Our Christmas season opened on Saturday and as part of this Father Christmas was subjected (!) to a trip to Durham aboard Guy Rutter’s Sentinel steam lorry. Father Christmas returned to the Museum on the Beamish bus (which runs from Durham to Beamish at weekends), just beating the Sentinel back to take part in a parade down the town street culminating with the big ‘lights’ switch on. Andy Martin gave chase to this unusual procession – as seen below…

Below: Parked on North Road, Durham.

Below: Market Square, Durham.

Below: Sentinel and cathedral.

Below: Back at Beamish, with Mary Margaret evident among the crowds (and me trying to stay out of site on the big Marshall). You can just make out that Santa is stood in the open Armstrong as seen in an earlier post.