HOLIDAY homes could be built on a haulage yard as a North-East dale leaves its industrial heritage behind and moves towards tourism.

Businessman Bill Hobson is behind the development in Weardale, an area hit hard by job losses in manufacturing.

His plans for 100 log cabins and fishing lakes on 12 acres beside the River Wear at Wolsingham will be submitted in the next few weeks and the park could be open next year.

He hopes to move his present businesses, which include a foundry and a warehouse, a few hundred yards away to land becoming available when the village steelworks shuts down.

Mr Hobson, from Stanhope, was preparing his plans even before one of the dale's biggest employers, Lafarge cement, at Eastgate, closed in 2002 with 147 job losses.

He supplied sand and sub-contracted as a haulier for the works and foresaw its closure years before it was announced.

He said: "It was obvious that the whole dale was going to change, never mind my business. A plan to redevelop the area for tourism and leisure was a direct result of the closure at Eastgate."

Mr Hobson's yard is close to Wolsingham Station on the Weardale Railway, which is due to reopen this summer.

He already leases land to the railway for a car park and could make more space available.

He said: "Visitors to the railway don't want to see this sort of business here.

"The only alternative would be to create more industrial activity here and I don't think that is the way forward.

"It would be better to have a high-class development, which would be aimed at families and people with a high disposable income who would spend money in the area.

"It will be a phased development and will create probably two full-time and some part-time jobs."

He added: "It won't place a burden on the primary school and doctors' surgery and it will have its own sewage system. People we have talked to so far have been very supportive."

There are plans to develop a renewable energy village at the Eastgate site, hopefully attracting thousands of tourists, while the nearby Harperley Prisoner of War camp has proved a magnet for visitors since it opened two years ago.