Across the pond

A fellow guest at the breakfast table in our B&B in Barnard Castle was surprised when we said we were going to the Durham Miners’ Gala. ‘I thought there were no miners left’, she said, as her husband went on reading his Daily Telegraph. She could not have been more wrong. By the time we arrived at lunchtime the car parks and the streets were full and the procession already stretched from hill by the riverside gate right across town to the vast field, where the picnic is held while stirring speeches are made.

Most of the Durham miners favour the blass or silver bands but the branch who arrived at the same time as us favoured the bag pipes.

Further down the hill we found a more typical group marking time while they waited for the path to clear ahead of them.

On the reviewing balcony of the Royal County Hotel more gold chains were on display than I had seen in many a long year. The swing against the government has not yet wiped out Labour’s Durham mayors.

In the field the tea and booze was already flowing and the brass and silverware was spread all over the grass.

Afterwards we visited the miners’ favorite Sunday playgrounds in the Pennines, including the waterfall at High Force.

And finally to the tranquillity of the river at Romaldkirk where this young girl was sitting quite as gracefully as the mermaid in the harbour at Copenhagen.