Depends what I'm looking for.
Lots of the information I want I have looked for online, but I am looking for pre 1820 stuff now, which is difficult to find online.
I have been to County Hall, Durham archives, and found the people there not as friendly as those in Hull History Centre.
I have been to Woodhorn Colliery in Northumberland, near Ashington, which has all the mining stuff in Northumberland and Durham. My mother in law wanted to know if they had any details about the pit accident where her father had his back broken when a pit prop fell on it. So my husband and I went to ask, about three years ago, and were told that they could not release records for 70 years, so we told her. It turned out the accident happened before she was born in 1922. But I haven't been back there since. He fathered three daughters after the accident!
I used to like going to York library to look at all their records, but when we moved up to Durham, they were thinking of having the City records sent to the Borthwick Institute at York University. I do not know if that happened.
I like the idea that you can now have one ticket for record offices in the County Archive Research Network that lasts for three years so you do not have to get a separate one for each record office.