Say Weardale and the response of many people outside the northeast would be “Where-dale?”. However, this far-flung but spectacularly beautiful rural spot in the North Pennines, 30 miles west of Durham, could be about to acquire a higher profile.

Local authorities are planning to build a 25-acre eco-village, run on spring, solar and wind power, to lure buyers from the south. To drum up interest, One NorthEast, the regional regeneration agency, is launching a poster campaign in London tomorrow singing the region’s praises.

The village, to be built on the site of a former cement works at Eastgate, will have 65 permanent homes, 25 holiday homes and nine live/work units. It will be the only place in Britain to run on all five types of land-based renewable energy: wind, solar, hydro, biomass and geothermal power. There will also be a public spa resort built around the hot springs — the only ones in Britain outside Bath.

With its high moorland and tumbling rivers, Weardale deserves its status as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. But this does not pay the bills. When the Lafarge cement works at Eastgate closed in 2002, 147 jobs were lost. The effect on the local economy was dire, especially as it followed a foot-and-mouth epidemic that had taken its toll on local farmers.

The eco-village is crucial to One NorthEast’s plans to encourage small and medium-sized businesses, as well as individuals, to relocate to Weardale. “The idea is to breathe new life into Eastgate,” says Julia Banks of One NorthEast. “We really want to put the place back on the map.”

A planning application is expected to be submitted in October. The Weardale Task Force, the body responsible for overseeing the masterplan, hopes that permission will be granted by next year.

Inov-8, a firm that designs and develops running shoes, is the first company to sign up for space in the new development. Its founder, Wayne Edy, 44, who moved from Zimbabwe to Weardale in 1992, is just the sort of person the area wants to attract — and is the poster boy for the campaign.

Four years ago, he and his wife, Joanne, 43, paid £300,000 for a five-bedroom, Grade II-listed home in Wolsingham, an attractive local market town. Their home was recently valued at £450,000.

“We looked at a few options in the UK, but I really liked this place,” Edy says. “It has a nice mix of things and a nice balance. We live in a 180-year-old converted coachhouse — double the house we would get in London.”

His enthusiasm for Weardale is so contagious that Alan Futter, 62, a London-based accountant, has just agreed to move there and join Edy’s company. Futter and his wife, Colleen, 54, have been pleasantly surprised by what they can buy with their £300,000 budget. “I fell in love with the area and decided I had to move out of London,” Futter says. “My pound is going to get me a lot more here.”

So, while the Eastgate eco-village has yet to be built, what sort of property is on offer in Weardale?

“There are lots of quaint little villages,” says Claire Mallen, head of the estates and farm agency department of Strutt & Parker’s Northumberland office. A large four-bedroom stone farmhouse with traditional outbuildings and a paddock would sell for between £500,000 and £600,000 — about 10% cheaper than further south in the Yorkshire Dales.

“Properties here don’t get the same values as in North Yorkshire, yet they are a similar distance from the A1, and it’s a cracking area,” says Richard Henderson, a surveyor for Broadley & Coulson estate agents.

- Strutt & Parker, 01670 516123, www.struttandparker.com. Broadley & Coulson, 01388 602656, www.broadleyandcoulson.co.uk

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