The Palatine Pedal (1 of 3) - Cycling 300 km around Durham's historic county boundary

The Palatine Pedal is The Durham Cow's bespoke, multi-terrain cycling tour around the pre-1974 boundary of the historic County Palatine of Durham which includes today’s ceremonial county of Tyne & Wear and Metropolitan Boroughs of Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees and Hartlepool. I created it to complement the two County Durham walking trails - the Weardale Way and Teesdale Way - that I’ve been hosting on the website for a few years now. I have it starting and finishing in Durham city - not far from Durham Cathedral. However, because of the transport infrastructure it’s almost as easy to start/finish at other locations including Newcastle/Gateshead, Darlington, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Predominantly it's a road ride but makes considerable use of railway paths and shared use footways particularly in urban areas. There are easy miles as well as hard ones - and lots of hills (including England’s highest public road). Definitely not an easy ride but a satisfying one where you’ll get to see the best of our region - from the North Pennines to the North Sea. One important reason that I made the video is to show that - with sufficient fitness and conditioning - it can be ridden comfortably, in a single day, in this case in under twenty hours as I wanted to have it validated as a 300 km DIY audax (officially, an ‘audax’ is a ‘long distance, unsupported bike ride along a predetermined route that must be completed within a time limit’ - a DIY is one that you put together yourself). It’s not my usual audax video as there’s quite a bit of extra detail with regard both to the route and to the features encountered, so I’ve had to break the eleven sections into three single videos. Even so, it remains a bit of a whistle-stop tour and you may have to stop the video to read the captions properly. Various route options are offered on the website along with cycling advice and features associated with the route at www.durhamcow.com/palatine-pedal