September 25, 2008
Teesside Tourist [Normanby - Normanby]
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The weather was much improved today, so I set off on my Tees-side tour. I intended to take in some of the area's still formidable heavy industrial landscape, while it was still there.* A feature of the day's ride was that it would be flat.
An early stop was at the former house [there's a plaque] of one-time Middlesbrough striker Brian Clough. Clough, always a controversial character in the tight-lipped world of professional football, is more famous as manager of Nottingham Forest, with which unfashionable club he won the European Cup. Twice. The current owner was in his front garden. I asked him if he minded me taking a picture. 'No problem.' He even posed in front. 'Do you get many visitors?' I asked. Middlesbrough's Grove Hill Estate is, on the face of it, an unlikely location to be on any tourist agenda. 'I get the odd coach load.'
I visited the site of Middlesbrough FC's former 'stadium', Ayresome Park, now covered by new housing, Middlesbrough town centre, then, what the town is probably most famous for, the Transporter Bridge. The bridge carries traffic across the River Tees, by means of a cable-hauled platform, suspended from the superstructure at road level. This style of bridge is a rarity. For a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_bridge
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As well as crossing at road level, it is also possible to walk across the top of the bridge. It's something I should have done, but never did, while I lived in Redcar. A notice at the visitors centre stated that for a trip over the top, it was necessary to book in advance. I asked one of the bridge operators [official title] if it might be possible to go up right away. 'Go and ask in the office,' he suggested. This was good advice as it turned out. The bridge manager put Brian on my case straight away. He offered to lock my bike in the winding shed. We were up and away.
The climb to the top of the bridge was easy enough, but the steps narrowed and became steeper the higher we climbed. The safety rails on the landings were probably too low for a tall person: if you stumbled, they'd probably help you off rather than keep you on. Acrophobics would ride with the cars.
We walked to the Durham end of the bridge and back again. There was a kestrel's nest up there, in among the steelwork. I looked out eastwards at the Tees curving towards the sea. 'That's our river, ' said Brian taking obvious pride in his role as occasional tour-guide. He was good at it too, an informative ambassador for 'the worst town in the country.'
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Back on the ground, I retrieved my bike from the winding shed and shook hands with Brian, before leaving for the next item on my itinerary, the Riverside Stadium.
On the way, I stopped to photograph the preserved external wall of the 19th century, Vulcan Street salt-works. This is what passes for an Ancient Monument in Middlesbrough. The stadium itself, far from ancient, dates from 1994, the first of the new football stadia to be completed on the recommendations of the Taylor report, after the Hillsborough deaths in 1989.
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Next, near the Navigation Inn, a match-day bar for Boro fans, I was on the Black Path, following the railway line towards Redcar. This was tougher riding because, it's for walkers, but there was no-one around to stop me. It's been renamed. It's now part of the Teesdale Way and it's no longer black. It's green. In the early 1960s, when I travelled to school by train, the line was enclosed on both sides, for a distance of six miles, by the fiery structures of iron and steel making. The smell of coal-gas was always in the air, sometimes chokingly so. The Black Path was indeed black, covered with fall-out from the coke ovens. No grass could have survived. Since then, three complete iron and steel works have shut down and been demolished. The one I briefly worked at, Cleveland Works, had two blast furnaces, two steel-making plants, coke-ovens, a sinter plant and it's own power station..
The director, Ridley Scott, originally from nearby Hartlepool, is said to have based the dark cine-scape of his film, Blade Runner on the Black Path at night.
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The path was rideable, if bumpy, until just beyond Lackenby works, where a stretch had been made up with blast furnace slag; far from the surface of your dreams. I had to walk perhaps a quarter of a mile. The path then turned south to join the Middlesbrough - Redcar road. There's a decent cycle path alongside, but before taking it, I turned left towards the main gate of Redcar Works. A security man was out of his cabin, before I had the chance to pull on the brakes. Did he think I was intent on blowing up the blast furnace? As he approached me, I took a photograph of the mission statement boldly painted on the side of the railway bridge above the road into the works. 'This is as far as you can go.' 'I guessed as much.'
I rode into Redcar town centre, to buy a new memory stick for the camera, then ate a late lunch in a shelter on the sea-front. Two plump ladies, sharing the shelter with me, admonished me for eating a Snickers bar. 'Chocolate?' said one, 'You'll get fat.' The voice of experience, I thought. 'Not if I have to go back on the moors on that bike,' I said.
Redcar was used instead of Dunkirk, as the location for the beach scene in the movie Atonement. 2,000 local people were hired as extras for the shoot. The whole thing was done in one long take. If you don't blink you might notice the blast furnace. [see pictures]
Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 580 km (360 miles)
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