Durham Streets and Lumiere Festival

There’s a first for everything and Durham is the furthest north, both Joe and I have ever in the UK. We’ve not even been to Scotland (yet).

We were invited to visit Durham for the Lumiere festival, to help promote it coming to London in January 2018. After 4 hours travelling by train from King’s Cross, we headed out to explore the lights dotted about the city.

We didn’t know too much about Durham before visiting, other than expecting it to be very similar to how we’ve experienced Bath recently.

The UK’s largest Light festival is brought to Durham and London every year,  since starting in 2015.

“Urban landscapes are spectacularly transformed with installations by international artists.”

The lights were installed in iconic places around Durham, with one of their biggest installations inside and around the famous Catherdral.

One of the biggest attractions for visiting Durham is to see the Cathedral; which has also been filmed in Harry Potter films!

Taking photos of the light installations can be quite difficult, as there’s often loads of people mingling about and large distances to cover between all the features. The photos can’t really do it full justice, so you’ll really need to see it in person!

With only a single night stay in Durham, we were lucky to get good conditions for exploring the city the next day.

There was one particular street (Owengate), where we spent about twenty minutes, taking photos of all the different angles of the cobbled streets and brick buildings.

We were walking around lunchtime, which was primetime for everyone to be out in the centre. Joe spent a good while waiting for about 50 people to pass by every street, before he was able to get an empty shot! It’s definitely worth being patient, to get the results you want.

With a couple of hours walking around the city, we then headed back home to London. Durham wouldn’t usually be on our list of place to see, but we’re glad to have had the opportunity to visit. A cute quaint city with really friendly people — the perfect way to spend a weekend.

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