A Bimble from Tyne to Wear

Bimbling on from South Shields took me past Roman remains and reminders of this fine river's industrial prime. A vast breakwater protects sandy beaches, alive with activity. A foodie festival stopped me in my tracks and I fuelled up listening to a honky tonk band rocking out on the roof of a bus serving low and slow brisket. Maybe not an ideal repast but there were miles ahead and the gradient looked challenging.  The road was red and the vistas endless as I pushed on stopping to take in the happy vibes as South Tyneside revelled in the last of summer.

I had to stop at the iconic Souter Lighthouse, a monument to the dangers of the coast and the many ships that had past under its beam and heard its siren call through the mists, guiding them to safe haven. Immaculately maintained by the National Trust and its merry band of volunteers I marvelled at their dedication and passion. The sheer power of the light and the ambitious engineering of the whole venture was explained by the father of the lighthouse family, proud in his crow's nest to a captive audience enraptured by the view.  Decades ago the visible panorama was blighted by mines and industrial murk but now the clifftops were green and pleasant and today the sea was pure blue.  I was having trouble imagining the heavy industry and belching fires and even signs of urban decay seemed far from here. The candy coloured column was replicated in Roker and the battery looked majestic as I cycled along yet another sweep of bay packed with amusements and bank holiday merriment.

The mighty Wear where they used to Mackem reared into view. The largest city on this coast and the home of shipbuilding, depending on who you listen to.  A Geordie suggested that they built ships in Newcastle whereas in Sunderland they knocked them out at a huge rate at any price. Meant as a back handed compliment to the industry and initiative of Mackems it was an argument I didn't have time to test. Once in the centre of the city my bike seemed to speed up past a centre blighted by the crisis on our high streets, its grand parks suggesting better times lay behind.  As I whipped past arguing drunks I felt like I had probably made a quick and unfair assessment but it felt like a monument to Ozymandias;

 'Two vast and lifeless trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert. ' 

It could have been my bonking state but this Shelley tip continued as I ground uphill toward County Durham through pit towns with statues hinting at former glories. The incline was slight but constant up Stephenson's old mineral routes which once carried the endless supplies of coal to the Wear from countless collieries with famous names...  Easington, Ryhope Peterlee, Shotton...Each village had its own memorial to the proud miners.. 

 ' its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things '

 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare...

I was entering that state of mild exhaustion and blood sugar depletion that better cyclists plan for. I required an instant fix...  a Mars bar or a flapjack for me and my iron horse. I remember a fight I had at school with a diabetic kid who submitted early,  crying for a Mars bar to save him, or perhaps he was just hungry. Net curtains twitched and gangs of men fiddled with Ford Sierras. I looked in vain for a shop but all I could find were chip shops.  I had a battered sausage in Hetton, a chicken pie in Haswell and a saveloy in Shotton which was the wrong way.  

In my growing delirium I felt the spirit of the land in recovery from exploitation, mined for its ore and pillaged for its black gold, polluted and despoiled and left to fade into a desert socially and ecologically... people left behind to tinker and rust, ghosts of an industrial past. What do you do when all reason is taken away.?..all you ever knew leaving a scar and open wounds upon the landscape and the populace...these are the badlands of Britain, broken and discarded..barren but beautiful...waiting for rain and new growth...

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

...I was lost in a land I didn't understand in a state of weary discombobulation..the fragments were too shattered to piece together..the landscape broken and the people tired and beaten, or was it me... they looked bewildered by this apparition from another land..whats he doing here? was the gaze I got in the chip shop which seemed the heart of the village now the pubs were boarded up..quad bikes roamed the streets, the obese ran with the undernourished and tattooed youths skulked on pitheads long deceased... the rail lines petered out in fields or turned into bridleways ending up in junkyards with snarling dogs warning of illicit deeds beyond...I hit the main road, dispirited, and up it went to the wind farms and vast quarries still eating away at the earth which seemed to cry out and revel in my exhaustion....was I being unkind? ...was my fractured state impinging on my consciousness unable to see truths as I callously passed through these proud and defiant communities...You have to say what you see and I knew I was beaten, I wanted out, journey's end...

The descent into Durham changed everything and it was like I had passed across a border. One which seems to exist across Britain, hiding that which dwells on the edgelands, unseen and unbidden. The Britain we seek lies in hotspots not the land that lies between forgotten and unloved.  I felt a wave of sadness, not pity, for that which I could not comprehend, as I had not the time or the map to it.  I chided myself as I could not do the land justice. It would take patience to understand the living history of Durham County and I could only guess at the rawness of its recent memory. I determined to dwell a while in old Durham town.

A Bimble through North Tyneside

 South Beach, Blyth, marks the start of a cyclist's  dream run down the golden miles to the River Tyne. Distant memories of these beaches covered in tar and coal may be overplayed and on a day like this its hard to imagine these wide expanses of sand being anything but spectacular.  We used to picnic in the dunes and hide from the winds then brave the chilly shallows of the North Sea.  Childhood fun and seaside frolics all the way to Tiddly Bay.

 Each turn of the pedals manipulated cogitations of the mind as I hit the asphalt down memory lane.

 

Seaton Sluice, where the Kings Arms sits proudly atop the headland and the smell of chips never fails to seduce.

 Green parks guide me into Whitley Bay on a warm, late summer evening and there was only one thing to do.  It took a while but the effort was worth it.  Like a cryogenic ice bath the salt eased my weary limbs and signalled day's rest.  I didn't want to get out once the hard work and been done and healthy virtue sprung from every pore as Robert found my sodden, walrus hide beached upon his sandy turf.

 Welcome to Whitley Bay. Much regenerated and shifting in character from a stag venue and Spanish City to a genteel and respectable town. The whole stretch to the ferry defied any popular misconceptions of a rough and ready coastline, besmirched by grime, coke and  shipyards, hard labour of dockworker, miner and fisherman. Dirty British coaster with a salt caked smoke stack.

Carter had been got and vestiges of hardened times were hard to spot in my whistle stop tour of the highlights of North Tyneside's many jewels.

 

Winslow Homer understood the magic light of Cullercoats would offer inspiration and today it would  run St Ives close for one of those TV specials 'Britain's most picturesque harbour '. It would win with the offer of plenty of space on the beach.  

 And the views just came on coming like some fortunate deal or no deal run. St Alfred's Bay crowned by Tynemouth Priory.

 North  Shields was journey' s end for Rob whose father lived by the docks in livelier times. The quay was full of life, buzzing with hipster start ups and community action groups keen to light the fire that will see Geordie pride in place rewarded as the area is regenerated. Some might say this new investment destroys the heart of places but Shields felt like it was on the cusp of something.  To the visitor it has every natural advantage to fascinate and beguile. Rich, maritime history and a working 'Fish Quay' protected by a huge breakwater on the edge of a city burning with regional pride and sure of its identity.  

 I was sad to leave, there was so much more to see as I caught the ferry over to South Shields, a less adventurous choice of carrier than Cuthbert's coracle or Shiel which gave the towns their name when they were lined up on either bank of the Tyne, the fisherfolk's choice of craft. 

A Bimble to Blyth

This was the day of the pilgrimage to the town where my Grandparents lived.  Memories abounded of familiar streets and docks. A terraced house with a coal fire opposite a primary school where I thought Dracula lived.  This was due to my fathers idea of bedtime stories beginning it was a cold dark stormy night and the rain was coming down in torrents .. there was a rat tat tat at the door..'

 We had to get there first though and a quick breakfast fuelled blast found us in exquisitely named Amble by the Sea at the mouth of the River Coquet. It had charm and a buzz that suggested further exploration would reveal its seaport secrets. Route One carried us past uninviting holiday chalets and through a wonderful country park adjacent to stunning empty beaches.

 The road straightened out and ran down the coast.  The beauty of this trip in the height of summer was the relatively quiet roads.  As I was told, if you have the weather there are few coastlines to match this rugged beauty.

 And here is Northumberland's own rugged beauty aiming for the front cover of MAMIL magazine.

 Our one mistake was to be seduced by the possibility of a more adventurous entry to Newbiggin by the Sea.  Despite boulders blocking the seaward path around a chemical plant we explored and slowed considerably, dragging bikes across sand dunes and despoiled, contaminated beaches until popping out on a golf course.  I remember Newbiggin as a child, penny arcades and a windswept churchyard overlooking the bay.

 As is so often the case the town was nothing like I remember. It was trying hard to retain elements of interest as are most seaside towns they forgot to shut down.  After the mines closed, the beaches became cleaner but the people stopped visiting. Newbiggin suffered from erosion and lost its golden sands for a while until half a million tonnes were shipped in for Skeggy.   A maritime centre celebrates its fishy history and glory years as a seaside destination and the council seem determined to draw visitors back with elaborate schemes like commissioning sculptor Sean Henry to create The Couple who look out to sea on the new breakwater. There is a replica on the promenade which I was bemused by. Was this a patronising representation of working class Newbiggin folk or an evocative hymn to the sea?  I wondered what others felt about this statement piece as we cycled along the grand prom and felt endeared to this bay.

 Although we could see Blyth and have since been told about a chain link ferry over the river from Cambois, we decided to take the scenic route using the myriad of cycle lanes that perplexed and confused my sense of direction. Robert of Whitley, with the scent of home on his nostrils, seemed to know the way as we passed through Bedlington home of the pitman's terrier of choice and another church of St Cuthbert.

We hit the Blyth river and apart from the occasional huddles of track suited youths toking on the riverside path it appeared rural and peaceful, not as I remembered. The docks loomed at the mouth all industry and order.  I remember dilapidated, weathered boards resting dangerously on decaying staithes.  An adventure playground for a child but a health and safety nightmare.  The docks were now pristine and managed. The Port of Blyth is now an energy hub servicing offshore wind farms. Huge wooden reels held the cables that would be laid to Norway across the North Sea. The social problems of the past decades seemed out of view of the docks. 'The Spirit of the Staithes' sculpture gleamed on the restored dock, a symbol of regeneration and a memorial to the Port which led the Western world in coal exports. Investment in renewables is evident in the wind farms that lie off the coast and the Port seemed a symbol of hope in a town that had been through tough times.

 I took a spin around the town centre and took in the positives, marvelling at the grand buildings in their faded glory like the Customs House. Ridley Park was abuzz in the sunshine, much changed from the park where we used to sledge down the bank.  Manicured and respectable this was not the Blyth of popular imagination.  This continued along the rest of the coast toward Newcastle.  Gentrification had built on the raw beauty of the coastline and by Whitley Bay in the heat of summer I was wondering if there was a coastline to match it in all the UK. I stopped to see the houses of our imagination.  The school was gone, replaced by retirement homes but the scene was familiar. Aunty Glad's flat looked the same and Forster Street looked as solid as ever.  A man over the road wondered what I was up to taking photos and let me into some hometown secrets. He said it was mostly a good town and although there had been a murder at the end of the road last week, this was out of character and drug related.  A young man had set his dog on his mother. With that cheery thought I hit the front and bid Blyth a fond farewell.