Land of the Prince Bishops

I've been away for the past week on a sojourn to my ancestral homeland, the Land of the Prince Bishops, or, in terms most of you will understand, County Durham in the North East of England. I was born in Newcastle in Northumberland and grew up in a small village just south of the River Tyne in County Durham. Both were proud counties that had bits nicked to become "Tyne & Wear" in the boundary changes in the early '70s.

Durham city is the home to a thousand year old castle and cathedral, and the cathedral is one of the best in England, resting place of the Venerable Bede of Anglo-Saxon chronicles and Ecclesiastical History of England fame. Durham was a political powerhouse back then, with bishops of the early church wielding the powers of princes, hence the name. Somewhere between Darlington and Durham the countryside magically changes and it becomes wilder and less tame and I love it. When the train pulls into Durham station you're on the top of one hill with a valley for the city and then, on the opposite hill, a glorious view of Durham castle and the cathedral. It's a great sight.

Then it's another 15 minutes to Newcastle, passing the wonderful Angel of the North by Anthony Gormley standing on a hill just south of Gateshead. I didn't like it when it was first erected, thinking it was a mis-shapen piece of rusty iron. But now I love it. You can see it from the train and it welcomes me home, the signal to start pulling my bits and pieces together and get ready to leave the train as it heads into Newcastle. It's the 10th birthday of the Angel and it is rightly being celebrated in Gateshead.

Many cities straddle rivers but, for some reason, the River Tyne isn't only the ancient boundary of the two counties, it also creates two different towns. Gateshead is south of the Tyne in (what was) Durham and Newcastle is north of the Tyne, the real city and home to Geordies. Lots of bridges cross the Tyne to Newcastle and it's another great sight. The train passes the old Black Gate of the Norman city and keep and pulls into the ever-so Victorian station of Newcastle Central. Us Geordies can be rightly proud of our industrial past, where Stevenson invented the locomotive engine and the railway, where our coalfields powered Empire and, unfortunately, where thousands died in poverty and appalling conditions while the ruling families grew rich. It's an interesting history. The Queen Mother was a Bowes-Lyon with a home in Alnwick castle (one of the 'Harry Potter' film locations). In the centre of Newcastle there's a statue on the top of a column to Earl Grey of the tea fame. It's all there if you look.

My great-grandmother on my Dad's side owned three or four pubs around Gateshead. That was rich in them days. The family lost them before the Second World War but one of them is still there and still a pub. My Dad was born in one of them.

The Northumberland coast is wild and harsh and beautiful. Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, is a windswept hide-away accessible by a causeway that is covered by the North Sea for half the day. The mighty castle at Bamburgh is a glorious sight, perched on a rocky hill overlooking the cold sea, placed and designed to protect the area against marauders from over the sea, the later Vikings. It's wild up there, a harsh landscape that's beautiful to my eyes. Give me the untamed lands of the North to the soft rolling downs of the south any day.

I probably won't be going back very often though. I'm a soft southerner myself these days. I've lived in London for 25 years, for more than half of my life and I'm proud to live in one of the world's great capital cities, but part of my heart will always be on the windswept coast of Northumberland. My Dad left us at the weekend and his ashes will join my Mam's at one of their favourite places on the coast.