County Durham - Kingfisher Owner Feature
Over the Christmas period the Polar Express came to Stanhope
the run up to Christmas at the Weardale Railway as the train rolled out of Stanhope Station bound for the ‘North Pole’! The Polar Express was back in Stanhope with a bang following the huge hit it was last year with tickets selling out within a couple of weeks. We’ve caught up with the Errikson family who had their own magical Polar Express wish come true.
A Local Features
The 320 million year old Fossil Tree Horse
Imagine standing in a steaming, tropical rainforest, amidst the leaves of Giant ferns and horsetails. You are in Stanhope – 320 million years ago! The Stanhope fossil tree grew in this forest and like all fossils it tells a fascinating story of ancient life in the distant past.
Carboniferous world
The story of the Stanhope tree takes us back to the time in Earth history known as the Carboniferous Period. Back in those distant times there was nothing you would have recognised as the North Pennines – in fact, even Britain did not yet exist. The piece of the Earth’s crust which would eventually become northern England lay almost astride the equator, covered by rainforests and fringed by shallow, tropical seas.
Silent forest
For millions of years the North Pennines was part of a vast, tropical swamp. Dragonflies the size of kestrels flew through the trees, and giant scorpions and cockroaches scuttled through the undergrowth. Large amphibians, like alligator-sized newts, lived by pools and riverbanks. There were no birds or mammals – they had yet to evolve, and even the first dinosaur would not appear for another 100 million years!
This Carboniferous forest contained some of the earliest large land plants. Giant ferns and horsetails were abundant,
growing to several metres high. There were huge trees, tens of metres high, but these were unrelated to modern trees. The most advanced trees were primitive ancestors of modern conifers. True flowering plants had not yet evolved.
The Stanhope Tree
This is a superb relic of one of the trees that grew in the Carboniferous forest. It is a species known as Sigillaria, an early ancestor of modern clubmosses. Today clubmosses are small mountain plants, only a few centimetres high, but in the tropical swamps of the Carboniferous period they grew into 30-meter-high giants
Cast in stone
When the tree died and was buried, sand from a nearby river filled the space left by the rotting wood, and eventually hardened into sandstone. The sandstone now forms a perfect cast of the original tree. You can even see the impressions of the bark on the trunk. Natural casts of small trunks, roots and logs are quite common in the local sandstone – but spectacular specimens like the Stanhope tree are rare. Be sure to check it out!
leisureAt your 67
The family were originally just visiting park to check that everything was okay with their holiday home, well that’s what Daniel thought at least. After popping into the office Daniel and his friend Georgie saw the first Polar Express of the day go past wishing that they had tickets. Mum Dawn couldn’t hold her excitement
ll Aboard! This winter the Polar Express brought plenty of festive cheer in
in any longer. “We’ve got our own tickets” the kids not believing her until she said it again, Dawn had secretly packed onesies in the car without the kids knowing before they set off. “You’re going on the Polar Express”. Daniel said “It was a wish come true, a thoroughly enjoyable and magical experience I would be sure to do it all again!” We don’t want to spoil it for anyone else in case they want to go on in the future, but it was a truly magical experience. Daniel and Georgie had an amazing trip going through the whole Polar Express movie, getting a hot chocolate and even a Polar Express mug to take home with them. The Polar Express will be back again
for Christmas 2014 so make sure you keep an eye out for when tickets come on sale as they sell out fast!
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