Gilesgate and Pelaw Woods Circular
This trail takes you round some lesser-known green areas of Gilesgate and then finally into the adorable Pelaw Woods - a beautiful local nature reserve. This trail used to be around the whole of Gilesgate (my first ever hidden caches!) but for a number of reasons, I've had to change it into this trail which hopefully will last much longer.
For info on Pelaw Woods, please visit Pelaw Wood - Friends of Pelaw Wood
Gilesgate is a lovely suburb of Durham city with a population of over 9500.
Gilesgate was originally the main street in a settlement associated with the hospital of St Giles which was sited by the existing St Giles Church. The street was divided in the 1960s by the construction of the A690 and the demolition of a number of houses, pubs and shops at the foot of Gilesgate Bank to construct a roundabout. During the 19th century, housing extended along the Sherburn and Sunderland Roads. Additional housing was constructed along the Sherburn Road in the 1930s, including the Sherburn Road Estate.
Following the WW2, a further council housing estate was constructed north of the Sunderland Road with the streets taking the names of war leaders and local recipients of the Victoria Cross. In modern usage Gilesgate can refer to the street, the smaller area (partly following old council boundaries) consisting of the street above the roundabout and the Sunderland Road estate, Gilesgate Moor and High Grange Estate.
Modern Gilesgate now has a wide arrange of shops including a huge Tesco Extra, a number of pubs and 2 big retail parks in East Gilesgate. Would recommend!
This trail is designed to show that Gilesgate is not just a bunch of houses. There’s nature, there’s life, there’s secret gardens, there’s beautiful views and generally, Gilesgate is a really nice place to walk around :)
If you're not walking the trail please go to the waypoints section to find the closest parking at each cache location
Cache-wise this trail is very very mixed. There’s lots of different containers, there’s 2 field puzzles, there’s urban and rural caches - ENJOY!
Doing the whole trail leaving time for searching will take you around 3 hours.
This is my first attempt at a cache trail - this means that not every cache will be perfect or ‘up to your standards’ - please do try to be kind in the logs. I’ve done my best (and had a lot of fun while doing it)
This is a circular trail so I suppose you could park anywhere but I’ve made it such that you start at the west-most free parking area of Gilesgate. Colloquially Gilesgate starts from the West-side so that’s where the trail starts :)
Pretty urban area - the hint should help a lot - I would recommend reading it before you attempt a find. The hint is read as if you are facing the bush the first time, with your back to the school :)