Newcastle, Rivers, Bridges and Sketches

We decided on a random trip to Newcastle for this spring’s random couple of days away, for no real reason other than having never been there. I have to say I was not sure what to make of Newcastle, and I’m still not – I think that we definitely only scratched the surface of the place in the time we were there, staying mostly along the Tyne Bridge area and the City Centre due to limited time. So here’s some thoughts and some photos and stuff..

One thing I did aim for, with reasonable success was to actually do some art while there, packing a few sketchbooks and a small Cotman sketch set I got for Christmas from my stepson. Starting on the train…

So… First impressions. It was nice of course to travel on one of the TPE Nova 1 Class 802s, a little bit of train geekery to start with. Considering they are basically the same design they manage to be a little more comfortable than the Azumas, and the TPE Livery looks great. I think I had expected Newcastle to be a lot more industrial, and of course many parts of it are, but the city centre has retained a lot of its Victorian Architecture and not become too overcome with modern eyesores.

Of course Newcastle has to be appreciated for its bridges, and I have a mild interest in the railway infrstructure (from playing Train Simulator). We booked an hotel right under the Tyne Bridge. Annoyingly this is undergoing a fairly complex maintainance at the moment and is quite covered in scaffholding, but it’s still a very impressive sight, and the over 1000 pairs of Kittwakes that nest there are certainly something to see, and indeed to hear!

The area under the Tyne bridge makes me think of Brooklyn, with the towering metal bridge over the large Victorian Buildings and these wide angle shots really show the scale of being beneath this structure. Of course my artistic side also spent a while pondering the iconic green and how it might be produced – I thought Oxide of Chromium, Gemini would suggest PG7, PW6, PBk6 and sometimes PY42 in modern formulations of the Hollybush Green now being used, though I suspect Oxide of Chromium may have been the original pigment.

We actually first thought about a trip to Newcastle last year (but ended up going to London instead) in part attracted by the devloping waterfront. I have to say this was a little dissapointing – some of this does not seem to have taken off, and the pop up summer area round Trakol has closed. However it’s a pleasent area to explore, even if the nicest pub (to my mind) is just a Wetherspoons. We started with an afternoon walk round over the Millenium Bridge to the Gateshead side, and back over the swing bridge before wandering up to the cathedral and castle.

Visually though the Quayside does come alive at night, with the various bridges and the lights on the water. As a little photographic aside, this trip has made me think a little – I have found mysefl doing less photography recently, and while I took my 60D with me, I am finding this much more of a pain to lug about these days, and a lot of my work on this trip – especially these night time shots was just done on my phone. The quality from my Pixel is top notch, though I do miss the control of the DSLR. This is something I am thinking about and may look at investing in something smaller.

We went up into the city centre the next day. This is where I think I was less impressed with Newcastle as a place to visit. Of course a highlight for me was Details – an art supply shop to rival those I visited in London, with great stuff, and was nice to get some reduced end of line Michael Harding Oils.

Grainger Market was definitely worth a visit, though a lot of what I would have like to buy there was food, which is always a pain when staying in hotels and travelling without a fridge! Grey’s monument adds a touch of London vibes and the Huge Fenwicks is definitely worth going into – again I could have spent a fortune there had it not been for carrying it home…

What’s missing, at least obviously is more interesting independant shops. I think this is definitely something that going back and going out of the city a little would need. We visited the Laing gallery – more on that in a future post.

I visited the Baltic Gallery, which again I’ll include in a seperate post later. Perhaps the highlight was dinner in the recently re-opened Dobson and Parnell which we noticed opposite our hotel window and I had done this sketch of the evening before. This was great, and the food was exciting and modern.

A couple more evening shots while walking this off, before a glass of wine back in Wetherspoons…

Of course, another famous Newcastle thing is the Stottie – we’d looked at recomended bakeries, many of which were out of the city, but while waiting for the train noticed Pink Lane, an unassuming little alleyway, though at the end is Pink Lane Bakery – which we nearly missed. Stotties for the train were aquired…

As I said, I do think we only scratched the surface, which is of course a liklihood in larger cities when you don’t know them. I’d definitely like to go back, and see more.

As I also said, I did aim to try and do some art, and spent some time in the evening sketching – here’s a few from while I was there and when I got home.