Places to explore in County DurhamEngland · North East England

The Tees hurls itself 21 metres over the Whin Sill in a single roaring drop, one of England's mightiest falls.

Vast open-air museum near Stanley recreating northern life across the 1820s, 1900s and 1940s with trams and shops.

Vast medieval castle with towers and deer park.

The great Norman cathedral on its rock above the Wear, shrine of St Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede.

Norman castle sharing the cathedral's World Heritage peninsula.

The largest ancient woodland in north-east England, a deep wooded ravine running down to the coast at Horden.

England's high, quiet backbone of moorland tops, waterfalls and old lead-mining dales, designated in 1988

1,985 km²

The first and toughest of them all — 268 miles along England's rocky spine from the Peak to the Cheviots.

431 km · spans 8 counties

England's longest cascade, where the Tees tumbles some 60 metres in stepped falls below Cow Green.

A series of stepped cascades on the Tees below the Wynch Bridge, gentler sister to nearby High Force.

Curtain of water on Bow Lee Beck falling past a recess where an outlaw once hid, a short walk from Bowlees.

The world's oldest surviving railway bridge of 1726, a single stone arch high above the wooded Causey Burn.