Having been some time since I completed my Crossings of the Tees, I decided another project was called for. The Wear - at its closest only some fourteen miles from my home and flowing from high Pennines heathlands, through a gorgeous valley to its industrial mouth at Sunderland where it enters the North Sea - seemed an obvious choice. The history of the population of the Wear valley is closely linked to the history of the Industrial Revolution, its upper reaches flowing through lead mining country, its lower reaches through the Durham coalfield. Limestone quarrying, lead mining and coal mining encouraged the early adoption and development of railways.