With new measures aimed at tackling student drinking in effect following a spate of river deaths, reporter Mark Tallentire headed out for student night in Durham City

“ARE you sure you’re okay? We could get you a taxi home."

“No, I’m fine. Thanks, but I’m fine.”

And with that the two male friends exited Durham’s Walkergate nightspot and started the walk home to their student digs.

For those expecting tales of drunken debauchery from Durham on Wednesday night, prepare to be disappointed.

On what is sports and societies night – always the biggest student night out of the week – the city was mostly peaceful, the drinking mostly responsible, the atmosphere mostly calm and the behaviour mostly sensible.

After a horrific few months city centre manager Carol Feenan barely dare whisper it, but it seems the safety messages are starting to get through.

“Students are starting to look after each other,” Carol says, from her office above Walkergate – surrounded by high-visibility jackets, walkie talkies and caffeinated drinks.

The Northern Echo:
Students make their way down Sadler Street to the bars close to the Gala Theatre. Picture: CHRIS BOOTH

“We are seeing signs of people starting to take up a guardianship role and the licensees are engaging with us and not just sending people out of their premises alone.”

It’s a development Durham’s powers-that-be will be all-too-glad to hear of.

The reputation of the city, which remains one of the safest in the UK, has taken a severe battering in recent months, as first American economics student Sope Peters, then first-year engineering scholar Luke Pearce and finally 19-year-old law student Euan Coulthard perished in the Wear, before a fourth unidentified Northern Irish student was dramatically rescued from the icy cold river late last month.

“The circumstances recently have been terrible,” says Andy Hughes, chair of Durham’s Pubwatch scheme.

“But we’re working very hard to make Durham a safer place to drink.

“We’re trying everything we can. That’s our main priority.

“Durham is a fantastic place to come for a drink. The police and the council are very pro-active about looking after people and the licensees are engaging – we’re discussing various ways to look after people.”

While calls to make the riverbanks safer have gained impressive support, public sentiment has vocally turned against the students following January’s river rescue – with many locals saying they have only themselves to blame.

Understandably, then, very few students want to talk to the media about the subject; feeling they have suffered a very “bad press”.

However, one, a rather intoxicated first-year history and politics student, expressed total sympathy with the locals’ viewpoint.

“If I fall in the river, it’s my own fault – not the council’s,” he says, before confessing he is only on Walkergate because he was thrown out of nightclub Loveshack for smashing bottles.

The Northern Echo:
IN GOOD SPIRITS: Students get a 'selfie' with one of the police officers on duty

Guy Stoker, manager of neighbouring Bishops’ Mill – which often gets 1,000 students a night through its doors, blames the big supermarkets.

Students are “pre-loading” at home on large quantities of cheap alcohol and only hitting the town late on and with limited cash, he says.

But even Guy, a bar manager in Durham for several years, believes the rumours there is a sinister cause behind the trio of river deaths.

“I think there’s a pusher,” he says.

“The river’s been there forever but this has just happened in the last few months.”

The police have been less-than-firm in dismissing the suggestion – Assistant Chief Constable Dave Orford saying only his investigators will “deal with the facts”.

“I think the drinking’s not as bad as it was,” Carol Feenan says, back on patrol on Saddler Street.

“It seems to me young people now are more sensible than they ever were,” Andy Hughes adds.

Certainly the evidence of Wednesday night supports that claim.

Several students suggested it was quiet because many of their classmates were working hard to meet upcoming coursework deadlines and Durham Students’ Union sabbatical officers and Christian Union members were out and about making sure people got home safely.

There was the odd stumble; an occasional raised voice – but one would surely see much worse from locals in any town or city centre on any given Friday or Saturday night.