Durham

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Durham, but it was a nice town. The old town is on a craggy hill on the bend of the River Wear. At the top of the hill is Durham Cathedral and Durham Castle.

The Castle is now part of the dormitories for Durham University which is pretty cool. I’d love to live on the top of a hill in a castle! We did go through Durham Cathedral before the concert we attended. It is definitely a Norman Cathedral with the big huge pillars in the aisle with the decorative designs on them.

They also filmed some of the Harry Potter outdoor corridor scenes here and Professor McGonagall’s classroom was the chapter house (not open).

They also had a lot of modern stained glass windows that had been put in during the 21st century. And they also had some old glass as well.

One of the most interesting things we found was that Durham had been allowed to keep their shrine to St. Cuthbert behind the altar. There had been a similar shrine to a different saint at York and they removed it during the reformation. However Durham still had theirs.

Also we found the needlework done by their “broderers,” the women who do all of the embroidery work, was amazing. It was colorful with unique patterns.

We also had really good scones at the Cafedral cafe.

We stayed above a Bar which was an experience. The ladies who ran the bar also cleaned the rooms so I had no idea when they slept. They left us chocolate and earplugs on our pillows since we were sleeping right above the live music. Honestly, we were so tired we just went right to sleep despite the noise. They told us the next day it had been a rough night for them so they kicked the students out early so we (and they) could sleep. They were probably the nicest people we had met on the trip so far. They also had a very distinct accent that was somewhere between Scottish and English.