Having been offered an extremely last-minute place on my course during clearing three years ago, I never got the chance to visit Durham before beginning my course in September 2013, but sometimes I think that if I had, it may have been quite a different story…
Barely knowing where to place Durham on a map (please don’t judge my English geography, I’m from Northern Ireland), I certainly wasn’t aware of how petite the city was, nor of the fact that it was built on a 700-foot rock; which of course means a very dense concentration of seriously steep hills.
You don’t notice them for the first few days, that is, until you begin your science-site lectures, or if you’re an arts student, until you have to make the first necessary trip to the library. Breathless, perspiring, aching: this is a really unpleasant experience. And it doesn’t get any better two years on.
Student life + Durham hills = endless pain. Being a conscientious Durham student means that you quite often have a lot of books to carry around, the weight of which becomes quadrupled when you have to transport them while tackling one of the several hills you’ll encounter daily. Being an unconscientious Durham student is equally bad: they add a lot of time to your journey which means that running up the Bailey with 5 minutes to go until a summative deadline is not going to be pretty…
FUN FACT: ‘Durham’ means ‘hill on an island’. Another fun fact – Durham’s hills are a pain whatever the weather: if it’s raining, an uphill struggle makes a terrible day even worse while mild, sunny, and even cold weather combined with a regular Durham hill-walk makes for one really sweaty student. But worst of all there’s the ICE. We only experience the Durham freeze once, perhaps twice a year, which is very fortunate because not only is it frightfully perilous, but it also makes us look ridiculous: tentatively crawling up the hill to the science site, or clinging to the side of one of Durham’s many bridges never looks good.
Way back in first year, during our habitual grumblings about the hills, we often used to reconcile ourselves with the fact that we’d inevitably develop enviably toned legs (and I secretly hoped that my endless hill-walking would have magical slimming effects), but two and a half years later and I’m still failing to see a difference. Sigh.
Another annoying thing about Durham’s hills: they begin to dictate your lifestyle choices. I’m walking up a long, steep hill – heeled boots or flat boots? Flat often wins the day. I’ve also resorted to spending one or two very long days in the DSU café because I couldn’t bear the thought of tackling the practically vertical hill back to my flat again… What’s more, Durham’s hills make shopping a particularly laborious and agonising chore; even if you leave Tesco with only a box of cereal and a litre of milk you’ll still end up feeling like a bag of bones once you get to your door. As such, doing ‘one big shop’ becomes almost impossible, so you end up doing lots of little shops throughout the week which leads you to spend even more money. Great.
But I know I can’t complain too much; coupled with the limited car access in the city centre – and the cobbled streets – Durham’s dreadful hills are a real nightmare for people who have reduced mobility, which therefore cause a whole heap of unnecessary inconvenience for those who really don’t need it!
However it must be said that without the hills we’d never get to experience the glorious views of the Cathedral and the Castle, which can be seen from just about anywhere in the city. And, Durham would probably not be quite so characterful without its ascending, coiling cobbled streets, replete with listed buildings by the dozen.
To sum up, the hills of Durham are pretty pesky, but it’s probably the most negative thing of a really fantastic campus, so if can manage them – yes, you guessed it – it’s all downhill from there…