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In the 1910s, County Durham produced 41 million tons of coal each year, raised from three hundred pits by 170,000 miners. This was the heyday of an industry that since the 1830s had transformed the county's landscape, spawning scores of pit villages which matted the rolling hills from the Pennines to the North Sea, between Newcastle and Stockton-on-Tees. The miners' union, waging a long struggle against serf-like pay and conditions, achieved a gradual improvement of the miners' lot, but could not prevent the slow decline of the Durham coalfield from the 1920s: just 127 pits were left when the mines were nationalized in 1947, only 34 in 1969, and today not a single pit remains in the county. For a taste of the old days, most people troop off to the reconstructed colliery village (and much more) at the open-air Beamish Museum , north of Durham. The county's other obvious tourist attractions are to the west of the coalfield. There's Raby Castle , a stately home to the east of the market town of Barnard Castle , itself the setting for the opulent art collection of the Bowes Museum . Farther west lie the Pennine valleys of Teesdale and Weardale , whose upper reaches boast some enjoyable moorland scenery, most dramatically at Teesdale's High Force waterfall. If you have your own transport, you can move on north from Weardale via Blanchland , a delightful stone village tucked away in the valley of the Derwent River just across the border in Northumberland. For a public transport information pack, including the useful Across the Roof of England leaflet, which details all bus and train services in this area, contact Durham County Council (tel 0191/383 3337, transinfo@durham.gov.uk ).
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