(I've Had) The Tyne Of My Life

I'd been to Newcastle before, of course.  Many times.  I'd even spent a few nights staying here.  But I'd never ventured into the city itself.  I'd always had trains to catch, or I needed sleep, or I'd gone for a pint to a bar round the corner.  I'd never "done" Newcastle.  It didn't help that the station was being redeveloped every time I visited, and I wanted to wait for that to be finished before I collected it.  See it at its best.

I am furious with myself for this.  Because it turns out Newcastle is bloody fantastic.  Just wonderful.  I wandered around the city with a dizzy, ecstatic smile on my face.  Everything about it was perfection.

Dramatic sandstone buildings curving along ancient streets.  Impressive vistas along busy roads.  Tiny moments of staggering beauty.

In Liverpool, the river brushes right up against the buildings.  The Tyne is far more dramatic, sitting in a gorge that puts the city high above the river.  It's crisscrossed with half a dozen bridges, each as interesting as the one before, each one different.

I went down to the dockside, where the Tyne Bridge soars over the streets like an ironwork Godzilla.  I could have stood there all day and just marveled at it.

I found the Bigg Market, notorious as a centre for depravity and wantonness, and found a reasonable little square with a few drunks.  Not the sodom I'd expected.  Of course, it was Friday afternoon.  Probably around 1 AM it would have been different - the posters for Cocktail Buckets: £5 didn't point to refined entertainment.  (No, that's not a bucket filled with bottles.  It's a bucket filled with booze).

Sadly, the Rupali, legendary home of the late Lord of Harpole Abdul Latif and made famous in Viz, has closed, so I couldn't experience the "Curry Hell".  Instead I found an ancient church and a plaque commemorating the first place The Blaydon Races was performed (that song again!).

And the people!  Obviously the Geordie accent is the sexiest one in the country: that is a stone cold fact and I will not be persuaded otherwise.  But they're also gorgeous.  My eyes regularly alighted upon yet another male model with cheekbones you could slice ham on, or a girl poured into a tight dress with more curves than a mountain road.  They were happy and sexy and laughing and I wanted to do rude things to all of them.  They were also kind; at one point I was so busy being gobsmacked at the city that I tripped over the kerb and went sprawling.  A young woman ahead of me turned round, stopped her conversation on her mobile, and checked that I was ok.  In most other cities she'd have kicked me while I lay on the floor.  She certainly wouldn't have stopped talking.

In amongst all this finery, there's the railway station of course.  It's huge, but not as busy as it used to be - local services were pretty much all redirected onto the Metro (the Metro!  Oh, I love the Metro!  There will be a whole separate post gushing about the Metro).  But it's still Newcastle, and it's still wonderful.

The redevelopment - which still isn't quite finished - filled in the porte cochere to create more space for coffee shops and ticket machines.  It's been done well, in glass and copper, and allows you to appreciate the station more.

Rather than biding a while at Caffe Nero I went through the huge entrance doors into the station itself.

Long curved glass reaches over shiny-floored platforms.  The whirl of trains passing through, always progressing, to London and Scotland and all points in between.

The twists in the roof make it feel like the building itself is moving, helped by the open ends.  There's a thrilling feeling of excitement.  Trains can't linger long because there's always another one behind waiting for its space.

I love it.  I love everything about it.  I needed to recover, and I staggered into the Centurion Bar.  Not just a bar though; the former first class lounge, now open even to plebs like me.

Astonishingly intricate brown tiling above soft seating.  Heavy marble fireplaces under huge elegant mirrors.  Artwork that you'd expect to find in a museum.

I sat down with a Newky Brown - even the city's drinks are superlative - and tried to take it all in.

I'm sorry Newcastle.  I wish I'd visited you sooner, I wish I'd visited you longer, I wish I'd known just how bloody fantastic you are.  But rest assured: I'll be back.

Led Astray

I have to apologise to Cramlington.  I was keen as mustard to have a look round the town before I arrived.  It's a New Town, developed in the 1960s for Newcastle's residents, and New Towns are always interesting.

Unfortunately, as I got off the train, my phone rang.  It was the BF, calling to let me know that he had arrived in Berlin.  (Yes, while I was trekking around the North East he was gallivanting in the German capital for a week with his mate Peter.  No, it isn't fair, is it?).  Normally this would just be a brief phone call, but it turned out that his EasyJet flight had some interesting passengers - namely, the British diving team.

If you're not aware, the diving has a significant... following among the homosexual community.  I'm not sure what appeals to the gays about well-toned men in Speedos performing acrobatic feats while leaping from brave heights, then emerging dripping wet from the water - perhaps it's an appreciation for swimming pool architecture.  All I know is that we were glued to the men's diving during the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, while completely ignoring, say, the Track and Field events.

The sight of half a dozen of our nation's finest divers sent the BF into raptures.  He launched into a lengthy monologue about who he saw, how they were dressed, how Chris Mears was asleep, how Jack Laugher was listening to his iPod, how he pretended to go to the loo just so he could get a better look... Basically he sounded like a twelve year old girl who's just spotted Harry Styles in the corner shop.

(Before you ask, no, Tom Daley wasn't with them, and no, I'm not really a fan of Team GB's divers.  I'm much more of a Vincent Riendeau from Canada fan).

Anyway, twenty minutes later he finally got off the phone (presumably to write Mrs James Denny over and over on his pencil case) and I was left with a conundrum.  Walk into the town, and not give it my full attention so I could be back in time for the next train, or just hang around the station.

I hung around the station.  Sorry Cramlington.  I'm sure you're lovely, but I fancied a bit of a sit down and a drink (my legs were still protesting after the previous day's walk).  I took up a position on the platform and waited for the train to take me to my next station.

Manors suffers from the same affliction as Edge Hill in Liverpool and Ardwick in Manchester.  It's just a little bit too close to the main city terminus to be useful.  By the time you've worked your way to the station, waited for your train, and then got out of Newcastle Central, you could be halfway into the city centre on the bus.  Or you could even walk it.

It leaves Manors with a desolate, unloved feel.  It's an island between the tracks, with a multi-storey car park on one side and the backs of some apartments on the other.  There's no lift for the disabled, because what would be the point?  Just a metal footbridge to clatter over to the main entrance: a gate behind a 1980s business park.

More of that terrible signage as well.

Another reason for Manors' relative quiet is that there's a Tyne & Wear Metro station a two minute walk away.  Theoretically this should be an ideal interchange spot; in reality, anyone in the area just uses the Metro because that goes to far more useful places than the train.

Obviously I was ecstatic at the opportunity to ride the Metro again.  It's a brilliant network, all fast, efficient trains and lovely underground stations and that gorgeous Calvert font.  Manors is underground, with a pleasingly clean and spacious ticket hall leading down to two platforms.

Part of me wanted to just lark around on the Metro for the rest of the day.  I have a feeling that someday I'll have to come back for round the Metro we go.  It's just too tempting, especially now there are direct Newcastle trains from Liverpool every hour.  I doubt it would take too long to do either.

There were two side platforms with the tracks running inbetween; an unusual arrangement in the UK, where we tend to prefer separate tunnels for each underground track.  It reminded me of stations in Barcelona, which have a similar layout.

The only thing that stopped me from riding the Metro all afternoon was that I was incredibly tired.  I'm used to having a bit of a nap in the afternoon - this is a depression side effect, sadly - and combined with the 20 mile walk the day before my body was in full on protest mode.  I changed at Monument and got the train to Newcastle Central, where I could find my hotel and have a bit of a kip.

Observant readers will have noticed that in all this time I haven't actually collected Newcastle Central mainline yet.  I've been through it a few times but I haven't waxed lyrical about it.  This is because it's been undergoing significant refurbishment works all the times I've visited.  They're nearly done now, but the street outside is still a mess and some of the retail is all over the place, so I decided to leave it for another day.  I need to come back some time to collect Blaydon, anyway, the only other Tyne & Wear station I haven't yet been to.

If you're the kind of person who likes reading transport related blogs - and if you're reading this, you probably are - you'll have also read Robert's Station Master blog.  He's trying to visit some of the more obscure and poorly served stations on the network, and as part of that, he visited the Chathill line.  He even asked me along, but when I suggested walking between stations, he turned pale and said perhaps it would be better if he went on his own.

This lead to a certain amount of competition between us.  Admittedly it was mainly on my part; I can't bear to be second (or first loser) at anything.  We'd both visited the same stations, we'd even stayed in the same hotel, so there was a little bit of rivalry about who would have the best time.  It didn't help that he sent me texts like the one below:

So if you're keeping score, Robert got a room with a view of the station, but was in Acklington too early to visit the pub.  I had a view of the street outside my hotel room, but I got to have a couple of pints in the Railway at Acklington.  A draw.  Possibly.  Personally I think being able to drink alcohol is worth five points at least.

That text meant that I had to do one thing at Widdrington, and one thing only: eat chips on the platform.  I got up from my nap and dashed over to the platform for my train.  It was - for the first and only time - busy.  Finally I saw the point of the service to Chathill.  It was full of commuters on their way home, plus a smattering of bored teenagers finding ways to kill time during the holidays.  People were actually standing.

At Morpeth, though, most of them cleared out.  The jammed train became distinctly deserted.  Only a couple of us alighted at Widdrington; I should imagine the rest were waiting for Alnmouth.  I headed immediately for the chip shop - or, to use its proper name, The Widdy Chippy.

It was a real, proper working class chippy; there was none of that pretentious food you get in some other places.  My local chip shop offers curry, chinese, kebabs; the Widdy had spam fritters on its menu and that was about as exotic as it got.  The drinks were bottles of Tip Top and there was a Kid's Special Snack Box with a free frisbee (sorry, "flying disc").  It was packed.  A constant stream of punters came in for their Friday night tea.

I decided not to go with the fish, and instead ordered a battered sausage, onion rings and chips.  A few minutes later, with a smattering of salt, I was on the platform.  Obviously I texted this victory to Robert.

(He's not a smackhead, by the way; he'd just had wisdom teeth removed).

The chips were gorgeous; soft, fluffy, with a deliciously tempered batter.  The onion rings crunched satisfactorily.  The battered sausage was something else.  The batter was fine, but when you bit into the centre, it wasn't really a sausage at its heart; it was more a soft, slightly cold collection of mashed pink stuff.  It wasn't tightly packed inside the sausage skin and flopped onto the tongue.  I couldn't eat it.  I took a couple of bites and then it went into the bin with the polystyrene tray and the scrag ends.

I had a bit of a wander round the immediate vicinity of the station.  The chip shop was housed in a parade of turn of the century stores, next to a Co-op and round the corner from an Indian takeaway.  Behind it was a wide recreation ground which was, for some reason, Stones of Blood themed.  I'm sure it made sense to the playground designers to lay out a space for a pagan stone circle, but I'm not entirely on board with their logic.

As I stood, bemused, a woman appeared at the gate of her house overlooking the recreation ground.  "Simon!  Tea!" she yelled, and a little blonde boy immediately detached himself from the group and legged it towards the house.  Meanwhile, a half dozen teenage girls appeared over the hill, stinking of perfume and over made up, and they took up position behind the bins at the back of the shop.  They were there for the rest of the evening, just hanging out, casting bitchy glances at passers by and sharing packets of crisps.  Friday night in a small town.

I headed back to the station.  The building's a private home again, and you can stare right down into their back yard from the platform.  I put on a podcast - Dennis Hensley chatting to a friend about Partridge Family 8-tracks - and waited for my train.

I'd done it, then.  The whole of the Chathill branch crossed off.  It was always going to be a challenge, I thought, but in reality, it was pretty simple.  A bit - alright, a lot - of walking.  A bit of hanging around.  It had been fun.  And most importantly, I did it better than Robert.

The Furthest Reach

There's a unique alchemy at work in near empty railway stations.  I was in Newcastle Central not long after it opened.  Most of the shops were closed.  The ticket barriers were unmanned, their gates folded back.  There were no trains passing through.

That's where it became magical.  A railway station without trains is holding its breath.  Each part of it is ready to spring into action; it just needs the first grind of a train to make it happen.  Platforms offer promise.

I clacked across the tiled floor, my walking boots echoing in the empty space.  The other people about were still half-asleep.  They wanted to be somewhere else, at home, in bed, being cuddled.  It was too early to be lively.  The exception was two lads sat on a table outside Costa, fizzing with excitement and energy. They had backpacks at their feet and were playing cards, whacking down hands, laughing, ready for their adventure.

My train was waiting for me on the platform, but it was dead.  Silent and cold.  I bought myself a chai latte from the sole open store - Costa - and took a seat by it.  After a few minutes, the driver arrived, and he coaxed the Super Sprinter into life.  The diesel engines coughed, a thick gruff clearing of the throat, then it began to throb.  A pulsing clatter over and over.  I felt a strange moment of nostalgia for it.  Electrification means that these diesel workhorses are going to be pushed to the edges of the network; they'll be on the fringes and won't visit the big cities any more.

A flicker and the white fluorescents of the carriage came to life.  They were the brightest light around; yellow downlights pooled subtly on the shiny floors, but the train was a bar of glowing phosphorescence.  Then another kind of light: the orange circle around the "door open" button.

This was the 0555 service from Newcastle to Chathill, and I was the only passenger.  Not surprising.  It's a token service that no-one really uses.  The train travels over the East Coast Main Line, the route from King's Cross to Scotland, and there are larger, faster, more important trains that need to use the rails.  A dinky stopping service calling at quiet Northumberland villages is an inconvenience, but no-one has the heart to kill it completely.  Instead they run a token service: one train north in the morning, one in the evening, and the same going back.  A loop just beyond Chathill lets the train reverse.  It's useless to all but the most committed commuters.

The guard checked my ticket with disdain before heading to the front of the train and staying there.  I guessed that he and the driver saw this as a nice easy way to start their day with no passengers getting in the way.  I pictured them sat in the cabin sharing a flask of tea.

As we tore out of Newcastle and into the countryside the skies changed from violet to grey.  Night receded to leave the odd glimpse of sun behind thick clouds.  It felt as though we were travelling impossibly fast.  The engine was a constant drum in the background as the train was pushed to its maximum; InterCity speeds being wrestled out of a rickety old lady.  The driver must love it.  This is why he became a train driver, not to pootle around brown suburbs, but to burn through the countryside.

A level crossing whizzed past, barely more than a track and a gate.  Morpeth came in a blur of flat roofed extensions and conservatories.  The wheels protested loudly at being forced to stop.  There were no passengers, just as there had been none at Cramlington before it.  Two stations down, two to go.  Then we were out at maximum again, the driver doing whatever the railway equivalent of foot-down driving is.

Alnmouth appeared alongside, embarrassingly pretty, a tiny town huddled on a curve in a wide estuary.  The station brought the first sign of other passengers - on the opposite platform, mind, but it was nice to see some life.  On a distant hillside, a herd of cows clustered, determined to create dramatic silhouettes against the morning sky.  The second East Coast train of the morning crashed by; the line was beginning to fill up, and soon there wouldn't be room for this little purple interloper.  I pictured furious Scottish 125s stacked up behind the Sprinter, tapping their wheels impatiently, shouting for it to get out the way.

"This is Chathill, where this train terminates."  It was the first time the guard had spoken - he'd seen my ticket, he knew where I was going; there was no point in announcing the other stations.  Chathill is as far north as Northern Rail goes.  It's not the furthest north station in England - Berwick-upon-Tweed, nudging up against the border, holds that distinction - but Northern aren't allowed to go there.  Only the fastest trains, electric ones, are allowed past this point.

I put a line through the station name on the Northern Rail map I carry around in my head.  If I achieved nothing else that day, I'd done this, one of the most obscure, most difficult to reach stations.  Job done.

The station building is a private house now, of course.  I tiptoed by and out onto the road, not wanting to make any noise at such an early hour.  I crossed over to the southbound platform to have a look in the shelter.  Normally these quiet stations have nothing much in the way of facilities - you're lucky if you get a seat - but Chathill has a proper shelter, with a heavy sliding door to stop the birds from nesting inside.

Inside, the locals had put up British Railways noticeboards and filled them with pamphlets for local attractions.  There was a history of the line and the station, and a small book exchange (mostly historical romances).  And there were postcards.  Robert visited the station a couple of months ago, and so I was forewarned that I could buy a souvenir of my visit; there were only two left in the plastic wallet.  I put some coins into the envelope and crossed back to the house ("drop it through the letterbox").

There was a train back into Newcastle in a few minutes; I say "a train", it was the one I'd come on.  I wasn't getting it.  I'd decided to walk to the next station along the line, just twenty miles or so away.  Surely it couldn't be that hard?

Ending on a High

It's odd how an island platform can change your perception of a station.  I don't mean a large, busy halt, where the island is just one of four or six or twelve stopping places.  I mean when there are two tracks and the only place you can alight is on a strip of concrete between the two.  Suddenly you're isolated and set apart.  You're lonely.

Billingham station was an island platform, with a set of concrete steps to take you over the tracks.  After the open spaces of Seaton Carew it seemed harsh.  It's as though you've been abandoned in the middle of Railway-land, not a friendly country occupied by Thomas and Friends, but an expanse of iron and steel that's not interested in humans.

On the other side of the tracks there was a small turning circle and a taxi firm in a prefab hut.  My fellow passengers were obviously locals - they strode confidently down what looked like a dead end street to me, but must have been a secret short cut.  Another girl ran ahead, into the car park of the vast Tesco's just outside the station, and flung her arms round her waiting boyfriend.

There were little units lining the road - workshops, car washes - presumably the kind of industrial development that was all over here until the superstore came along.  I walked along the road, then paused underneath the giant chimney of the Stockton-on-Tees District Heating centre (now closed).

Shouldn't I have turned left by now?  Or was it right?  I pulled out my phone and looked at Google Maps, but I couldn't quite work out my walking route into Stockton town centre.  I turned back - perhaps if I returned to the station I'd be able to start again - and the little arrow on Google turned in what looked like completely the wrong direction.  My internal compass, normally so reliable, was fudged, like I was sat next to a magnet.

I realised I was tired.  It was now early afternoon, and I'd been up for twelve hours.  I was booked on a six thirty train back to Liverpool, which meant I wouldn't be home until about 10:30 if I was lucky and managed to get a decent connection at York.  If I'd been at home, this was about the time I'd have slipped back to bed for a siesta.

So I took a bus.

Well, the bus stop was right there, and they were every ten minutes.  I got on behind a Goth boy, and asked for a single into Stockton.  The driver seemed confused when he realised I wanted to pay with cash.  We seem to have reached a state with public transport where people who don't have regular passes - people who aren't commuters, pensioners or students - just don't use buses.  I've had similarly befuddled looks from drivers on Merseyside, baffled that I wanted to exchange money for a service.

The only thing I knew about Billingham before I arrived was that it was where Jamie "Billy Elliot" Bell grew up.  It turned out to be a fine, well-laid out council estate, with long curving avenues and greens.  The gardens, sadly, were mostly paved over for car parking, but it still seemed like a good example of social housing.

We passed long rows of local shops, past "The Theatre Upstairs" (Listen very carefully, we shall say this only once: 'Allo, 'Allo, 17th-22nd Feb) and over the wide dual carriageway that whisked the tankers and trucks to the chemical works without stopping.  After that, the houses became smaller and grimier, and then disappeared altogether.  They'd given up trying to regenerate this part of town, abandoned all pretence that it could ever be a decent place to live, and now it had been decimated.  Wide tracts of rubble showed the spots where there used to be flats.  Piles of earth as high as a house towered over bare streets.  Signs promised new developments to come, but were deliberately vague about a timescale.

The bus finally dropped us off on Stockton's High Street - the bit of it that was still open, that is.  The wide central avenue was being torn up and repaved as part of another redevelopment, one that will see the installation of a paved expanse, a water feature and an "automaton".  Should we be inviting automatons onto our nation's high streets?  That's just asking for the robots to rise up and destroy us.  We may as well just bow down before our new computer gods right now.

What they'd done so far looked good, plenty of clean new paving and, of course, new lamp posts.  It was just away from the High Street that things became problematic.

I have a great affection for what you might call "grimier" cities.  I like a town that works hard and doesn't take your appreciation for granted.  Chester, for example, basically says "We've got a Roman ampitheatre and a medieval wall and some rows.  We're really fucking charming.  You have to like us, or you're an idiot."  It takes your appreciation for granted, and sort of doesn't care about you.

A town that's been knocked about has far more appeal to me.  Somewhere like Doncaster, or Dewsbury, or even Liverpool.  A city that's been kicked about for a bit but has worked its way back up.  It might not be as pretty as others, or have as many tourists, but it's got a reality to it, a healthy cynicism and sense of awareness about its position in the world.

It's no pleasure for me to say that I didn't like Stockton.  I had a good root around, up and down backstreets, through the shopping centre and off the ring road, and it never grabbed me.  It seemed drab and unwelcoming.  It was ugly.  It just didn't seem to care.

I walked around for a bit and finally gave up.  I couldn't find a positive.  I decided to just head for the station.

Worse was to come.  The impressive building at Stockton dates from the end of the 19th Century, and is a wide, elegant structure with a station clock.  It's just that it's not actually part of the station any more.

That lovely brick building is now sheltered accommodation for the elderly.  To reach the actual station, you have to walk through the car park (there are no pavements worth speaking about) and down a side alley to access the platforms.  They're almost apologetic, as though they'll happily disappear if you wouldn't mind sending a bulldozer round.

A rat run of ramps and stairs takes you up and over the tracks.  At the top you can see what Stockton station used to be before it was rationalised and cut back.

I took a seat in the shelter on the platform, and almost immediately it started to rain.  I stared out at a tower block through the mucky glass and thought, I can't end it like this.  This can't be the last station on today's trip.

Thank goodness for Heworth.

It was the only stop on the Northern Rail line between Sunderland and Newcastle.  I hadn't collected it before in my eagerness to get on the Metro, and I didn't think I'd have time to get it on the way back because I'd assumed I'd have walked from Billingham to Stockton.  That bus meant I suddenly had time to spare.  And what was this beautiful, shining beacon on the platform at Heworth?

Short of installing a giant neon sign saying This way for lots of free booze and sex, I don't think they could have made the entrance to the Metro more welcoming.  I resisted the urge to run straight in, giggling maniacally, because of course the Rules of the Blog dictate that I have to actually exit the station.  I took the ramp up to street level, where a bus exchange surrounds the Metro station building, and where Margaret Calvert's friendly sign provided a pleasing spot for my selfie.

Inside the ticket hall was bright and warm.  It was starting to fill up with kids, rushing from school to the train into town.  I bought a ticket - I'd foolishly only bothered with a single to Sunderland earlier - and headed down the steps to the platform.

Once again grinning like an idiot, I wandered up and down, just enjoying being there.  I love the Metro.  Properly love it.

It certainly cheered me after the misery of Stockton.  Soon I was on a little yellow and black train, my foot once again on the hinge, whizzing under the streets and over the river.  There was only one way to finish my day properly.  I walked out of Newcastle Central and into a pub nearby.

I love Newcastle Brown Ale, always have, ever since I used to spend my Friday afternoons drinking it in a pub in Luton after my A-level classes had finished.  It's probably my favourite alcoholic drink and, trust me, I've put in plenty of research.  As a student, it was practically all I drank, until money started getting tight halfway through the term and I'd go onto the cheaper lager.  I'd shared a flat in halls with a Geordie, who'd told me that it's called "Dog" in Newcastle (it being what husbands usually end up with when they tell their wives "I'm just taking the dog out") but I didn't have the guts to ask for it by that name.  Instead I ordered a Newky Brown, and the barman gave it to me with a half-pint glass.  That's how they drink it here; so much classier than me simply necking it from the bottle.

Newcastle: home of a superlative metro and an astonishingly good beer.  I may just retire there.