The Way of Learning

About

Gain the ultimate enlightenment on The Way of Learning as it takes you on the trail of England’s original scholar, the Venerable Bede through a rich legacy of the North East’s foremost industry, inventiveness and innovation.

‘Devote yourself to learn the sayings and doings of the men of old ’ runs a quote from the Father of English History, the Venerable Bede, around the atrium of a museum dedicated to him at Jarrow Hall, near the start of The Way of Learning. The quote is an apt metaphor for this walk.

The route traces the special places associated with Britain’s best-known scholar-monk the Venerable Bede, besides taking you on a journey to ground-breaking Roman discoveries (Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort), the majestic medieval Finchale Priory, where fascinating St Godric once
attracted attention from as far afield as Rome for his famous piety, and masterful modern cultural icons such as The Word, National Centre for the Written Word in South Shields.

This, the most urban of the six Northern Saints Trails, might have less of the jaw-dropping countryside the North East invariably exhibits, but it compensates by being jam-packed with cultural eye-openers. The area has produced countless firsts (first English history book, England’s first stained glass, first incandescent light bulb) and the route winds between example after example of the region’s exceptional innovativeness over the centuries, and the museums that champion it. But one character stands out from The Way of Learning in particular and that is the Venerable Bede.

Learn about his life and times and pass the monasteries where he studied and became inspired to produce some of England’s most important early literary works. By the time you reach his tomb at Durham Cathedral you might well feel as if you are revisiting an old acquaintance. You will certainly feel acquainted with a region that can justly claim to have been instrumental in kindling the thirst for knowledge we hold so dear today.

For full route descriptions download the documents below.