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<\/a>Newburn-Newcastle-Wallsend-North Shields-South Shields<\/em><\/p>\nAfter a few weeks of heatwave unconducive to enjoyable hiking we had chosen\u00a0 a couple of pleasantly warm days, with temperatures of 23\u00b0 and 26\u00b0, a light easterly breeze and sunshine enough to catch me out on the first day and reminded me to use sunscreen the next.<\/p>\n
We set out from the the green and monument marking the site of the Battle of Newburn Ford in 1640. The River Tyne must have changed since those days and I wouldn’t want to try fording it here\u00a0now.<\/p>\n We crossed a wee footbridge over the Reigh Burn and\u00a0were back on cycleway 72 walking along what would once have been a waggonway. In places we strolled in the shadow of\u00a0mature trees, while in others the path was surrounded by what I can only think to call urban meadow, with tall grasses and a wealth of wild flowers growing on land that would once have been factories. There was teasel in abundance with yarrow, knapweed, thistle, ragweed, wild parsley and scabious. The route took us by the Tyne Rowing Club with its figurehead of Old Father Tyne, the Boathouse pub (handy for the rowers, but not open for business when we passed), and the suburb of Lemington where an information board with old photos showed us just how industrial the area had once been.<\/p>\n The A1 is quite an obstacle for the HW walkers trail and cycleway, but the trail copes by leaving the old waggonway at Neptune Road, heading through the parkland of Bell’s Close and crossing the Great North Road by way of a footbridge.\u00a0This took us into Denton Dene which isn’t so much a narrow wooded valley as its name suggests but a series of football pitches with youngsters’ teams giving us our first sight of a Newcastle Football top in its native land. Surprisingly this was one of only three we were to see in two days walking through Newcastle. Whereas I saw nine actual (corvid) magpies in that time. Depending on which rhyme I read I am either looking forward to a kiss or meeting the Devil himself.<\/p>\n One for sorrow, Or<\/p>\n One’s sorrow, Oh dear! I looked up Devil’s kiss in urban dictionary. That’s given me a shudder.<\/p>\n To be fair I think these refer to total numbers seen at the same time, in which case I was to expect\u00a0joy or mirth. Both were to come at the end of day one, as you will hear.<\/p>\n The trail dumped us onto Denton Road and we turned back towards the river, passing the rather intriguingly named “Da’Wah Invitation Restaurant”. This left us mulling over whether locals sit in their homes waiting for an invitation, and whether this would be a good business model. A little Google Fu enlightened me, Da’Wah means invitation in Arabic.<\/p>\n Our musings on invitation-only dining were brought to an end when we noticed a statue by the next road junction. A man in old-fashioned working man’s attire led a pony ridden by a boy who from a distance looked like Pinocchio and a girl lifting a mobile phone as if to take a\u00a0selfie.<\/p>\n A nearby plaque informed us that this was:<\/p>\n In memory of the 38 mean and boys who tragically lost their lives in the Montagu View Pit Disaster on 30th March 1925, when an inrush of water from a burst seam flooded the mine shaft. The pit finally closed on 13th November 1959.<\/p>\n The pitman, pony and tank depict our past heritage. The house represents the regeneration of our community. The children are our future.<\/p>\n The sculpture was made by Exceptional designs.<\/p>\n In Remembrance of Men of Steel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I pondered on the tank and the house. Where were they? I found the house in the\u00a0boy’s right hand and I presume the tank is what they they are standing on. The lamp the miner carries is inscribed No.38 representing those who died and I only noticed when looking at my photos that there are flowers in the pony’s bridle. Reading the sculpter’s website, the piece is said to show a miner on his day off taking his children to the Blaydon Races, so recalling happier days. Why does the girl have a mobile phone?<\/p>\n The HW trail rejoined the old waggonway and took us through more post-industrial urban meadows to Paradise, and as the song Blaydon Races<\/a> says “Noo when we gat to Paradise thor wes bonny gam begun<\/em>“. Walking on the HW trail one would not have noticed Paradise were it not for road signs and the Paradise Gardens are long since gone. I found a\u00a0modern version<\/a> of Blaydon Races’ lyrics which contrasts the emotions in passing through Paradise then with those of today (or ten years ago).<\/p>\n That said Newcastle does seem to be regenerating, new growth spreading over the lost industrial landscape, especially around the quayside.<\/p>\n For the first time on the trail we had a walk along a length of a major road. The pavement of the A695 perhaps allowed us to clear our minds for the next\u00a0section which followed the old quayside. The sound of traffic is not new to me, but it washed through my mind, the weeds of the roadside adding a little colour to the grey of road and paving. I took a deep sniff hoping to notice the flora amidst the cars and lorries and found myself nothing a different smell. My mind immediately said “petrol” but then corrected itself to “like petrol but sweeter”. Neither Audrey nor I could place it, but when we turned off the road and passed a sign proclaiming “JP Ltd Asphalt Plant” we knew the smell.<\/p>\n Two miles to the Tyne Bridges<\/p><\/div>\n The Quayside has been renewed, old piers have been repaired repainted\u00a0and now sport\u00a0artwork and anglers, the footpaths are decorated with a variety of art, millennium cycleway signs and information boards describing the industrial heritage of the area. Apparently almost all the warships involved in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war were built here (which you may interpret as good or ill as you see fit).<\/p>\n Sculpture by David McMillan 1990.<\/p><\/div>\n This piece looked like waves to me but it is said to represent\u00a0the\u00a0undulations of the Northumberland hills.<\/p>\n Armstrong’s Arches<\/p><\/div>\n The Armstrong works which once covered 230 acres would \u00a0have dominated this part of the riverside are gone, replaced by new businesses, expensive dwellings, statues\u00a0and recreation spaces. These arches are all that remains of the Armstrong Works.<\/p>\n Elswick Pier<\/p><\/div>\n Lintzford. Nick Lloyd 1990.<\/p><\/div>\n Lintzford is constructed from Ancaster hard white limestone. The title refers to the place in the Derwent Valley where the artist lives and works. The work looks as if it is made up of the remains of a building.but the artist describes the work as portraying the countryside of Northumberland and Durham.<\/p>\n Spheres by Richard Cole<\/p><\/div>\n There are several\u00a0giant spheres made up of concrete rings of varying sizes at three different places along the walkway.<\/p>\n I hadn’t noticed we were in blue and pink<\/p><\/div>\n We made use of the seats here to have a rest, take a selfie and look across the river. We could see the Angel of the North on the distance and the Tyne bridges, which in my mind marked Newcastle proper, a little further downriver. Once we reached the bridges we found\u00a0Newcastle’s quayside busy with people walking, resting and filling the seats outside pubs and caf\u00e9s. A real promenade.<\/p>\n Tyne Bridges<\/p><\/div>\n The city has several bridges squeezed close together. (Edit: autocorrect tried to make that into “togither”. It must be turning\u00a0Geordie). The old Fish Market, topped with a statue of Neptune himself, had obviously changed its purpose, since it sported a neon sign “Hot Tramp I Love You So” and was surrounded by teenage girls in going out gear (not quite party gear but not just everyday gear). Perhaps they saw themselves as Rebel Rebels.<\/p>\n The Fish Market’s Neptune<\/p><\/div>\n Bringing me back to earth, my laptop shows me that the Fish Market is now described as “a high class ale house for the booze sodden partygoers that make the nightly pilgrimage to this centre of revelry.” There’s a sentence fit to spawn an entire sociology lecture.<\/p>\n By now we were looking for a place to sit and eat our sandwiches, but Newcastle seems to have taken a decision to only provide public seats without backs. We soft north-westerners searched for an elusive backed-bench, but had to make do with a low wall topped with a wrought iron fence (against which we could rest our weary backs).<\/p>\n River God<\/p><\/div>\n I sat eating my ham and mustard sandwich on Sandgate, the Millennium bridge framing the Baltic Flour Building, a busker singing the works of Dire Straits and a\u00a0bronze figure, The River God, looming above me. The River god, atop a steel column, holds a mace and chain and appears to be blowing at the Siren, another statue.<\/p>\n Siren<\/p><\/div>\n The Siren had her effect on me. I climbed the steps to reach her (for a photo) and while there a local woman, identified as such by her accent, mumbled about her husband being back where we had come from. At first I thought she was talking about her own husband but she meant the Siren’s husband, the River God.<\/p>\n The wall beneath the Siren was inscribed:<\/p>\n As Aa cam thro Sandgit This is a traditional song Keel Row. It is not a poem by Kipling as several internet sites claim – presumably someone has\u00a0made a mistake and others have\u00a0copied it. Audrey recognised it and broke into song, but I\u00a0had not\u00a0heard of the song. It certainly wasn’t one of the traditional songs such as “The big ship sails through the Alley Alley O” that I sang at primary school. I did intend linking to a version of Keel Row but boy do the recorded versions sound dire.<\/p>\n So after a brief chat about sirens and school songs we set off along the quayside once more. There were several more art installations each of which I paused to contemplate, and one that I thought was a corporate logo for a hotel, and ignored. What does that say about my appreciation of art? (Authorial intent does\u00a0not art make…repeat one hundred times).<\/p>\n Rudder \u2013 Andrew Burton (1996)<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Blacksmith’s Needle (1996)<\/p><\/div>\n This needle has six sections each relating\u00a0to one of the six senses.<\/p>\n Swirl Pavilion (Raf Fulcher 1998)<\/p><\/div>\n This is described as a folly for the Quayside. It has the names of destinations\u00a0carved around the inner rim, which\u00a0the artist found on a faded sign for a\u00a0local shipping company. The Swirl takes its name from is\u00a0a hidden stream that joins\u00a0the Tyne nearby.<\/p>\n ?<\/p><\/div>\n I’m not sure what to make of this fish<\/p>\n As we had strolled along the quayside promenade at Elswick, a walker resting on a bench called to us asking if we were on the Hadrian’s Wall Trail. when we admitted we were he said he had begun just that day and warned us that the way ahead was\u00a0industrial. After the nnnamed fish statue we crossed the Ouse Burn and left the regenerated quayside and passed into an \u00a0post-industrial landscape of concrete, where sharp topped fences\u00a0surrounded\u00a0abandoned and\u00a0neglected\u00a0plots of land and To Let signs provided the brightest colours. Even the pavements were overgrown.<\/p>\n Beyond the Ouse Burn<\/p><\/div>\n And then amid the dire colours was an oasis of colour and regeneration at St Peter’s Marina.<\/p>\n St Peter’s Marina<\/p><\/div>\n The HW trail then took us back to the riverside towards\u00a0St Anthony’s Point, passing a small shipwreck in the tidal mud and more artwork (its artistic effect unsullied by knowledge of authorial intent).<\/p>\n Artwork at Walker Riverside<\/p><\/div>\n As we walked we looked across the river to a large factory each of us trying to read the name on its sign. It eventually revealed itself as AKZO Nobel, a manufacturer of paints and coatings and not explosives as I had guessed from the name.<\/p>\n The final mile to Segudunum was along a cycleway\u00a0between houses to our left and what were once\u00a0shipyards to our right. As we walked we mused on how we would mark the end of the official Hadrian’s Wall Trail. We agreed photos would be in order, and given the temperature we decided that ice-cream would be our “champagne”.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\nTwo for joy,
\nThree for a girl,
\nFour for a boy,
\nFive for silver,
\nSix for gold,
\nSeven for a secret,
\nNever to be told.
\nEight for a wish,
\nNine for a kiss,
\nTen a surprise you should be careful not to miss
\nEleven for health
\nTwelve for wealth
\nThirteen beware it’s the devil himself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nTwo’s mirth,
\nThree’s a wedding,
\nFour’s a birth,
\nFive’s a christening,
\nSix a dearth,
\nSeven’s heaven,
\nEight is hell,
\nAnd nine’s the devil his own sel’.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Wow. I just looked it up. That song was released 44 years ago.<\/em> I\u00a0pause, and look up, my mind wandering, the world becoming monochrome. The cadence of my rocking chair slows, disturbing the old hound who lifts his head, looks at me with milky eyes and sniffs the air. I murmur\u00a0“don’t worry boy, that was long ago. The diamond dog will be as grey as me and his joints stiffer than yours.” He rests his head back down and I turn my gaze back to the laptop as the nostalgia passes and colour refills my perceptions.<\/em><\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/a>
\nA hard a lassie sing
\nWeel may the keel row
\nThat ma laddie’s in<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>