Skip to main content

Newcastle: Bridges, Buses and Beaches

After Fountains Abbey we continued north to Newcastle - or more precisely Gateshead, Newcastle's sister city across the Tyne River.  Our hotel was on Gateshead Quays, an area which includes the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage Gateshead concert venue.  It's obviously undergoing serious regeneration; the remaining derelict industrial buildings and weed-strewn vacant lots were overshadowed by modern metal and glass springing up all around.

On the Millennium Bridge with the BALTIC Centre behind.

Millennium Bridge with the Sage behind (that wavy building).
We had a view of the river from our fifth-floor room, and Toby was most excited about sleeping on a sofa bed: "They're going to make my bed by magic!"  Theo seemed content enough with his familiar Moses basket, which we placed in the bathroom - a travel tip I'd seen somewhere.  It gave us a little more space in the main room, but whether it improved the quality of anyone's sleep is difficult to say.

I think we hit the sweet spot with our boys' ages on this trip.  Toby coped amazingly well with a fair amount of walking, while Theo was happy to be carted around anywhere, as long as he got milk on a reasonably regular basis.  We got a DaySaver ticket which meant we could hop on and off the Metro and buses - at least we thought we could; the fourth and final bus driver of the day insisted it wasn't valid and made us pay.  Up until that point we had been most impressed by both the value and frequency of public transport, and it was great to be able to rest our legs now and again.

Toby likes buses!

A whistlestop tour in photos:  We visited Grainger Market and ate pasties by the Grey Monument, which appeared to have a permanent seagull in residence.






On our way to Leazes Park for the obligatory playground stop, we passed a diminutive Chinatown, part of the old city walls, and Newcastle United's football ground.


For you public nursing advocates (I'm looking at you, Eva!): Theo having his lunch by the old city walls.


Daisy chains in the park

We were able to take a bus part way to the Discovery Museum, where Toby got ecstatically drenched in the Play Tyne room, with a replica of the Tyne River and its bridges.


Out to the real thing, we rode a bus along the quayside, and walked across the sweeping curve of the Millennium Bridge.

That's the Tyne Bridge in the foreground, but you already saw the Millennium Bridge.

Dinner was at Zizzi's, located on the solid Georgian splendour of Grey Street, from where we caught our final bus practically to the hotel door.


Next day was the beach at Cullercoates, a short drive away.  It was cooler and a little drizzly - but what does that matter when you're a three-year-old boy with a bucket and spade?



Labels:

Comments

Zoe Richardson said…
Sounds like a lovely family holiday with great pictures. I have three children and have always wanted to try and holiday in the North of England, but find it hard to see beyond family holidays in Devon.
13 April 2015 at 00:11
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Laid-back Lille and Bustling Brussels

After a night in a tiny AirBnB in Canterbury , where there were chocolates on the table and artwork on every inch of the walls, we boarded a ferry with an absolute minimum of fuss, enjoyed a smooth crossing of the channel, and were deposited in the decidedly unscenic surroundings of the port of Dunkirk two hours later. Once we got past the cranes and shipping containers, though, the countryside was flat but pleasant. We stopped at a small town called Cassel, reached by cobbled roads winding up a hill. On the summit was an old windmill and a topograph telling you the distances to various improbable places; St Omer may have been visible in the haze, but Manchester was surely over the horizon.  In Lille, we found our apartment, unpacked the luggage (one rucksack apiece), and set out to find food. Our first choice was fully booked, so we embarked on that kind of aimless wandering where everyone is hungry and no one wants to actually choose a restaurant. We reached a Lebanese place call...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more