Thinking Allowed: Oh my Darlin’ton

You probably haven’t heard of Darlington. It describes itself as a ‘market town’, which sounds quaint enough and dogwhistles Dominion players. It is “the birthplace of passenger rail” in England. It’s also the town we spent a week in, solely because it had an affordable Airbnb and we were scrambling for a place to go.

We arrived one rainy grey afternoon, trundling our bags down desolate streets lined with shuttered pubs and kebab shops. Our flat was clearly on the wrong side of the tracks, and the first impression was one of trash in the gutters, little green space and slightly rough folk (one of the first people I encountered was a furious man yelling at his wife in the entrance to the supermarket).

But we gratefully found our Airbnb to be a cozy, small, tidy townhouse with lots of natural light. After the social whirlwind of Norway and Scotland, it was all too easy to unpack our bags and just mooch around for awhile.

Darlington ended up growing on us in a weird way. Tamar found an escape-room-walk, exactly like the ones we make if slightly less advanced, and it led us to some very cute alleys and lanes. The bouldering gym was wonderful and we climbed every day or two - even Zadie mustered up the courage to top out a few times. The librarian willingly gave us a temporary card and even sought out every book they had on girls’ topics of choice: Tova studied pencil drawing, and Sophia learned about medieval castles. Echo 3 was the best cafe in town, and we hit it up more than once.

We kept busy. The girls did a tonne of ‘smarts’ without complaint. Tamar gave a seminar on drystone walls and yarn-making, and mine was on the history and music of Ireland (our next country.) There was much laundry and baths, a movie night, Tamar went to Newcastle, we bought lots of books at 5 for £1, the girls got donuts and were complimented on their reading habits by old ladies, and we did loads of planning for Ireland.

Darlington felt like a real and important side of the UK, far removed from the tourist buzz of Edinburgh and London. We stuck out like sore thumbs, and wouldn’t really want to live there, but we feel like we know the country slightly better now, and we all had a thoroughly good week.