The 14-Year-Old Standing Stones

My feelings about Lord Stones Country Park sit somewhere between fondness and grudge. Our wedding guests gathered there for a run — a bottle of Champagne subtly secreted in the heather — before a cèilidh in the evening, so it has earned a permanent soft spot. During the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak, when most of Cleveland was fenced off, it was the one patch of open country still letting people play. The owner back then was a proper character, welcoming to hikers and bikers alike, and locked in a long, stubborn feud with the Ordnance Survey over their refusal to grant the place a tourist symbol on the map. The café itself was tucked into the hillside like a Hobbit house, a condition of planning permission rather than a flight of whimsy.

Then it changed hands, and muddy boots stopped being welcome. I once turned up after a long December run and was told to remove my running shoes and pad about in wet socks instead. It was half past eleven, too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so cakes were the only thing on offer. Polythene shoe covers appeared briefly, then vanished. The toilets stayed locked. Rumour has it the local Harley Davidson club was banned outright, apparently for lowering the tone. Commercial ambition had already arrived, in the shape of a curved arrangement of standing stones built to look prehistoric, and grew from there into a glamping resort with canned music drifting across the car park.

Now the whole thing is up for grabs. The property, spanning roughly 148.46 acres at the top of Carlton Bank, has been listed with an asking price of £1.25 million, marketed by Savills as a unique rural leisure estate, and the reason for the sale has not been disclosed¹Darlington & Stockton Times. “Lordstones Country Park put up for sale for £1.25 million.” 8th July 2026. https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/26260743.lordstones-country-park-put-sale-1-25-million/. Whoever buys it inherits five timber glamping pods, four roundhouses, twenty five camping pitches, and a café seating sixty inside with another hundred and twenty on the terrace—with the tinned music. Whether the new owner brings back the muddy boots remains, delightfully, anyone’s guess.

• 1
  Darlington & Stockton Times. “Lordstones Country Park put up for sale for £1.25 million.” 8th July 2026. https://www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/26260743.lordstones-country-park-put-sale-1-25-million/