Pandammonium

This evening, we watched episode two of Walking Britain’s Lost Railways on My5. I was very excited by the whole thing: it was about George Stephenson's Hetton colliery railway, with a bit of West Hartlepool thrown in at the end for good measure. It was really interesting, and shows what a feat of engineering it was to get coal out the ground in Hetton to the ships on the River Wear, which is pronounced the same as 'weir',  at Sunderland.

There are opportunities for spotting Penshaw Monument, which isn’t pronounced like the presenter says it, and they show the mining statue I went to the unveiling of last year. There was also the obligatory trip to Beamish – well, you cannot make a programme about the history of the north east without going there.