Michael Portillo calls into Locomotion Hotel Eaglescliffe

At the end of last week, the Locomotion Hotel in Eaglescliffe played host to Michael Portillo after MP for Stockton South Matt Vickers invited him to the venue. 

The visit of the TV personality was captured on Mr Vickers' social media pages with the caption: "A pleasure to grab a pint with the great Michael Portillo at the Locomotion Hotel Eaglescliffe

"It’s the place to take the man we link to all things rail-related."

Mr Portillo, who was a Conservative MP himself, is known best on TV for his Great British Railway Journeys, where he tours the length of the UK using trains and visiting various locations. 

Alongside Great British Railway Journeys, he has also hosted numerous other rail and travel-related programmes, with the latest series of his, Portillo's Andalucía, airing recently. 

This isn't the first time that the TV star has visited the North East. 

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He called in at Middlesbrough and Darlington on the fourth leg of his journey from Derby to Lindisfarne, part of the programme’s sixth series of his Great British Railway Journeys programme in 2015.

It followed his travels around the country by train using a copy of George Bradshaw’s 1863 guidebook to compare and contrast modern Britain with that documented by the Victorian cartographer.

Mr Portillo visited historic William Lane Foundry as he explores Middlesbrough’s rapid 19th Century rise from a hamlet to a centre of Victorian Britain’s iron and steel industries.