We've spent years in Durham's hotel trade: checking people in, moving them when the bells were too loud, finding last rooms in graduation week. This site puts live prices from the big booking sites on one map, with the honest notes we'd give you across the counter.
Compare tonight's prices
Most visitors stop at the cathedral city, but County Durham holds four very different stays. Each key below is one we'd hand you for a different kind of trip.
The peninsula and the Bailey for cobbles, college walls and waking to bells; the riverside for the reliable chains; Victorian guesthouses up by the station with viaduct views. Everything is walkable, and everything books out first here.
Parking on the peninsula is scarce and tolled. Arrive light, or park below and walk up; the city is smaller than it looks.
Country inns, walkers' hotels and farm stays in the North Pennines. High Force, Barnard Castle and some of the darkest skies in England. This is the county at its quietest and most spectacular.
Book dinner when you book the room; kitchens up the dales close earlier than city visitors expect.
The heritage coast runs from Seaham down to Crimdon: sea-glass beaches, cliff-top paths and harbour views, with Seaham as the natural base for a coastal stay.
Sea-view rooms go first on fine weekends, and a good one turns a night on the coast into the whole point of the trip.
The middle of the county: Bishop Auckland and its castle, the Kynren showground, Locomotion at Shildon and Beamish within easy reach. Market-town hotels and country houses with easier parking and gentler prices.
On Kynren show nights the rooms around Bishop Auckland vanish; book the bed before the tickets, not after.
The short version of the guidebook: the places we actually send people when they ask at the desk.