Teesdale Travel Video Guide

Teesdale Travel Itinerary

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Extending twenty-odd miles northwest from Barnard Castle, Teesdale begins calmly enough, though the pastoral landscapes of its lower reaches are soon replaced by wilder Pennine scenery. There's a regular bus service only as far as Middleton-in-Teesdale, with infrequent (Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat) services on to High Force waterfall and Langdon Beck.

MIDDLETON-IN-TEESDALE , the valley's main settlement, was once the archetypal "company town", owned lock, stock and barrel by the Quaker-run London Lead Company, which began mining here in 1753. There are no specific sights in the village, but it's a quiet and remote spot to spend the night. The tourist office in the central Market Place (daily 9.30am-12.30pm & 1.30-5pm, closes 4pm in winter; tel 01833/641001) can give details of B&Bs , including the nearby Bluebell House (tel 01833/640584; no credit cards; under GBP40). Also in Market Place is the Teesdale Hotel (tel 01833/640264; GBP50-60), a seventeenth-century coaching inn. It's also well worth knowing about the Rose & Crown (tel 01833/650213, ; GBP70-90), a couple of miles or so back towards Barnard Castle in ROMALDKIRK , which encompasses an impressive church and village green. The ivy-clad eighteenth-century inn has very comfortable rooms and accomplished cooking in the bar or restaurant.

Past Newbiggin, the countryside becomes harsher and the Tees more vigorous as the B6277 travels the three miles on to Bowlees Country Park and Visitor Centre (March-Oct daily 10.30am-5pm; Nov-Feb Sat & Sun 10.30am-4pm; 50p), the halt for the short walk to the rapids of Low Force . Close by is the altogether more impressive High Force , a seventy-foot cascade which rumbles over an outcrop of the Whin Sill, a black dolerite ridge that pokes up in various parts of northern England. The waterfall is on private Raby land, and visitors must pay GBP1 to view the falls and GBP1.50 to use the nearby car park, by the B6277. By the car park, the High Force   pub and hotel (tel 01833/622222; GBP50-60) brews its own beer (a Teesdale Bitter and the stronger, award-winning, Cauldron Snout) to accompany the bar meals.

The Pennine Way - which passes the falls -

continues the six miles upstream to Cauldron Snout , near the source of the Tees, where the river rolls two hundred feet down a dolerite stairway as it leaves Cow Green Reservoir . It's also possible to reach the reservoir by car: turn off the main road at Langdon Beck - about a mile north of the stone-built youth hostel on the B6277 at Forest-in-Teesdale (tel 01833/622228, ) - and follow the three-mile-long lane to the car park, a mile's walk from the Snout.

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