Day 4 completed

One of the ridiculously narrow "gates"

Camera Boy

Dad at the end

Panda at the end - lighthouse in the background

Information board at the end

Alexander "relaxing" in the first class lounge at Newcastle Station

An early start in beautiful sunshine. Forecast said it would get warm. Fuelled up with a good breakfast ( I reckon I am putting weight on rather than losing it :-) ). We decided not to go back along the A68 but to head towards Consett by the main road and intercept the route where it crossed.
This was fine, although the morning rush hour traffic was a bit busy and the road was a bit steep in places.  We had to regain the height we lost at the end of the day.
The route signposting was a bit more hit and miss from here on.
We stopped at Morrisons to get some sun cream. We didn't bring any because I was convinced it was going to be cloudy. Oops. Alexander got a touch of sunburn on Saturday.
We took a couple of wrong turns in places but we realised pretty quickly each time thanks to the GPS and corrected ourselves before straying too far from the path.
Most of the route was traffic free although there were a few rather busy roads to cross.
A lot of the route was old railway paths. Some of them tarmac and some rather rougher.
Our plan was to get to Beamish and spend a couple of hours looking around.  This we duly did, having an early lunch while we were there.  Not surprisingly there were a lot of school parties there as well.  It was very hot wandering about in the sun.
After leaving Beamish we made good time through Chester Le Street to the edge of Sunderland.
The final few miles were not brilliantly signposted. The GPS programmed route was a little different from the signed one - obviously someone with local knowledge because they cut out a couple of miles by crossing the River Wear earlier and following an excellent bridle path instead - another old railway path.
We got passed by some youths on motorbikes on the path at one point. Completely illegal. We should have them on film!  They were revving their engines behind us in a very intimidating manner at a point where it was impossible to let them past.
Our final climb was up to the bridge over the river then down to the waterfront and the final mile and a bit to the end.
We didn't do the dip wheels in the water thing.  We took a couple of photos and then headed for the station in time to catch the 3.30 to Newcastle.  We are now in the first class East Coast lounge waiting for our train to Edinburgh about 40 minutes from now.
I will add track logs and other information later.