AT the weekend, I dragged the ever-moaning family for a nice spring walk through a chill wind and hail of sleet showers along the banks of the Tees. They admired the wild primroses along the pathside while I kept my eye open for an extroardinary, hulking remains of the Tees Viaduct just outside Barnard Castle.

This will probably sound ridiculous, but there is something thrilling about the way mountain towns have implausibly large quantities of rock hanging high above their rooftops. The Tees Viaduct abutments, suspended high above a couple of farmhouses, is equally astonishing. Perhaps more so because, 150 years ago, it was men who dragged these large quantities of stone to on high in the middle of nowhere, and because they dared to think that they could somehow overcome the most enormous obstacles that Nature could throw in their way.

It's such a grand viaduct that I felt I had to put it up on the Memories blog straightaway - a blog that has been criminally neglected during a hefty workload. Now that the Titanic has been sunk, taking poor old WT Stead down with it, perhaps I can find more time to update more regularly.

Opening day of the Tees Viaduct - designed by Thomas Bouch - was August 8, 1861. When the first train went across it, some of the passengers felt nauseous because it was so high - 132ft above the river - and because it swayed just a little when a train went over the top.

Of course, it is far too dangerous today to go to the edge of the parapet and look across the 732ft to the abutment on the other side, but should you do so, the view looking south to the castle at Barney is astonishing, and the view north is strangely unsettling. The river twists so far beneath you that you momentarily lose your reference points and think there is a wall of water standing right in front of you - perhaps that's why those opening day passengers felt so nauseous.

The Stainmore line closed in 1962, although the Viaduct continued to serve travellers on the Tees Valley Railway up to Middleton-in-Teesdale. That closed in 1965, and the Viaduct came down in November 1971. I wonder if the demolishers had any perception of their vandalism: the tourism potential for this line today would be enormous.

Still, the astonishing abutments are worth looking on and wondering, particularly because in a recent Echo Memories the Tees Viaduct was wrongly, and inexcusably, mistaken for the Deepdale viaduct a couple of miles away at Lartington. No matter what is written in a book, the two viaducts are easily identifiable: Tees had stone columns whereas Deepdale rested on its metal trestles.