Durham

This is a view looking down from the main tower at Durham Cathedral.  The bend in the river Wear is visible beyond.

We drove to Durham from Sunderland in a rented car guided by GPS which drove us into the heart of the pedestrian city.  Fortunately it was early in the day and we managed to find a safe place to leave the car.  We walked through the plaza, which was full of vendors selling things to tourists and then we walked up the hill to the cathedral.  We toured the cathedral and afterwards walked to a pub called Ye Olde Elm and had a pint.

There is so much history on the grounds and buildings of this cathedral that I cannot begin to do it justice.  The principal story is of the founding of the monastery at Durham in 875 AD by monks fleeing repeated Viking attacks on their original location on the Island of Lindisfarne.  The legend is that they found the site of the cathedral on a peninsula in the Wear river after following a maroon cow and being unable to move the bones of their patron Saint Cuthbert once they had arrived.