no concession at all to its popularity as a picnic destination: no tables, bins or parking lots, with a tucked-away visitor centre the only evidence that it's any more than well-sheltered grazing land. If you arrived early enough of a morning you might easily convince yourself that you were the first to discover those broad, grassy banks, overrun with yellow-flowering broom and dotted with little copses of Scots pine, beech and hawthorne. My abiding memory of this springtime visit will doubtless be the smell of coconut, which was so strong we seriously thought it must have been drifting over from a nearby sunbather, larded up with Ambre Solaire. It was the broom, something I'd never noticed before, despite its being heavy with bright yellow blooms... it was everywhere, humming with bees and stinking in the sun like a tropical market stall.

From the woolly wilds of Northumberland to darkest County Durham, it's all daisies and dandelions, at last. The trees, spiky and bereft of greenery when I left, are all leafy and rounded now, as if they'd been transplanted from somewhere else while I wasn't looking. Buildings I'd just begun to get used to are hidden behind these heavy curtains, the always-wet roads have tuned into dusty shaded avenues and everyone is out in short sleeves and skirts. Oh, hang on, that was the case back in February ;o) it's maybe because I've been out from in front of the computer for such a time that I've had a chance to take it all in & in some ways it's clear that we're not all that far removed from the Mediterranean spring. While lowland Spain is already well into the growing season with the vines shooting away in all directions, up in the cooler mountain climes it's more like here, just about woken up from a long winter hibernation. I know where I'd rather be (answers on a postcard etc) even if it is a subtle difference rarely appreciated by those with TFT displays glued to their foreheads, wherever they may be.

This is the first chance I've had to do the blog in weeks. I'd half expected to be helping out at Ian's bike shop this week and barely finished uploading my Spain photos when I got the call. It's an expensive bus ride to Sunderland – about five euros each way – or a painful stop-start car journey, but about 20 km of railway line have always connected our town to the coast, and now that it's disused, rails removed, it's a very pleasant and relatively brisk cycle commute. You climb up from Chester marketplace to the scary estate overlooking the town, press quickly on to the overpass where you join the railroad trail. From there on it's a straight, flat ride, partly sealed where the bods who oversee the C2C route have deemed it necessary. Under the A1 and the Washinton Highway, past the gas works and into the rural bit that separates Durham and Tyne & Wear, you eventually head down to the Wear river at Cox Green. This is a very pretty spot & vaguely reminds me of the boaty nooks and crannies around Pittwater in NSW; I must take a camera one day and get some pics. It gets hillier from here on as you climb up from the river and enter progressively more urban/industrial areas, although in so many ways it's all downhill from Cox Green to Sunderland ;o)

It has to be said, it's an odd place. Residential zones like Grangetown and Ashbrooke rank among the most pleasant Victorian housing areas I've ever seen, but the city itself is just a bit of a mess. Planning seems to have been carried out with the merest nod to a wider urban "identity", with all sorts of incongruous bits & bobs cribbed from other, equally cut 'n' paste city centres. There's the mall, of course, looking like a monument to uPVC conservatories, pedestrianised areas weaving in and out of a completely unfathomable one-way system, and a Marks & Spencer all resplendent in green marble. Despite occasional flashes of architectural finesse, the collective whole looks about as cosmopolitan as an African souk, populated almost entirely by the singular tribe known hereabouts as the Mackems. I've never met a bad 'un, but that's mainly because you can spot the real crazies a mile off. I should probably leave it there... let's not forget the fact that, for all I might have mixed feelings about their city, I did end up marrying one.