OS Explorer map 306, Middlesbrough & Hartlepool: Stockton-on-Tees & Redcar – I do not own this map, and had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 23rd September 2022.
I visited this map area as part of my All Line Rover trip in September 2022, travelling around Britain by train, for which I did day-by-day blog posts already, and am now going through doing my regular posts about the new map areas I visited. The main content below will therefore be just a lightly edited version of relevant parts from my post about Day 7 of the trip – for a more connected narrative I recommend taking a look there instead.
I arrived in Middlesbrough on the train from Whitby, and had a wander around town. The town centre was fine, pretty unremarkable – it wasn’t outstanding in any way, but also not particularly dingy or nasty, just… fine. There were occasional somewhat-high-rise buildings dotted in with imposing old ones and aging concrete blocks; it seemed pretty quiet on a Friday afternoon.
Heading northwards to the riverbank, I saw the Tees Transporter Bridge, which was fun – I’d seen Newport’s transporter bridge earlier that year, those two being the only theoretically-operational transporter bridges remaining in the UK, though both are closed for repairs at the moment, meaning that, just as with Newport, I wasn’t able to cross either on the gondola, or by climbing up to the gantry. Oh well, it’s still cool!
From the bridge, I headed back towards the railway station, making a brief stop to see the Old Town Hall, which unfortunately currently sits boarded up in the middle of a currently-derelict area, where all the surrounding buildings have been demolished for redevelopment that, so far, has not come, leaving the hall surrounded by overgrown paving, temporary fencing, graffiti, and not much else. There were still tourist signs pointing the way to it from the town centre though, which is nice!
Getting back to the station, I caught a train a few stops westwards, and out of this map area, to Allens West, near the village of Yarm, where I’d be staying the night!
Visiting all the maps! 