Beyond The Chemical Factory

Cross Bike Ride

30th December 2014 route

A quick spin on the cross bike for a couple of hours, just a lone ride to Seaton Carew using some of the off-road tracks which cross the flatlands and marshes to the North East of Billingham. The outward journey passing our place of employment - The Factory - merrily belching steam into the blue sky before the first bit of singletrack, turn left immediately after the sewage works, brief but satisfying. Cross the Seal Sands road and after another sewage works, the countryside begins, bisected by a newly surfaced track leading to the village of Greatham. Historically famous for salt manufacture, where it was originally condensed from sea water in copper pans which were left on raised hummocks on the tidal marshes, when the tide ebbed, leaving the pans full, a fire would be lit underneath to boil off the water. A few hundred years later the Cerebos factory was producing salt on a more industrial scale and supplying most of Britain. The old factory has recently been razed, leaving only a few piles of rubble to show it was ever a major employer. A new track leads to Greatham Creek, home to a large colony of grey seals and an even larger colony of birdwatchers and seal spotters. A few hundred metres pedalling along a busy main road, passing another factory - the tioxide as it’s know in the area, manufacturer of titanium dioxide, the pigment which makes white paint so brilliantly white. Further up the road is Able’s dismantling yard, for a few years the home of the infamous “ghost ships - redundant American warships which became the subject of a legal tussle and the nuclear power station. A few hundred metres further on and I was riding a gravel track through the golf links, the North Sea occasionally visible through gaps in the sand dunes. The bright lights of that Las Vegas of the North, Seaton Carew, came next (or Seaton Canoe as it was dubbed following the Reggie Perrin adventures of one former resident) it’s art deco buildings gleaming white in the winter sunshine. It would have been rude to pass through without devouring a lemontop - strictly for calorie replenishment reasons naturally, sitting on a seafront bench, catching some rays while watching the hardy souls on the windswept beach.

Industrial history, seals, birds, salt marshes, art deco architecture, not to mention sewage works and chemical factories all in one short bike ride. The biggest advantage of using tidal floodplains for a ride? Virtually no ascent.