Iâve done some fairly interesting things this month, and had planned to write posts for each of them
â but, for whatever reason, none of them provided that particular spark to me. Maybe they just
didnât seem that interesting to explain to you, the reader, or maybe i didnât know what to say about
them except the obvious.
Nonetheless, it would be a shame for these events to pass into the annals of my journal without
telling you about them. So! Hereâs a brief summary of my unblogged July thus far.
I toddled off to Shildon to visit Locomotion, the local
branch of the national railway museum. Itâs the birthday of the railways, and thus boasts a
disproportionate selection of anorak arcana â alas, you canât go in the trains, but you get
a pretty good look at the inside of Queen Alexandraâs royal train car, the erstwhile Birmingham
maglev, and, most proudly, Stephensonâs Rocket.
Locomotion also provides a lot to geek out about for any heraldry nerds.
Beamish1
has been newly crowned
Museum of the Year, so there was no better time to check it out. I hadnât properly explored their new fifties town
yet â the chippie and the old houses are wonderful, but the record store, crammed up the stairs,
across an anachronistically modern mezzanine, and down a grey corridor, leaves much to be desired.
Nitpicks about balcony design aside, itâs as great as ever, and, somehow, well worth the ÂŁ33(!!!!!)
asking price.
Finally, just yesterday, i went off to an Elbow concert hosted in a ruined mediĂŚval priory by the
sea. Belting out âOne Day Like Thisâ in the fading dusk light with five thousand other people
standing on the same hallowed ground where monks tried to figure out where baby eels came from is a
top-ten human experience.
Hope whoever
felled the Sycamore Gap tree
enjoyed whatever kicks they got out of destroying a centuries old piece of local heritage. Sick
cunt.
Iâve been hammering away at a big olâ 2022 recap post, trying to get it ready before itâs
irrelevant. It seemed cruel to leave you all with nowt over the new year, though, so i thought i
might send you some photos from a recent evening walk.
Ashington1 is a poor erstwhile mining town at the very tip-top of the local
conurbation, Newcastleâs last gasp before coal and collieries give way to princes and pastures. It
takes pride in two things: one, its mining history, and two, the fact that two Ashingtonians
delivered England the world cup in a final remembered by ever fewer people.
This is the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park â not to be confused with the
Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park
down in that London â a marvellous regeneration project which has turned a spoil heap into a lovely
lake complete with a Premier Inn. That purple light off in the distance is the
Woodhorn Colliery Museum, a
whistle-stop tour of Northumberlandâs mining history which apparently fancies itself the Blackpool
of the North.2
And thatâs all i wrote. Tune in next time for either another bashed-together filler postcard (by
Gods, am i going to have to make Blyth sound appealing next?), or the first annual Horny Awardsâ˘.
Weâll see how far the Procrastination Monster lets me progress. :â-)
Iâve been terribly bored recently, and have been occupying myself by trying out a way i came up with
of mapping out elections â a compromise of sorts between geographic maps (which donât always show
the whole picture) and cartograms (which tend to be butt-ugly).
I chose to map out 2019âs results in the North East to get a feel of things:
New Zealand is relatively small, so i figured it would be the best choice for the first full
country:
And, finally, the most recent council election in good old Northumberland1:
Hello again. Itâs been a while, hasnât it? I went on a nice riverside walk and thought iâd send you
some photos. (Look, i was getting desperate and it was either this or a post about why seven is my
favourite number.)
Our scene today is the southern end of Bedlington, a reasonably sized and â if iâm to be honest â
terribly mediocre town right in the middle of that conurbation in the southeast of Northumberland.
Thankfully, weâre not going to concern ourselves with the town centre (a place whose selling points
are a Greggs and a void that used to be a Tesco) â no, weâre going down a steep and heavy slope
until we wind up on the steep banks of the river Blyth, where the local parish have kindly set up a
path. Wonât you join me?
Seeing this, i was simply overcome by the androgynous urge to stomp and plod around in a stream.
(Itâs what Hermaphroditos would have wanted.) Alas, my shoes were
terribly unfit for such activity, and i had to call it off for another day. A national tragedy!
About halfway down the river, thereâs this small leafy island that some ducks appear to have claimed
as their home. I would have admired it further, but i was being shadowed by by a couple with some
particularly yappy and aggressive dogs and really just wanted to get the whole predicament over
with.
Iâm not 100% sure whatâs going on with the pillar in the middle â itâs about where the path on the
opposite side comes to a sudden stop; perhaps it used to be the support for some kind of railway
bridge.
I did, i admit, have to trespass on a dam for this view â the ducks, i hope, would never be grasses.
Itâs just not in their DNA.
Some incredible visual storytelling here. Someoneâs drawn an owl saying âPeace!â, then someone else
has come and vandalised it with a swastika, then someone else went and turned the
swastika into something resembling the Windows logo. I donât know where âR.C.â comes into this, but
if they were the last fellow, i salute them. Truly, one of the heroes of our time.
(I was somewhat tempted to scribble over it myself and turn it into Loss.jpgâŚ)
This article comes equipped with its own optional soundtrack for those who want to follow along
with my listening habits as well as my walk.
We begin at the
Holy Jesus Hospital, whose site
served as an almshouse for the poor for seven hundred years.
The current 17th-century building now serves as office space for the National Trust.
No noseys allowed (shame!)
Anyone need some tiles?
Iâm pretty sure this is either âHallelujahâ or âJerusalemâ, but i have absolutely no idea which.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0
Only a scant few BT-branded trucks occupy the parking lot of this
hulking concrete husk, surely far too big for its intended purpose.
Ahhh â reminds me of home, back in Hoorn.The tragedy of Brexit.Is it, Greggs? Is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHSH9sJUEo
Thereâs a lot of commie graffiti scattered along this road, though all of it seems to be by the
same person â you can tell because they canât draw a hammer and sickle.
Bloody showoffs. (That reminds me â i have a massive unpublished gallery post of a walk down the
full length of the Ouseburn, but never did get around to finishing it⌠maybe soon?)
The most important meal of the day.1
Iâve decided to join the Sea Org and give my lifeâs savings to the military-industrial complex.
(In all seriousness, it was a bloody brilliant film â everything a blockbuster should be!)
Itâs the end of an era in Newcastle, however short it was, as the temporary
shipping container food courtâcumâpublic squareâcumâshopping centre Stack comes down after three
years. The former site of an Odeon cinema was set to be turned into a mixed-use development, but the
pandemic caused a change of direction from the developers. The plans have since been slimmed down to
just comprise what lockdown proved was truly, 100% necessary:
Offices.
Youâd never guess it, but this luscious green path (carefully cropped so that you donât see the
yawning gravel service road behind the camera) is on the former site of a colliery in
Bedlington. Thereâs not much left to see â the neighbouring pit town
was bulldozed in the â70s, and the farmers have done a bang-up job of hiding any traces of the mines that lie underneath.
After
2.3 million pounds
and a skyscraperâs worth of scaffolding, Morpethâs central station has finally been
restored to its former Georgian glory, red fences and all. The locals will be pleased to know that
Lumo, a sparkly new Ryanair-ified third-class train service from Edinburgh to London, have no choice
but to stop here thanks to a sharp bend in the track.
St Peterâs Marina confuses me. Itâs like someone dropped a quaint postwar Dutch town centre
in the middle of a grimy industrial waste, The river still stinks, and the architecture is â generally â an unconvincing pastiche. Just
who is living here?
I had some time to kill after buying my mam a present from Tynemouthâs station market and decided to
spend it by taking a walk in the golden hours of the day, now that spring is coming around and the
weather isnât quite so permanently miserable. I thought i might show you some photos.
These are not the warm, jade waters of the Mediterranean â the North Sea is (usually) grim,
cold, and trying to kill you.
St Maryâs Lighthouse, off the coast between Seaton Sluice and Whitley Bay. Fond memories of many
a school trip.
Oh shit i took both pills and now iâm stuck in the Bench Dimension
I went to see everyoneâs favourite synth-pop act Chvrches a few nights back, and i must say they put
on a hell of a show. Even at the
City Hall â quite a stuffy venue by
most standards â the crowd went absolutely mental for âClearest Blueâ at the end! (I
barely know what came over me.)
Great staging, too â i counted three costume changes throughout the night, including a delectably
bloody âFINAL GIRLâ shirt for the encore. (Their latest album has a
horror-movie gimmick crafted entirely to let them swap remixes1 with John
Carpenter â not that iâm complaining.)
Now imagine the same distorted whingeing and generic melody for half an hour straight.
The opening act were an Ozzie band called HighSchool who, being brutally honest, should go back to
PrimarySchool. Theyâre one of those acts that basically only know how to write one song over and
over, and itâs alright at first, but by take number five of the same sludge youâre praying for it to
end, you know? (See also the inexplicably successful 1975 cover band Pale Waves.)
9/10, would stand in line for several hours again.
I was on my usual city constitutional the other week when i noticed that
my favourite bubble tea place1 had
shuttered. Hm, thatâs odd, i thought.
Last time that happened was lockdown. Donât know why theyâd do it again. I assumed theyâd
be back again swiftly, and went on with my day.
Then the week after i noticed that the entrance to the
Ăźber-hip shipping-container food court of which it was a
part was blocked off. Hm, thatâs odd, i thought.
Ah, well. Itâs probably just construction. These things happen all the time.
It was only yesterday that i saw the crane lifting one of the shipping containers away and realised
something (other than the container) was up. Sure enough, one quick google reveals the flashy new
development thatâll be taking its place â originally it was going to be
mixed-use, but covid crunch caused them to scale back to the thing that covid really, conclusively proved
was absolutely 100% necessary and in demand, definitely:
offices.
âPilgrimâs Quarterâ is part of a broader redevelopment of the neglected Pilgrim Street, which may or
may not include a pedestrianisation â i donât know; itâs all in jargonese and i canât make heads or
tails of what Enhancing The Public Realm is meant to mean. (Or, for that matter, why theyâve
misspelt it as âPilgrimâs Quaterâ on the official brochure.)
The permission slips are all in place â so hereâs to you, Stack. You might have had some exorbitant
prices (sorry, Korean place, but iâm not paying ÂŁ12 for a few chicken wings and fries), but
otherwyze you were a shining beacon of small businesses in the city centre â you were too good for
this world. *Pops open a bottle of champagne*
Down a narrow alleyway to the back end of St Nicholasâ Cathedral, in Newcastle, one can find a
rather curious decoration garnishing a door on the opposing façade. The âvampire rabbitâ has stood
watch over the cathedral for at least half a century; while records are scarce (a quick search of
Google Books doesnât bring up anything until the twenty-first century), it could well date back to
the buildingâs construction in 1901.
Spooky.
Hereâs a noticeably brighter bun, as it looked in 1987.
Hereâs the thing, though. Nobody knows how it got there. Indeed, even the name âvampire rabbitâ is a
misnomer; its jet-black fur and red claws were added on some time in the 1990s,i
as were its distinctly batty ears. Some say it was put there to scare away wannabe graverobbers, but
i have my doubts that twentieth-century crooks would be so dumb.
Yet others posit that it represents a
mad March hare, arising at the time
of Easter, or that it refers to Thomas Bewick, a nearby engraver who had a fondness of all things
lagomorphic. Most fascinatingly,
a theory advanced by one Mr Adam Curtis
suggests a Masonic pun in reference to one George Hare Phillipson, a local doctor (hence
vampires) and active Freemason, as was the lead architect, one William H. Wood. It being a secret
society in-joke would also explain why itâs located around the back, rather than the front, which
faces onto one of the busiest streets in town.
Perhaps we might never know for sure. In any case, itâs a fascinating little secret â what do you
think is most likely?
The family and i went to a local food-and-craft market at Pontelandâs garden centre this morning. I
thought iâd send letters of recommendation for some of the stalls.
Urban Bakery, from Gateshead, make the most decadent cinnamon buns iâve ever had.
Mrs Bâs Kitchen, from Durham, sells jams, conserves, chutneys, honey, sauces â all the things you ever need in the
top drawer of your fridge. (I got the rhubarb and raspberry.)
Hops and Dots, of Bishop Auckland, make âaccessible craft beerâ with Braille on the labels.
Wilde Farm, of Ponteland, are ostensibly running the whole thing, and sell... you know, farm things. Carrots,
veg, burgers, sausages, turkey â you get the idea. Theyâre currently taking
orders for the winter holidays.
Last time on The Garden: A strip mall turns out to be a place of immense historical curiosity, i am interrupted by a
rude troupe of boy racers, and find myself caught up in the lyrics of a pro-union folk song.
Leaving Seghill, going past a house with a conspicuous
Northumbrian flag, the
landscape once again slips swiftly back into ruralia â a common occurrence on this leg of the
journey. No sooner had i left behind the station house than i found myself on a dirt path which i
wasnât quiiiite sure i was meant to be on.
This was the small hamlet of Mare Close, essentially a farmhouse surrounded by a few cottages. I
have a sneaking suspicion that everyone living there has been friends since primary school, though
i'll never know for sure. Opposite the cottages, by the next leg of my route, lay a
small village church and
graveyard which i dared not enter. Onwards.
Seaton DelavalÎą sits at the heart of the valley. Turning
one way, there lies a charming local coĂśperative store, a
genuine lordly manor (owned by
the townâs namesake De la Val family, who came over after 1066), the
previously-blogged village of Holywell, and, eventually,
the seaside settlement of Seaton Sluice.β Unfortunately, weâll be turning
the other way, by where once stood a colliery.
The former site of Delavalâs station can hardly be considered a sight for sore eyes. Cars and
lorries pass by, horns blaring, trying to weave their way between those turning into the nearby
petrol station.Îł The location of the station itself is an uninspiring gravel
pit on one site with an overgrown nettle-filled path on the other; next door is a chain pub whose
car park will be getting embiggened to accommodate the extra traffic once the railway reopens.
It doesnât get much better. A few interesting-looking eateries (a grimy-looking cafĂŠ called âOnly
Fools and Saucesâ, a venue by the name of the
Secret Gardenδ with a wonderful
hand-painted sign) added some initial spice, but soon i was back to the same industrial wasteland:
Auto recycling! Furniture wholesalers! Caravan storage! Chemical producers! The works!
...I said something about a colliery, didnât i?
16 January, 1862. Itâs half past ten â or, at least, it might be. Youâve been labouring
away in the coal pit since two in the morning, and youâve not seen the sun since. The shift is
almost over, and itâs time to swap over with the next group.
One by one, your comrades file in line to get out. A huddle of people enter the rusting lift. The
familiar ketter-ketter-ketter shudders through the cave â but then, for a fraction of a
second, all falls silent.
Your heart races. A drop of water falls from the ceiling. Nobody makes a sound.
And then, all of a sudden, it is as though Thorâs hammer has crashed
into the ground. The earth around you shakes in terror, lets out what can only be described as an
otherworldly scream, as ten tonnes of blood-red steel smash into the floor.
This was the
Hartley Pit disaster, and its shockwaves can still be heard across town.
Just across from the telltale jackhammers and yellow tape of a housing estate so new Google Maps
hasnât caught up yetÎľ sits a lovely memorial garden, explaining the story of
the tragedy, with a poem to contemplate as you ramble along the path.
In terms of stations, the town has had two â Hartley and Hartley Pit â both right next to each
other, and neither seeming to have any chance of reopening.
I was a bit anxious about continuing on, because there were several serious-looking men in hard-hats
and high-vis jackets, but they didnât seem to mind. They really, really should have tried to stop me
from going to where i was going next.
Coming up on The Garden: your author tries not to disturb some horses, desperately tries to avoid going to fucking
Blyth, and accidentally sneaks in a brief trip to Durham. I promise, it makes sense in
context.
Last time on The Garden: the axe falls on the Blyth and Tyne line, and i foolhardily decide to walk its lengthâŚ
Our journey begins at NorthÂumÂberÂland Park, in North Tyneside. Though itâs the
first station weâll be visiting, it was the last to be constructed, having only opened in 2005 â and
itâs quite easy to tell, even after sixteen years of wear and tear; the place is outfitted with
modern amenities, lifts, ticket machines flush with the wall, and, more lately, pandemic-themed
graffiti opposite the platform. This unassuming metro station will, according to the county
councilâs plans, serve as the interchange between the old and new lines, heavy rail and metro
meeting one last time before splitting apart and going their separate ways.
Setting off from there, the first thing that caught my eye were twin giants: a frosted glass-covered
car park and a red-brick Sainsburyâs, unexpected icons of the modern British condition. It didnât
get much better from there; down the road lies an American-style strip mall lined with bookmakers
trying to get people to piss away all their money.
This sorry-looking trolley was, i presume, abandoned from the local Sainsburyâs.
This southernmost tip of NorthÂumÂberÂland is criss-crossed by innumerable public footpaths, cycle
paths, bridleways, and other routes for non-metal-box-related transport; ducking onto one of the
reclaimed
âwaggonwaysâ once used
to transport coal, i found myself on the site of the second station on the list.
The leafy suburb of Backworth has a habit of burying its history.
A hoard of offerings from Roman times
was found underground in the 1810s, the last vestiges of the colliery that once was are long gone,
and the tale of this sorry ex-station is rather similar. Opened in 1864 to replace a nearby station
closing the same day, BackÂworth station served its community for over 100 years, surviving the
Beeching cuts. But when the Tyne and Wear Metro was announced to come to town, the old station
finally closed⌠for good. It wasnât until the opening of NorthÂumÂberÂland Park that there would be
a replacement.
As i wandered through the village's verdant streets, i couldnât help but think of its resemblance to
the straight, cycle-friendly streets of my old hometown. A little greenery can go a long way.
The graffiti reads âMonty Brown is a grassâ. I would never say such unkind things about Mr
Brown.
Network Rail were hard at work at the site of the aforementioned original BackÂworth station, whose
plot of land now sits vacant, marking the cityâs last hurrah; the further i walked along the dirt
back roads, the further the sounds of bustling cars receded, until, ducking under a shady underpass,
i found myself utterly alone amongst pastoral fields (and the overwhelming scent of manure).
That peace and quiet was swiftly interrupted by a troupe of boy racers on motorcycles and
quad-bikes, but you canât win them all, you know?
After the county borders were hacked up in 1974, this line became the divider between rural
Northumberland and ostensibly-urban Tyne and Wear.
The (post-1974) border town of Seghill occupies only the tiniest fragment of the
collective English consciousness, popping up briefly in an anti-scab minersâ folk song called
âBlackleg Minerâ:
Itâs in the evening after dark, when the blackleg miner creeps to work With his
moleskin pants and dirty shirt there gans the blackleg miner!
[...]
So, divvint gan near the Seghill mine Across the way they stretch a line, to catch the
throat and break the spine of the dirty blackleg miner
[...]
So join the union while you may Divvint wait till your dying day, for that may not be
far away, you dirty blackleg miner!
For our purposes, itâs chiefly notable for the fact that itâs the first disused station on the list
whose buildings are still intact and in use, this time as a corner shop, from which i of course
bought a copy of the local rag â prominently including a
Q&A about the restoration of service on the line, which i
thought a fitting reminder of why i set out on this silly old journey in the first place.
After getting some well deserved rest, i headed on off towards the next town over, awaiting what
fresh stories i would find...
Next time on âWalking the Blyth and Tyneâ: your author is reminded of her own mortality, finds
himself in the company of a noble family, and shudders at the thought of having to go to Blyth,
of all places on Godsâ green Earth
