CCLXVII – Hartlepool to Redcar

ON THE final morning of my March 2026 trip, I alighted upon the platform of Hartlepool station with a spring in my step and a rumble in my belly – I had skipped breakfast in order to get an early start.  This proved something of a self-defeating effort as I delayed that start in Hartlepool in order to silence my body’s demands for fuel.

A short while later, both fed and provisioned, I returned to the station for a not-quite-so early-but-still-earlyish-I-guess start…

Hartlepool

Hartlepool Station

The current Hartlepool station was built by the North Eastern Railway (NER) in 1880 and was then named West Hartlepool to distinguish it from the Hartlepool station built in the town’s Headland area by Hartlepool Dock & Railway (HD&R) in 1839.

The town of West Hartlepool grew up around its docks, construction of which began in 1845 because Ralph Ward Jackson (1806-1880) of the Stockton and Hartlepool Railway (SHR) was fed up with the access fees charged by the HD&R to permit him to use its facilities. Since there was no available alternative, he set about building his own.  This included a station on Mainsforth Terrace.

The SHR merged into the West Hartlepool Harbour and Railway (WHH&R) in 1853, which in turn merged into the NER in 1865. They then built the current station in 1880, retaining the Mainsforth Terrace site as a goods depot.

Today, the goods depot is long gone as is the original HD&R station, the closure of which allowed the 1880 station to drop the ‘West’ from its name. But the latter stubbornly remains, having survived such perils as nationalisation (1948), privatisation (1994) and even German naval bombardment (1914)!

Church Street

The station was tucked away around the back of Church Street, onto which I duly emerged. This was a fairly typical high street lined with shops. What it didn’t have, however, was a church.

I am, of course, being pedantic because, while that building is an art gallery now, it very obviously used to be the church for which the street is named. 

Christ Church was built in 1854, designed by the architect and ‘rogue Gothic Revivalist’ Edward Buckton Lamb (1806–1869).  Lamb was known for being an enthusiast of Victorian Gothic architecture and yet not following what everyone else understood to be its rules, which earnt him a considerable amount of criticism. Amongst the loudest of his critics was the Ecclesiological Society (est. 1839), which was also all about the gothic but had very particular opinions on how exactly it should be.

The church served as West Hartlepool’s parish church until the 1970s, when it fell into disuse.  It was repurposed as an art gallery by Hartlepool Borough Council in 1996 and its collection now amounts to around 1,500 works.

Ralph Ward Jackson

The Man with a seagull on his Head was disappointingly not ‘Cliff’ after all, but actually Ralph Ward Jackson.  In addition to founding the town and running the SHR, he was also the town’s first MP, elected in 1868 as a Conservative.

The statue was erected in 1897, marking fifty years since completion of the Coal Dock and thus the founding of West Hartlepool. It is the work of Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901), who had made his name sculpting portrait busts.

The pedestal upon which the statue stands displays a version of Ward Jackson’s coat of arms, which quarter Jackson of Normanby with Ward of Guisborough, although the latter on the statue doesn’t match their portrayal on the family’s memorials within Guisborough’s parish church. Here (I) are the quartered arms consistent with those memorials and (II) the arms of Jackson of Normanby alone to better show its glorious, if unusual, choice of animal charges: three sheldrakes proper (i.e. in their natural colours).

Royal Hotel

Turning my back to gallery, statue and seagull alike, I headed east along Church Street. As I drew close to its far end, my eye was drawn down to the paving underfoot, which tried to tempt me with alcohol.

The Royal Hotel was built in the late 1840s, along with much of West Hartlepool, and is now Grade II listed. Today, it is no longer a hotel but remains in business as a pub.

I’m pretty sure it never engraved its price list into stone tablets; just think of how much they’d have to increase to factor re-carving it into any changes! The paving slab is one of several specially commissioned in 2019 to highlight key historic buildings during civic refurbishment works. It is presumably based on an actual, printed price list, though.

The price list displays the Royal Arms to go with its ‘Royal Hotel’ name, those being the 1837 English version of the royal arms of the UK.  This quarters the three lions of England (1 & 4), the lion and tressure of Scotland (2) and the harp of Ireland (4) and is the version of the royal arms still in use today. Wales, somewhat unfairly, gets lumped with in England for historical reasons and so isn’t represented.

Swainson Dock

Church Street ended at a junction with Mainsforth Terrace (where the previous station once stood) and Victoria Terrace and it was into the latter that I turned.  This led me towards Jackson Dock, which – opened in 1852 as an expansion of the new dock system – and past the former site of Swainson Dock.

Swainson Dock was opened in 1856 and named after Ralph Ward Jackson’s father-in-law, calico printer Charles Swainson (1780–1866). Today, it no longer exists, having been infilled in 1968 after becoming disused. It is now an open patch of grass.

Old Dock Office

At the northern end of Victoria Terrace, nicely situated for all three docks (Coal, Jackson and Swainson) was the Old Dock Office building.  This was built in 1846 at the same time as the original Coal Dock, both being designed by engineer James Simpson (1799–1869) of London.

The Grade II listed building was converted into flats during the 1980s redevelopment of the docks to create Hartlepool Marina.

Jackson Dock

Upon arrival at the edge of Jackson Dock, I was very nearly lured off towards its western end, where could be found an intriguing pair of museum ships.  Unfortunately, I had not accounted for their presence in my planning and I knew, should I be foolish enough to wander over, that I’d lose the whole morning looking at them and entirely sink my day’s plan.  Instead, with much regret, I made my way to the dock’s eastern end and gazed upon them from afar.

PS Wingfield Castle

The vessel on the left above and seen side-on was PS Wingfield Castle, a paddle-steamer that formerly operated as the Humber Estuary Ferry. Or one of them, at least.  She was built in Hartlepool as one of a pair and launched with her sister ship, PS Tattershall Castle, in 1936.

Wingfield Castle, named for a castle in Suffolk, is 63 m long and has 550 t gross tonnage. She was designed primarily as a passenger ferry but had limited space for a handful of vehicles or livestock on deck.  Her usual service speed was about 12 kts.

Barring a slight interruption in troop ship service during WW2, both she and Tattershall Castle operated as Humber Estuary ferries from 1934 until 1974, when the construction of the Humber Bridge made them both redundant.

Alcohol Can Impair Your Ability to Judge Distances

No longer needed, Wingfield Castle mouldered in London’s King George V Dock until 1982, when she was bought by Whitbread (est. 1742) for conversion into a floating pub in Swansea Marina. Her purchasers, however, proved unable to organise a piss-up on a booze cruise as they’d failed to notice that her 17 m width was just a teensy bit wider than the 6 m beam limit that Swansea City Council posts for the marina lock gates. Well, oopsie!

That plan was abandoned with red faces all round, which left her available for purchase by Hartlepool Borough Council in 1986, which wanted her for its museum collection. The council then brought her home.

The Other Paddle Steamers

Amusingly, Wingfield Castle’s sister Tatershall Castle was successfully turned into a floating bar & restaurant, in which capacity she is currently moored alongside London’s Victoria Embankment. In her case, though, the conversion was carried out by a subsidiary of Greene King (est. 1799). 

PS Lincoln Castle also served as a floating pub/restaurant, first in Hessle then in Grimsby, but was broken up for scrap in 2010. A preservation society has since bought her dismembered pieces in the hope of putting her back together, which sounds an admirable, if somewhat ambitious, endeavour.

HMS Trincomalee

Much as I wanted to take a proper look at PS Wingfield Castle, it was the other vessel, HMS Trincomalee, that I really didn’t dare go near for fear I’d just abandon all my plans.

A 38-gun Leda class sailing frigate launched in 1817, she is Britain’s oldest floating warship and one of just two British frigates surviving from her era (the other is the heavily-modified HMS Unicorn, which I saw in Dundee).

Trincomalee is named for the 1782 Battle of Trincomalee in which British and French fleets fought rather inconclusively off the coast of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) as part of the American War of Independence, which France was actively supporting.

Napoleonic Connection

Although Trincomalee was launched two years after Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo, she does have a Napoleonic connection of sorts.

Trincomalee was built in Bombay and sailed to Portsmouth on her maiden voyage. During this journey, she called in at St Helena and picked up as a passenger naval surgeon John Stokoe (1775-1852), who had been attending the exiled Napoleon.

Stokoe was returning home on sick leave as an attempt to avoid a wholly undeserved court martial that was looming as a result of political machinations. It didn’t work; they sent him back and then court martialled him anyway.

Training Ship & Museum

Trincomalee went on to serve in North America, the West Indies and the Pacific Ocean but never saw action in battle. She arrived in West Hartlepool in 1862, having been withdrawn from active service and redesignated as a training ship.

In 1897, Trincomalee was decommissioned and sold off to entrepreneur Geoffrey Wheatly Cobb (1858-1931), who renamed her Foudroyant and moved her to Falmouth to serve as a holiday and maritime training ship. She subsequently moved to Milford Haven and Portsmouth, remaining in service until 1986.

She returned to Hartlepool in 1986, where she underwent restoration and was renamed back to Trincomalee in 1992, becoming a museum ship. The trust which owns her became the first official affiliate of the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) in 2014.

Hartlepool Monkey

The monkey that I failed to spot is not particularly remarkable, it’s just a bronze sculpture of a sitting chimpanzee, holding a bowl. Coins thrown into the bowl get donated to charity, raising about £2 k a year.

Installed in 1998, the statue references local folklore that, when a French ship was wrecked off Hartlepool during the Napoleonic Wars, its monkey mascot made it ashore but was then hanged by locals as a spy.  This sounds pretty silly, and is completely unsupported by any actual evidence, with no recorded mention of it until 1854 – half a century later – when concert hall performer Ned Corvan (c. 1830-1865) wrote a song about it.

Nonetheless, the tale has seeped into local consciousness and doubtless contributed to Stuart Drummond – then the man inside H’Angus the Monkey, official mascot of Hartlepool United FC – getting elected as mayor no less than three times.

Monkey Business

For me, the most unbelievable part of the whole thing is that the statue’s seemingly anonymous sculptor made it a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), which is an ape, not a monkey.  ‘What’s the difference?’ you may wonder. Well, monkeys and apes are both simians but the split between them is about the same level of difference as that between, say dogs and seals. Sure, there’s a bit of a superficial resemblance, but still…

Hartlepool Bay

From the South Pier, I followed a promenade along the shoreline of Hartlepool Bay. I had the sea on my left and mostly open ground on my right, apart from the Durham Coast Line (the modern incarnation of the SHR route), which crossed it.  That land would once have sported about a billion railway sidings serving the docks, but those are long-gone now, having gone out of use in 1967 and since been either lifted or overgrown and buried.

Newburn Bridge

The promenade conveyed me to Newburn Bridge, where the railway’s engine sheds had stood before 1967, and near to which the old turntables had been rediscovered in 2025, uncovered from decades of deposited dirt and debris.

The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map for the area (publ. 1861) showed the SHR line crossing an unnamed burn – if it had a name, it was probably ‘Stranton Burn’, Stranton being the name of the area – with the Burn Brewery occupying the site that would become the engine shed by the 2nd ed in 1898. The 2nd ed also showed that a track crossing the line on the level had been replaced by a road bridge.  That bridge would gain a companion, when the crossing was doubled in 1970 as an upgrade to the A178.

I crossed the burn without noticing – it was culverted beneath the promenade – and found that the A178 now ran on my inland side in its guise as Coronation Drive.  The promenade changed subtly but noticeably in character, becoming more open and pleasant to stroll.  I was now walking on the Esplanade, opened in 1905 to provide a pleasant constitutional stroll beside Carr House Sands to Seaton Carew.

Seaton Carew

Carews & Lumleys

Seaton Carew (pronounced; ‘kuh-ROO’) is a fishing village turned seaside resort that gets the second part of its name from the family of Robert Carew (or ‘Carou’ or ‘Carrowe’) which acquired the estate in the 12th century and held it until the late 14th, when John Carew (d. 1387) left no heir. 

The estate then passed to Ralph Lumley (1360–1400), 1st Baron Lumley, who also held land at Stranton. Despite the estate’s change in ownership, the old name stuck and persisted down the ages, even if its spelling took some time to settle down.

In 1400, Lord Lumley took part in the Epiphany Rising, an attempt to overthrow Henry IV which, having failed, got its participants executed for treason.  Lumley’s estates were thus forfeited to the Crown until 1461, when his grandson, Thomas Lumley (1408-1485), managed to get the attainder reversed. This made Thomas the 2nd Baron Lumley and restored to the Lumleys all of their lands, Seaton Carew included.

Seaside Resort

The 17th and 18th centuries saw Seaton Carew expand to become a small but thriving seaside resort mostly catering for visitors from Darlington. New houses and hotels sprung up along the waterfront, mostly giving it the usual Victorian resort aesthetic.

High & Low Lights

Something else erected on the seafront in Victorian times was a lighthouse, built in 1838 as one of a pair to aid navigation for ships entering the River Tees.  These served until 1892, when the 1884 South Gare Lighthouse was deemed to be sufficient on its own. 

The Low Light, on the seafront, was demolished in 1902 – meaning its existence was exactly one year out of synch with Queen Victoria’s 1837-1901 reign – while the High Light remained in situ until 1995, when it was removed to Hartlepool.

Bus Station

How much earlier it was that I’d not noticed the High Light, I could potentially judge by reading the time on the Grade II-listed Art Deco clock tower of Seaton Carew Bus Station.  This was erected in 1938 by local builder Thomas Mowbray Stonehouse (1878-1935) and renovated in 2018.

The two unremarkable-looking bus shelters that arc out on each side of the tower are actually worthy of architectural note, being amongst the first curved structures to be built from reinforced concrete. I paid them little attention, however, as I was staring up at the clock.

Seaton Snook

Up until the reaching the bus station, I had been strolling merrily along a seafront promenade, which had continued directly on from the Esplanade. Now, signs for the England Coast Path (ECP) directed me onto the A178 and I followed them.

Now named Tees Road, the A178 headed south, describing a shallow curve, but I had barely entered its arc when the ECP bade me leave it again, taking instead to a footpath heading across Seaton Snook towards the North Gare of Tees Mouth (where gare is a word meaning ‘pier’ or ‘breakwater’).

The path was sandwiched between the course of Seaton Carew Golf Club (est. 1874) on one side and Seaton Common on the other.  Beyond the common loomed the rectangular bulk of Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station and the towering structures of Able Seaton Port.

Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station

The nuclear power station opened in 1983, having been under construction since 1969. Its arrival in the area was not entirely welcome but not for the reasons you might assume.  Sure, there were the usual voices opposed to nuclear anything in general, but also many were anti its construction because it didn’t burn coal.

The station is situated right on the edge of the Durham coalfield and signified a move away from coal use by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) right at a time when the coal industry was already under threat. Thus, while it might well indeed have represented the bright, shiny future, it was a bright, shiny future in which nobody local had jobs!  The CEGB built it anyway.

The station is still operational, at least for a short while (it is planned to remain so until 2030) and outputs about 1.2 GW or about 2% of Great Britain‘s 60 GW peak demand. Thanks to the quirks of badly-thought-out electricity privatisation in 1990, it is now owned and operated by Électricité de France (EDF), which means that a British government ideologically opposed to its own ownership of industry facilitated the handover of our nuclear infrastructure to that of another country (i.e. France, which state owns EDF)!

North Gare Car Park

The ECP brought me to North Gare Car Park, situated for access to both the common and the beach. There, its access road led back to the A178 and a sandy track led out to the North Gare, but my way was forward along another rough track that connected to the end of Zinc Works Road.

As the name of the road suggests, it once connected to a zinc refinery, built by Zinc Corporation of Australia in 1907 and in operation until 1968 when an explosion and fire put it out of business.  Today, part of its footprint is occupied by the factory of Natara (est. 1933 as Frutarom) , a manufacturer of fragrances and flavourings, while the its workers’ cottages and school are long since demolished.

The ECP directed me along Zinc Works Road to reconnect with the A187. I thus got no closer to the power station and ship-breaking port than about 350 m.

Able Seaton Port

Able Seaton Port is operated by Able UK (est. 1966), an industrial services company that decommissions ships and offshore installations. It acquired the site in 1996, which included a 10-hectare (25-acre) dry dock, although that is currently open to the estuary as a wet dock.

The site has such a dock because it was built as a second shipyard for Hartlepool shipbuilders William Gray & Company (1863-1962), the company that built PS Wingfield Castle. Construction started in 1913 but, thanks to interference by WW1, it wasn’t completed until 1924.  Much like the Zinc refinery, Gray also built houses and a school for its workers, calling this company village Graythorp.

After Gray went bust in 1962 the site was bought by John Laing & Son (est. 1848) to become the Laing Offshore oil rig fabrication yard. It was Laing that gated the shipyard to create what was then the largest dry dock in the world.

Graythorp Industrial Estate

The Seaton-on Tees branch line was built by the NER in 1907 to serve the then newly-built zinc refinery. It has since survived the demise of the latter and remains both in place and in use to serve the nuclear power station for the movement of nuclear fuel flasks.

Immediately south of the line and west of the A-road lay Graythorp Industrial Estate, which I next passed.  This occupied the site of the shipyard company village, which managed to survive Gray’s liquidation but not the planners of Hartlepool Borough Council, who had it emptied and demolished in 1981.  The site was then repurposed for industrial units.

Almost symbolic of the settlement’s sad end was the equally abrupt termination of the pedestrian pavement upon which I was walking.  It reached up to the bus stop serving the estate and then stopped, after which I found myself stumbling along a grassy but uneven verge.

Greatham

Unanticipated Boardwalk

If the verge was at first uneven, it then became odd.  By which I really mean it became marshy and waterlogged to the extent that a perfectly new-looking boardwalk had been provided to enable one to continue without donning scuba gear.

There was nothing particularly strange about the boardwalk in itself, and I assume it was installed as part of works for the ECP or similar, but I was amused by the incongruity of it: Footway to the bus stop. Then no footway. Then a boardwalk that had no footway leading to it.

It’s possible I’m just easily amused.

Greatham Tank Farm

The A-road and boardwalk ran between two industrial sites of very different appearance. Inland was a raised green bank over which I could not see, that strongly (and correctly) suggested a reservoir or storage buried tanks.  This was Greatham Tank farm, which was disappointingly not where a bumper crop of Challenger 3s would be ripening, but rather an oil storage depot built in 1975 as an outlying part of Teesside Oil Terminal.

Like the rest of the terminal, it was operated by American oil company Phillips Petroleum (est. 1917) from its opening until 2002, when a merger turned that company into part of ConocoPhillips.

On my seaward side was the factory of Tioxide, a company producing titanium dioxide for white paint.

Tioxide

‘Tioxide’ was initially just the brand name of the chief product of British Titan Products (BTP, est. 1934), a joint venture between Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI, 1926-2008) and Goodlass, Wall & Lead Industries (est. 1934, now called Alent). BTP opened its Greatham plant in 1970.

In 1992, ICI bought the rest of BTP, becoming sole proprietor, and renamed the company Tioxide after its main product. It continued to operate as a largely autonomous subsidiary for the next seven years but was sold to the Texas-based Huntsman Corporation in 1999, which fully absorbed it, relegating Tioxide to once again being just a product name.

In 2017, Huntsman decided to spin off its pigments and additives division as a separate company, Venator Materials (named for the Latin word for ‘hunter’). Venator then operated the site until 2025, when it went under.

Its assets were acquired by China’s LomonBillions Group (LB Group, est. 1955). Mindful of corporate history and the power of a well-known brand, LB Group resurrected Tioxide as the name of a wholly-owned subsidiary to operate those assets, which contribute to making the group the third largest producer of titanium dioxide in the world.

Saltern Wetlands

The Saltern Wetlands is an area of salt marsh and mud flats surrounding Greatham Creek, which is itself a tidal creek connecting to the River Tees. In times past the wetlands were a site for salt panning but today comprise a wildlife habitat belonging to Teesside Environmental Trust (est. 1998).

In addition to being home to the vast multitude of estuarine birds that one might expect, the banks of the creek are also home to a permanent population of both harbour and grey seals.  But, just in case that’s not enough to gawk at, they decided to dot some art around:

This 2021 sculpture by Patrick Walls is titled Solar Disc. It is apparently ‘inspired by the open landscape, big skies and the long-distance views of dominant industrial shapes’ as opposed to, oh I don’t know, an open packet of Minstrels.

Greatham Creek Bridge

Having edged Saltern Wetlands for a quarter of a mile, the ECP returned me to the A-road at the bank of the creek, so that I might cross it via Greatham Creek Bridge.

The first Greatham Creek Bridge, now represented only by its empty pylons, was built in 1919, along with the section of the A178 that runs between Seaton Carew and Port Clarence. This road was constructed by the Tees Conservancy Commission (1854-1966) as a short cut for traffic between Hartlepool and the Tees Transporter Bridge.  For its first year of existence, it operated as a private toll road, recouping a minute fraction of its construction costs, but was then adopted as a public road.

The road was given its A-designation in 1923, when Great Britain’s road-numbering scheme was devised (initially as a system for funding categorisation; its usefulness for route-finding was just a happy accident). 

In 1981, upgrade works saw the old bridge replaced by the one now in use. It’s not much to look at – a typical 1980s concrete road bridge – but I did make sure to appreciate it as I crossed.

Greatham Creek

One thing you won’t have noticed in the two photos from Greatham Creek Bridge is a whole bunch of houseboats, because there weren’t any. But that was not always case, as I was informed by a handy information sign.

The houseboats were moored upstream of the road bridge and started to appear in the early 1900s, brought by fishermen from Stockton. Though when I say ‘houseboats’ I don’t mean anything grandiose, I mean small fishing boats being lived on like temporary, mobile fishing cottages.  A sizeable colony of 20-30 boats grew up over the decades, with the fishermen sending their catches to market via Greatham railway station, which stood next to the salt works site from 1841 until 1991, about half a mile from the creek.

By the 1930s, the colony had grown to include non-fishermen – grocers, clerks, ironworkers etc. – enjoying a rent-free if short-on-amenities existence and by mid-century, it had become more of a holiday collective.  The community survived through the 1970s, but it dwindled, with boats being lost to fires, vandalism and general deterioration over time. By the end of the 1980s, all were gone.

Billingham

Seal-Watching Hide

As I crossed Greatham Creek, I felt it might be prudent to keep an eye on the seals, ideally without them also spotting me.  I was clearly not alone in my suspicions, as the Environment Agency had catered to that need by commissioning a hide in 2018.

It’s hungry work, surveilling seals, so I sat on the hide’s circular bench and consumed some sandwiches that I had acquired in Hartlepool before setting off.  As I ate, I appreciated the dappled patterns of sunlight made by the holes in the hide’s Corten steel.  This effect was entirely intended by its designers – architecture postgraduates at Leeds Beckett University – and was inspired by the markings on the seals’ coats. Or, one might even say, their hides (I see what they did there).

In addition to installing the hide in 2018, the Environment Agency also reshaped much of the current alignment of Greatham Creek and its branches flowing across Cowpen Marsh.  This was, of course, not just done for shits and giggles but as part of a flood-protection scheme, raising and realigning the various flood banks.

Seal Sands Car Park

The hide was actually one of two, the other comprising a straight wall with similar holes, but no bench, right next to Seal Sands Car Park.

As I approached this second hide, I noted with an uncharitable internal sneer that, while the first had been empty, this one was crowded with people who, I thought smugly to myself, didn’t want to walk more than ten paces from their cars.

Seaton Carew Road

After Seal Sands Car Park, the ECP crossed the A-road and ran along a separated footpath just off to its eastern side. This was leafy and pleasant and removed any need to dodge traffic.

Both footpath and A187 – now called Seaton Carew Road but still marked on some OS Maps as New Road as late as 1976 – then struck south, aiming for Port Clarence and the Tees Transporter Bridge.

Mostly, for this section of the walk, I was looking out across flat, marshy grassland, with industrial structures rising in the distance. The exception being when an outstretched arm of the Teeside Oil Terminal managed to reach right up to the road.

Footpath and A-road soon came to a crossroads, offering me the chance to go and get closer to the rest of the oil terminal, should that take my fancy.

Nine Mile Pipeline

Immediately south of the roundabout, the road crossed a line of pipes, stretching off into the distance on either side.  Or rather, because the road had been there since 1919 and the pipeline didn’t open until 1949, the latter dived under the road.

You might be forgiven for assuming that the pipes must be something to do with the oil terminal, but they are not, and have never pumped unrefined oil.  They were actually built to pass petrol, butylene and propylene between two sites belonging to ICI, one in Billingham and the other at Wilton, near Redcar.  This required nine miles of pipeline, which had to cross not just roads but also the River Tees.

Saltholme Pools

About a third of a mile further on, as I crossed the causeway separating Saltholme West Pool from Salthome East Pool, I got my first glimpse of the Tees Transporter Bridge. This, you may recall, is what the 1919 New Road was built to connect to.

 I looked upon the transporter bridge with mixed feelings, knowing that the ECP was intended to cross it but, thanks to the closure, would instead follow a lengthy diversion. I also recalled that when I missed my chance to cross the Newport Transporter Bridge in 2012 by doing that walk on a weekend, when it was closed, I had told myself that I’d get a second transporter bridge chance when I eventually reached here. Ah well.

Saltholme Nature Reserve

Rather than dwell on disappointment, I shifted my gaze to Saltholme East and West Pools, which are run as a nature reserve by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).  There were several birds swimming about on them, no doubt blissfully unaware that they might be royally protected.

Saltholme was originally a farm but was rented by ICI in 1936 and bought outright in 1957.  The purpose of this acquisition was to mine a seam of anhydrite (calcium sulphate) that had been discovered on its land. The mine ceased production in 1971 and was sealed in 1978 but its operations had caused subsidence, creating a number of pools where once there had been only fields.

The RSPB acquired the land and opened the nature reserve in the 2009. A visitor centre and café now occupy the site of the old farmhouse.

North Tees Depot

I continued south along the footpath, which carried me past another an oil storage depot. This one – North Tees – was operated by Navigator Terminals, a company established in 2016 as a joint venture between the Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital and fuel distribution company Greenergy (est. 1992). It had acquired the site and connected refinery from the administrators of Petroplus in 2012.

Originally Netherlands-based, Petroplus (1993-2012) had at one time been Europe’s largest independent oil refiner by capacity. It transferred its headquarters to Switzerland in 2006 and aggressively expanded before overreaching and collapsing.

Much as Petroplus had once left its home city of Amsterdam, I left the familiar companionship of the A187 about a quarter mile south of the storage depot. Rather than follow the A-road straight into Port Clarence, the ECP had opted for a more roundabout approach.

Port Clarence Power Plant

Having left the A-road behind, the ECP struck boldly across a field from which I had a splendid view over the Port Clarence Pools to Port Clarence Power Plant.

This somewhat delayed power plant was built supposed to be a wood-fired biomass plant when previous owner and investor Glennmont Partners began construction in 2015. But in 2019, mere months before its planned completion date, all work was suspended and the 300-strong workforce laid off. It then sat empty and unfinished for six years until 2025 when Vital Energi (est. 2000) bought it and obtained permission to convert it to burning refuse derived fuel (RDF) instead of wood.

When conversion is complete in 2027, Vital Energi expects to burn some 320,000 tonnes of RDF per year, generating about 30 MW.

Seal Sands Branch Line

Shortly after passing the power plant, the ECP’s progress across its field was arrested by the Seal Sands branch line. This was an industrial railway line that had once served Teesside Oil Terminal, but had fallen into disuse circa 2011.

Surprisingly, part of this branch long pre-dated the oil terminal, having been laid by the NER in 1901 in anticipation of industry occupying reclaimed land along Teesside rather more quickly than it did.  When the NER also laid the Seaton-on-Tees branch in 1907, they hit upon the grand idea of joining them up across Greatham Creek.  This plan never came to fruition and the dead-end Seal Sands branch didn’t prove useful until 1975, when sidings were extended to serve the oil terminal.

I crossed a stream – Holme Fleet – by means of a footbridge beside the railway line and then turned to walk alongside it.  Not that I could see it on account of the brambles and bushes that screened it from view, as they did the Calor Gas filling plant I now passed on my other side.  What wasn’t screened was the Tees Transporter Bridge, which kept looming ahead as if luring me on despite it not being open, and had been doing so since Saltholme Pools.

Tees Transporter Bridge

The footpath emerged onto Port Clarence Road and should have turned left, ducking under the Seal Sands line to access the Tees Transporter Bridge.  Of course, what it actually did was march straight ahead to begin a six-mile diversion that used the next bridge upstream.

The diversion could wait, I decided. I wanted to glare irately at the bridge.

Opened in 1911, the transporter bridge is either the answer to the problem of needing high clearance when you can’t have long, high bridge approaches, or else to wondering if it’s possible to use a cable car in place of a ferry.  If it were in operation, it would shuttle a gondola back and forth, suspended from the overhead gantry.

In its 115 years of existence, it has experienced not just adverse weather and general wear and tear but also being bombed in both world wars; the WW1 bombing was by Zeppelin! 

It has undergone short closures for maintenance and repainting before – it used to be red until 1961 – but the current service interruption of 17 years and counting is excessive. The problem is that making it safe again is expected to need about £60 m and neither Middlesbrough Council nor Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council – the local authorities at either end of it – can scrape together the necessary cash.

The Long Way Round

I sat and looked at the transporter bridge for a while, mentally willing it to be fixed and running. It mocked my magical thinking by remaining resolutely not. Well, fine. I might as well make a proper rest of it, I thought, and sat there for a little longer, downing the last of my water and eating my few remaining snacks.

Eventually, though, I could put it off no longer. I rose to my feet, passed back under the Seal Sands branch line and turned left to begin the long diversion, trudging up Port Clarence Road.  For less than half a mile.

In fairness, I had a good reason for stopping, which was that I’d consumed all my water and snacks and Port Clarence was offering me the chance to rectify that, in the form of a Londis shop. I duly rectified, soon emerging restocked and with a mood-improving ice cream.

Port Clarence

Enjoying my ice cream, I ambled westwards through Port Clarence.

On the map, Port Clarence Road was sandwiched between houses on one side and the railway on the other, though the latter was on an embankment and completely screened from sight by trees.  It was that railway – specifically the Clarence Railway, authorised in 1828 and named in honour of the Duke of Clarence, brother to George IV – that created Port Clarence.

Prior to the 1830s, the area had just been an expanse of riverine flood plain known as Samphire Batts. But the Clarence Railway laid down its track to what became Port Clarence in 1834 – by which time the Duke of Clarence had become King William IV – facilitating the creation of wharf facilities to serve coal ships that were starting to get too big to navigate further up the Tees. A settlement duly grew up near to the wharves.

The Clarence Railway linked Port Clarence to both Stockton and Durham via nearby Haverton Hill, which is where my feet now carried me.

ICI Billingham

At a junction in Haverton Hill, the road (which was also the A1046) became Haverton Hill Road, in which guise I would follow it for the next mile and three quarters.  It quickly led me away from Haverton Hill and, turning south with a bend in the Tees, through an industrial landscape.  Before long, I found myself passing what had once been the site of ICI’s Billingham site and the eastern end of its nine-mile pipeline.

Today, of course, ICI is long gone and many parts of the site have been demolished, reoccupied or both. But some reminders of ICI’s day do persist.

Pinky & Perky

Nicknamed Pinky & Perky, after the BBC’s squeaky-voiced pig puppets of 1957, ICI’s North & South Cooling Towers were erected in 1974 to replace two others from 1965 that were found to have structural defects.  A glance at the photo above is enough to show that these towers aren’t exactly in tip-top condition, either, and their days are probably numbered.

In 2022, the site was up for sale for 600 k but Pinky & Perky’s demolition costs were estimated at an additional £150 k (although £120 k of that could probably be reclaimed from the scrap value of their materials).  It would seem, however, that nobody was tempted.

One possible reason for their persistence is that Pinky & Perky have become icons of local industrial heritage and no one wants to be the person that finally pulled them down. They are visible from many angles and at quite some distance, making them omnipresent landmarks. Certainly, I’d keep seeing them for quite a while.

Billingham Beck

The remaining mile of Haverton Hill Road was not my favourite part of the day, consisting as it did of walking beside a broad and busy A-road flanked by industrial sites.  Admittedly, it wasn’t awful, but it also wasn’t what I’d wanted out of my day.  I was not at all displeased when I found myself crossing Billingham Beck and knew it was almost over.

Once over the beck, Haverton Hill Road ended at a roundabout, the first exit of which was the Newport Bridge Approach Road.  This meant that I was just two thirds of a mile from finally crossing the Tees.

County Boundary

And so, about twelve minutes later, I found myself looking at this:

The Tees still forms the boundary between County Durham and North Yorkshire (which replaced the North Riding in 1974, albeit with boundary changes). The Tees Transporter Bridge having failed me, I would now be crossing that boundary via the Tees Newport Bridge.

Tees Newport Bridge

The Tees Newport Bridge was an entirely different answer to the problem of achieving high bridge clearance while keeping the approaches low; it was built as a vertical-lift bridge, capable of raising its deck to 37 m so that tall ships could pass beneath.

Designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson and built by local steelworks Dorman Long, it opened for use in 1934 and functioned as a lift bridge until 1990, when the requirement to do so was itself lifted.  Since then, it has served as a bridge of the standard fixed-deck type. It is Grade II listed.

The bridge’s current red and silver paint scheme was introduced in 2014 to celebrate its 80th anniversary; prior to that, it used to be green.  I didn’t much care what colour it was, so long as it could convey me successfully over the Tees, which it did.

Middlesbrough

Halfway There

On the far side, my exit was a side-ramp, which dropped me down onto a path alongside the river.  This path was simultaneously the ECP, the Teesdale Way and the Eight Bridges Way. 

The Teesdale Way was a 100-mile route stretching from the Pennines to the North Yorkshire coast and would accompany me for the rest of the day. The Eight Bridges Way, meanwhile, was a route along the Tees between Victoria Bridge (about 2½ miles further upstream) and the Tees Transporter Bridge. Accordingly, it would only be with me part of the way.

I knew I was on all three footpaths because of this signpost, which also told me I was roughly halfway:

Fortunately, I was in good spirits. The footpath was also a cycle path and was thus broad and easy-going. And, even though I had Riverside Park Industrial Estate on my non-riverine side, a fence was keeping us apart.

Ship Seal

As I strolled merrily alongside the River, I considered how different it was in character to its downstream tributary, Greatham Creek.  It was wider, for one thing, and its meanders much larger, and its banks better-defined.

Actually, the seal above did have one obvious similarity with something at Greatham Creek; the small plaque on its base was of the same style as that on Solar Disc, showing it to be part of the same 2021 art-installing project.  It is titled Ship Seal and I like it much more than the other one.

Ship Seal was sculpted in Corten steel by Steve Tomlinson who, in melding the shape of a seal with the structure of a ship, aimed to reference both the river’s shipbuilding heritage and its now much improved water quality (thanks to the decline of its industries), which has encouraged seals to return.

Ironmasters’ District

When I crossed the Tees Newport Bridge I not only passed from Durham into Yorkshire but also from Billingham to Middlesbrough.  The latter town started out as a mediaeval priory but later grew as a port and a centre for iron and steelmaking. So much so, in fact, that people nicknamed it ‘Ironopolis.’

One location for part of this iron and steel production was the inner curve of the meander I was following, with multiple foundries crammed into the space where the light industrial park is now. Its occupants included the Britannia Ironworks (est. 1871) of Dorman Long (which built Tees Newport Bridge), Acklam Ironworks (est. 1865), which Dorman Long also acquired in 1904 and Ayresome Ironworks, established in 1870 by the Swedish-born John Gjers (1830-1898).

Dorman Long was nationalised in 1967 and moved out to Redcar in the ’70s, closing the Britannia and Acklam works, while the Ayresome Works went out of business and shut down at about the same time. Suddenly, after a hundred years of noise and activity, the Ironmasters’ District fell silent.

Teessaurus Park

The collapse of the British steel industry came about in part through governments of widely different persuasions making decisions based on political ideals. First, Labour prioritised maintaining employment over efficiency or profitability, resulting in a failed business needing subsidies to survive. Then the Tories took the opposite tack, focussing on commercial viability and cost-cutting with little regard for social consequence.  The combination of these two competing and diametrically-opposed ideologies doing what they each thought was ‘the right thing’ created a perfect storm that doomed an industry.  Well, several industries, but steel’s the one immediately relevant.

Given that the ailing, unmodernised industry and its exponents were once decried by some as ‘dinosaurs,’ there is an irony in its local commemoration by Teessaurus Park, a sculpture park that reminds us that the ironworks went the same way as its subjects.

Opened in 1979, the park occupies the site of Acklam Ironworks’ slag heap and rail marshalling yard. Initially it had one dinosaur sculpture – a triceratops – but, from 1987 onwards, a bunch of others were added including a brachiosaurus, brontosaurus, tyrannosaurus and the rainbow-coloured stegosaurus in my photo. All are life-sized.  There’s also a mammoth (which isn’t a dinosaur but has managed to sneak in anyway).

Tees Transporter Bridge (Again)

The ECP abandoned the riverside via Teessaurus Park, ejecting me into the industrial estate after all.  Not that it (or I) had any choice about that. The next stretch of the riverside was still in commercial use, being occupied by the Port of Middlesbrough, which in fairness did need access to the water.

I followed Riverside Park Road eastwards until it became Depot Road and then, at a roundabout, Vulcan Road.  This last then conveyed me to where I should have been about two hours earlier.

The Eight Bridges Way ended at the transporter bridge, so thereafter I was only walking two long-distance footpaths at once. Alas, this wasn’t a third less tiring, so far as I could tell.

Vulcan Street Wall

Continuing eastwards, I passed yet another former ironworks site, namely that of Bolckow, Vaughan & Co. (1841-1929)> This had been Middlesbrough’s first ironworks and was at one time England’s largest.  From 1887 it had Cleveland Salt Works as a neighbour, which lasted until 1945.

Neither’s buildings now remain, with the exception of the salt work’s southern wall, which now serves as a decorative feature through which the transporter bridge may be viewed.

Actually, I didn’t bother looking through its windows; I’d already seen the transporter bridge quite enough.  Besides, something else looked interesting ahead…

Dock Clock Tower

This dual-purpose clock and hydraulic accumulator tower provided power for Middlesbrough Dock’s gates and cranes.  It was built in 1903 as part of a phase of dock expansions, and was designed by NER architect William Bell (1844-1919).

The tower has clocks only on three sides, with a blank circle facing north, allegedly because Bolckow, Vaughan & Co. didn’t want their employees ‘clock-watching’ while at work!

The tower was designed by the NER because they had inherited ownership of the dock from the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR), which had itself acquired dock ownership in 1849. It replaced a previous tower, erected in 1847 and designed by architect John Middleton (1820-1885), which had been sited on a spot consumed by the dock’s expansion.

I don’t know when the 1903 tower lost its hands, but Middlesbrough Council was reported as planning to replace them back in 2023. I guess they just never found the time.

Middlesbrough Dock

Middlesbrough Dock has its origins in 1830, when the S&DR ran a line out to a site purchased by its manager, Joseph Pease (1799-1872), which he had named ‘Port Darlington’ (it didn’t stick). The S&DR built staiths – elevated platforms for discharging coal onto boats – at the location now occupied by the Port of Middlesbrough’s buildings.

The port’s traffic rapidly outgrew its capacity and, in 1842, Middlesbrough Dock was opened to a design by prominent engineer William Cubbitt (1785-1861), who would go on to be knighted nine years later.  It subsequently outgrew its capacity again, leading to further expansions between 1870 and 1902.

The late 20th century brought the decline of the coal and steel industries, diminishing much of the port’s traffic, while what little remained moved further downstream. In 1980, the dock bowed to the inevitable and closed to commercial use. Today, it provides a pleasant water feature overlooked by Middlesbrough College.

Temenos

The ECP was supposedly routed around the southern edge of the dock but some hilarious wag had turned the footpath signs about, so I went around its northern edge instead.  Though not quite so pleasant, this was hardly a disaster and did mean that I passed more closely by this:

The sculpture is titled Temenos (Ancient Greek τέμενος) meaning land set aside for royal or holy use. Quite why that applies to two hoops and a wire mesh tube, I’m not sure.

It was unveiled in 2010, the work of sculptor Anish Kapoor and structural designer Cecil Balmond and was supposed to be the first of five commissions.  The other four never happened for reasons we may only guess at. Cost, I expect. Or maybe one too many eldritch horrors.

Riverside Stadium

Having reacquired the ECP, I next passed by Riverside Stadium, which since 1995 has been the home of Middlesbrough FC (est. 1876).  The club had previously been based out of Ayresome Park stadium, (opened in 1903 and demolished in 1997) but one consequence of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster was that all clubs in the top two football tiers had to have all-seater stadia and Ayresome Park lacked the space to be converted.

About 200 m east of the stadium, I crossed the Tees Valley Line by means of Whitehouse Level Crossing. This railway line was opened in 1846 as the Middlesbrough & Redcar Railway (M&RR)  – nominally its own thing but functionally an extension to the S&DR – and has been in use ever since. 

On its far side was the start of a footpath, beginning at the end of Cargo Fleet Road. Known as the Black Path due to the industrial grime that used to characterise it, this would run beside the railway for the next 4½ miles.

The Black Path

Ormesby Beck

The footpath began as it intended to continue, which was narrow and constrained. Initially this was because it was bounded by Ormesby Beck on the other side from the railway. 

On the railway side, I passed by the first of a number of disused station sites.  This particular one had been Cargo Fleet station, serving from 1885 until 1990, when the closure of nearby factories dropped its passenger numbers below the point where it was worth spending money on its maintenance.

East of the disused station site, the footpath crossed Ormesby Beck via a footbridge and then passed under Works Road.  On the far side of that road I had my first chance to escape from the path, should I want to, although a Teesdale Way fingerpost was on hand to remind me that I should not.

Cargo Fleet Railway Bridge

I took the hint and continued onwards. A mass of brambles now hemmed me in beside the railway fence, though this soon ended to reveal the busy A66.  That was a little noisy, but the A-road quickly peeled away, leaving us separated by a high bank that was once part of the site of Cargo Fleet Ironworks (1866-1973).

An overbridge crossed both footpath and Tees Valley Line from that bank, having once linked the ironworks to Cargo Fleet Wharf by carrying a railway track.

Today, as I learnt from a wooden fingerpost pointing up some steps, it is a footbridge leading to a ‘River Tees Viewpoint’ that occupies the site of the old wharf. I was strongly tempted to detour and sample its delights, but another Teesdale Way fingerpost was nearby to tell me not to.

Old Station Road

Moving onwards, the path returned to being tightly squeezed between fence and brambles until it approached the road bridge that carried Old Station Road over the tracks. There, it veered sharply onto a ramp to road level, then dropped back down on the other side.

As name Old Station Road rather gives away, this was the site of another disused station – the second version of South Bank, which existed from 1882 until 1984. Following its closure, the track was realigned, obliterating one of its old platforms and what had hitherto been just Station Road was extended right over it via a bridge. That bridge’s abutment then blocked the line of the footpath, hence the crossing at road level.

On the far side of Old Station Road was the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Plant of AVG Imperial Ltd (est. 2014). This is a biomass-burning power plant that burns a variety of unwholesome fuels including ‘sludges, fats, oils and greases’ and ‘solid agricultural waste.’  The plant is not exactly pretty, though someone had made an effort to mitigate that for walkers on the Teesdale Way:

South Bank Station

A little less than half a mile later, I arrived at the third and current South Bank station, re-sited in 1984 in search of potential passengers.

But, current though it is, even this version of South Bank was not entirely open; its footbridge had closed due to structural issues back in 2024. And, because the footbridge is the only way to access Platform 2, that platform had also been closed all that time, meaning that while you could catch a westbound train, going east involved the four-word phrase every passenger dreads to hear: rail replacement bus service.

Plans to strengthen the footbridge were announced the month after my walk, full replacement having been deemed too expensive.

Flame Flowers

The path was a little broader immediately east of South Bank station, though no less flanked by brambles. That was vegetation I had fully expected but up ahead was something more unusual:

These metal monster tulips were actually Flame Flowers, a 2021 sculpture by Steve Tomlinson that looks somewhat less friendly than his Ship Seal.  I was so preoccupied with wondering what they might mean, that I almost didn’t notice when the path suddenly narrowed so as to trap me between two fences for the next three quarters of a mile.

Grangetown Station

Thus imprisoned, I continued past the former site of Eston Junction station (1857-1866) and, about 150 m further on, that of Eston station 1866-1885, which was renamed to be the first version of South Bank station between 1877 and 1882. Because, why not?

The path stuck sufficiently close to the railway to cross with it on Holme Beck Bridge, then continued on, still tightly constrained, to the site of Grangetown Station (1885-1991).  There, the constraints seemed to briefly slip a little:

While on the railway side was the locked door to an underpass that would once have accessed the station (a sign upon which warned that CCTV was watching me), on the other was the station’s access road.  This passed under a bridge that once carried railway sidings for the Cleveland Steel Works and then connected to Tees Dock Road. 

This looked to be the first chance in ages to escape the claustrophobic path and probably the last one for ages too. I looked at my map as if thinking I might, then chose to stick with the path.

Tests of Resolve

There was an actual, genuine chance for escape a quarter mile further on, in the form of steps connecting the track access gate for Grangetown Signal Box to Tees Dock Road by forming a bridge over a number of pipes that now ran alongside the right-hand side of the path. I still had no intention to break from the path, but the steps were quite handy to sit on and take a rest.

When rested, I continued on my way for about another mile, sandwiched between track and pipeline and passing beneath Tees Dock Road.  As I went further on, the path descended relative to the ground to my right and soon I found myself beside a concrete retaining wall.  It was at this point that the path decided to properly test my resolve to continue on it by submerging itself in water.

Squelch, Squelchity-Squelch!

I squelched. It was… sub-optimal.

The water was cold, the ground under it was muddy and also dotted with stones. Fortunately, it wasn’t too murky, so I could at least see what I would put my feet on (my main worry was treading on litter, which Teesside had so far possessed in abundance), but it was no paddle at the beach. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been covered in thin ice.

At the far end of the flooding, the path climbed onto a metal footbridge that was itself under a road bridge over a railway.  The footbridge deck was basically a grid, which I wasn’t going to be walking on without my shoes, so a pause to dry and warm my feet proved necessary.

On the far side of the footbridge, it was back to walking beside a railway line, although now it was an industrial siding rather than the Tees Valley Line.  This soon passed under another and then, almost before I knew it, I was ascending some steps to join the A1085, after all.

Redcar

Lord McGowan Bridge

I joined the A1085 Trunk Road at the southern end of a road bridge over both The Mill Race and the railway line I’d just left. According to an informative plaque, this was the Lord McGowan Bridge, erected in 1951.

The Lord McGowan in question was Harry McGowan, 1st Baron McGowan (1874-1961), who was the chairman of ICI from 1930 until 1950.  The plaque told me that:

‘During his chairmanship of ICI this bridge and approaches were promoted jointly by that company and the North Riding County Council.’

I mentally thanked both lord and council and then made good use of their bridge.

I. Lord McGowan’s arms displayed two red lions and two horseshoes upon a blue and silver field divided per saltire.  The lions and saltire referenced his Scottish ancestry while the horseshoes pertained to his name – McGowan (Mac Gobhann) means ‘son of the Smith’.  II. If I’m showing the arms of one promoter of the bridge, I may as well show the other: the arms of the North Riding of Yorkshire displayed St George’s cross below a blue chief (horizontal upper stripe) bearing three White Roses of Yorkshire.

Diverting Developments

I knew from my map that all I need to do now was follow the Trunk Road around for a short distance, whereupon the ECP would make a break for the seashore. And I would be more than happy to follow it, so long as it refrained from any more exciting surprises.

So far as I can tell, someone was building something right in the way of the path and I would not be heading to the shoreline after all. Well, not unless I found an alternative route… 

I reached for my map and then stopped.  It was getting late and I was tired and that puddle had literally dampened my spirits.  I would make a point of seeing Redcar’s shoreline next time; right now, I just wanted to get to the end of my walk. In which case I might as well just stay on this road.

Coatham Marsh

Thus, instead of heading north from the Trunk Road, across Coatham Marsh, I went northeast along the marsh’s edge. 

This might have been a shame – the marsh is a nature reserve and part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with otters and about a billion birds and so on.  That could have been nice though, after that flooded path, I felt no great need for marshiness.  Weirdly, the one thing it had that I would have liked to see was a plant, the salt-tolerant moss Baltic bryum (Bryum marratii). There’s something about the texture of mosses I just love.

Resistance Was Futile

If nothing else, such mosses will have provided a soft carpet to die of wounds on for the northern rebels who hid out on the marsh following the Norman Invasion of 1066.  Like the more famous Hereward the Wake in the Fens, much further south, they concealed themselves amid treacherous ground and raided the Norman invaders.  This ultimately proved futile, because the Normans won, exacting a terrible price in the Harrying of the North.

Remnants of the rebels’ structures persisted until the early 20th century, by which time the ironworks had encroached on, and badly polluted the marsh.  Their site, as marked on the 1857 OS map, now sits beneath a roundabout in an outlying part of Teesport.

Entering Redcar

Because of the route by which I was entering Redcar, I was missing out all the delights of its seafront, which might well have included almost anything (I don’t know because I missed them out).  By this time, the sun was definitely setting and I was taking the not unreasonable gamble that whatever was on the seafront would probably still be there whenever I came back.

The Trunk Road became Corporation Road, which ended at a roundabout.  The obvious thing to do at that roundabout was to turn left and walk another 200 m to Redcar Central station and end my walk there.  Given that I was tired and the light about to fail, this would also have been the sensible thing to do.  But, when I did my travel planning, the internet convinced me that my train would instead leave from Redcar East, three quarters of a mile due southeast.

Uncertain Optimism

In this case, the specific part of the internet I had been dealing with was the National Rail website, ‘the official source for trains in Great Britain,’ so presumably it knew what it was doing? Maybe?

More hopeful than certain, I headed east along Thrush Road, beside which was a Tesco. This was good cause for a pause for rest and refuelling, because my body was demanding it be fed. It was definitely twilight when I resumed the last part of my journey, taking a brisk stroll down the residential streets of Redcar Lane and Ings Road.

Unlike Redcar Central, which was a proper station opened in 1846 by the M&RR, Redacr east turned out to be a simple halt thrown up by the London & North Eastern Railway in 1929. Today, it is served by Northern Trains who run two trains per hour. The same two trains per hour that also call at Redcar Central, making this final stretch completely unnecessary. But I had done it anyway, and my day’s walk was complete.

---

This time: 25½ miles
Total since Gravesend: 4,834½ miles

---