No Coal in Newcastle

On Saturday the school arranged a bus trip to Newcastle (a 2-hour bus ride north of York, Newcastle is about 50 miles south of Scotland).  I was expecting to see a rather drab, industrial city and figured the school planned this trip mostly as a shopping excursion for students, since Newcastle is a much larger city than York. (And, indeed, most of the students returned to the bus at the end of the day with shopping bags...mostly from a store called Primark...apparently a discount-price store with high quality merchandise.)  I was pleasantly surprised and, despite the rainy weather, we found plenty to do to fill up the 6 hours there.  Most of the pictures are rather cloudy because of the weather, but I'm told that's the way most pictures of Newcastle turn out: because it is situated on the River Tyne (the formal name is Newcastle-on-Tyne) there is often a sort of fog hanging over the city. The constant rain clouds didn't help.  But I'll try to give you a sense of the city in the pictures I did take. 

Our first stop was just outside of Newcastle at this fairly new sculpture called "The Angel of the North" and considered to be the landmark of northeast England.  It stands 70 feet high and can withstand winds up to 100 mph.  It's built of steel and weighs about 150 tons.  You can see the details better in the picture below (which I got off the internet).


But on to Newcastle.  Actually, our stop was in Gateshead, the city on the opposite side of the river from Newcastle.  Much of the newer construction is taking place in Gateshead, including the stunning new concert hall, below, that is open all day and has cafes and shops as well as the concert venue.  Though formally called the Sage, locals refer to it as the Slug....

Next a walk down the hill to the Baltic, a contemporary art museum in an old grain storage building.  Unfortunately, most of the galleries were in transition setting up new exhibitions, so we stopped at their cafe for a late breakfast (our first of three different Newcastle cafes) and went to the top floor for some great views of the Tyne River and the bridges crossing it. The bridges are Newcastle's most recognizable feature - here are a few:

The award-winning Millennium bridge is the newest. It is a walking and bike bridge that opens up like an eyelid to let ships pass. 

The Tyne Bridge is recognized as the symbol of Newcastle. It was opened by King George in 1928 and was the longest "two-pin steel arch" bridge in Britain with a span of 531 feet.  The red and white bridge in the foreground is the Swing Bridge, which pivots in the middle to let ships through.  There are more bridges (I took the above picture from the one below), but we'll move on to other things.

This the Norman castle, constructed in 1080. This castle "keep" is all that remains of the "new" castle that gave the city its name.  

And St. Nicholas' Cathedral....one of Britain's smallest cathedrals, there are remnants of the original 11th century Norman church on which the present 14th-15th century structure stands.

I was quite impressed with Newcastle's Victorian city center. It is a short walk up from the river (the castle, cathedral and other historic buildings are built near the river bank), the streets radiating out from a large monument to Earl Grey. One guide book describes the city center: "supremely elegant, lined with fine classical buildings, it is undoubtedly one of the country's finest."  Who would have expected it to be Newcastle!

Here, the interior of the Victorian shopping gallery:

And the pedestrian shopping street leading to Newcastle University (I couldn't talk John into venturing into the crowd):

We stopped at another cafe and another art museum and then a late lunch/early dinner before walking along the quayside (a very nice boardwalk that would be quite pleasant if it hadn't been raining), back over the Millennium Bridge, up the riverbank, through the Sage to catch our bus home.  Another great day.

The view from the Newcastle quay looking over the Tyne to Gateshead.