The Southern Charm of Northern England

The castle that gives the town its name was an early fortification expanded in the early 13th century by Barnard de Balliol. To see Barnard's Castle in all its fierce, vertical glory, walk all the way down the Bank, past weavers' cottages on the right and Thorngate House, a graceful mansion, on your left. Between the two old mills (now upmarket flats) there's a footbridge across the river: You can look through the slats beneath your feet down to the cold Pennine Hill water rushing to the North Sea.

On the other side, turn left and follow the riverside path. Don't scare the ducks. In a minute you'll see the castle, thrusting out of a rocky outcrop above the Tees, its twilight-gray towers solid against the sky.

It's a ruin now, but you can imagine how intimidating it must have looked to Scots marauders, Northumbrian insurgents or other medieval troublemakers. The Roman legions used to ford the river at the bottom of the cliff. The road you see to the left? That was originally Roman; it's still straight as rain.

A French Confection

I ought to be contemplating the great sweep of Teesdale's history. Instead, my mind is on shopping. Barnard Castle is hog heaven for antiques aficionados. I stand in The Collector and fantasize about the manor house I'll buy when I win the Florida Lottery. I'll furnish it with that ruby and sapphire Persian carpet and that refectory table and the cabinet with flowers and the cupids.

I window-shop my way down the Bank, considering rosewood chairs, a Coalport service for 20, a ceramic plaque that reads "Prepare to Meet Thy God." In the Mission Hall, a mini-mall of antiques down toward the river, I covet a stuffed stoat, a Victorian rolling pin and a giant lustreware mug shining like copper.

If you want to learn more about lustreware -- much of it made in nearby Sunderland -- or Elizabethan woodwork or the right kind of Old Masters to hang in the manor house, just march back up the Bank to the Bowes Museum, the greatest conglomeration of art in the Northeast.

The first time I saw the Bowes, I thought I was having a weird French hallucination. There, on a high hill overlooking the Demesnes (the medieval common lands of Barnard Castle), was this huge Loire Valley chateau: mansard roof, floor-to-ceiling windows, boxwood knot gardens, the works. What happened was this: John Bowes, love child of a village girl and the Earl of Strathmore (kin to the late Queen Mother), married a French actress named Josephine Coffin-Chevalier in 1852. They both loved to shop. Their house began to fill up with acquisitions, so they built the Bowes to edify the locals and commemorate their stuff.

And what stuff it is: El Grecos, Goyas, Turners, Louis XV furniture, Belgian tapestries, Meissen porcelain, Bohemian glass. In two seconds you can go from a green and gold salon from the time of the Sun King to a high Victorian sitting room with William Morris patterns on every surface. This summer, there was a special exhibition of drawings from the Queen Mother's collection (she took her Bowes connection seriously), including pieces by Gainsborough and Lawrence and a lovely portrait of her by Augustus John, back when she was simply Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

I take the shortcut back to the Bank through a narrow path by the churchyard, past the 19th-century schoolhouse and through the passageway underneath the old Broadgates Chapel, a Methodist meeting house. John Wesley preached there in 1765. I'm wondering if I have time for a walk up to Egglestone Abbey before dinner: It's less than a mile across impossibly green pasture, by hedgerows beginning to show the red berries of autumn and along the tree-shaded river.

I decide I'll go tomorrow instead and hike all the way to Rokeby. Once you make it to the gaunt and lovely 13th-century abbey ruins (Turner painted there on one of his trips to Teesdale), you can amble for a mile or so through the woods and get to the pumpkin-colored Rokeby Park, where Sir Walter Scott wrote a long historical poem. "Rokeby" got lousy reviews when it came out in 1813, turning Scott into a full-time novelist, but the Palladian house is well worth a tour.

If it's a fine day (northern weather can get fierce, but usually not till December), I'll take the track past the Dairy Bridge, where the Tees meets the River Greta, and on to Mortham Tower, a 700-year-old fortified house so ancient and serene that it seems to belong to some lost Arthurian epic. Walking along the banks of the Greta, maybe I'll have a drink and a ploughman's (bread, cheese and pickle) at the Morritt Arms, a nice country pub.

But that's tomorrow. Tonight is dinner at Blagraves.