Five miles ticked off

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola (pic explanation below)

Just managed to pound the easy-to-follow route of Hadrian's Wall from its start to the Millennium Bridge opposite the Baltic art gallery in central Newcastle. We must all be a lot fitter as we knocked off five miles with no problems whatsoever, helped only by jelly babies (Dr Who's favourite sweet).

Lola was disappointed that we saw a small chunk of original wall at the start - and the rest turned out to be hypothetical. It's so real in our minds we're almost tripping over it though...

Luckily we were able to distract her by raving about the route along the Tyne. It is an amazing industrial journey. We saw cormorants by chemical factories, joy riders by old flour mills, kittiwakes near sand depots; helicopters above anglers catching eels and crab; and Friday-nighters downing their year's alcohol units near the electric bus that circles along the Quay and up to the Metro. It made us all realise that there's so much space in Newcastle rhere to be used - or at least there is if you have a bike, two good legs or enough cash to feed the coins-only ticket machines at the Metro. I couldn't resist snapping this name-and-shame poster. So far we've been to six Metro stations and there's not a ticket seller or member of staff in sight - and definitely nothing as useful as an Oyster card or a ticket machine that accepts notes and cards. I think this pleasure in names is a regional thing - at the start of Hadrian's Wall there's even a plaque with some of the names of the men who designed the wall (engineers not foot soldiers).

To the lighthouse

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola

At St Mary's lighthouse, Whitley Bay, we all go into different worlds. I'm thinking Virgina Woolf; Nell is recalling The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch, Lola is excited to find that in 1995 Enid Blyton's Famous Five were filmed for an ITV version of Five go to Demon Rocks. In the lighthouse itself, an 150-step spiral staircase clings to the tower sending Pete into a Hitchcock style panic and has to close his eyes to get back down. It is quite scary, but at the top the views are amazing - to the North there's six or more wind turbines at Blyth and to the south the handsome white dome of the now disused Spanish City funfair at Whitley Bay.

The lighthouse was opened in 1898 and had a distinctive light (which flashed twice every 20 seconds) that could be seen for 17 miles. Now it's automatically organised but in the days when a lighthouse keeper was needed the c/v requirements included basic literacy, numeracy and a full set of working teeth.

The tide cuts off the lighthouse twice a day and so when it goes out you nip across the causeway. If you get the timing right you can search for beasties in the rocky pools. We found lots of kelp (oarweed with a holdfast rooty bit at the bottom), some limpets and the claw of an edible crab. The lighthouse is now run by North Tyneside council and has some fascinating displays of ship building, stuffed birds of the seashore and games for any age. Both girls did a brass rubbing and arranged some limpets into the shape of a starfish and a dolphin. They were so destracted they didn't even want stuff in the shop. That's what I call a result. Best of all they really believe that home is an island.

Take it to the bridge

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola

The kittiwakes of Newcastle famously nest on the struts of the Tyne Bridge (see pic). You know you're at the right spot because there's a strong smell of fish and then if you look up, or cross at the wrong point in the road, you are at serious risk of being hit in the eye by a squirty kittiwake poo full of digested sandeel. We put our hoods up to try and stop this happening but Pete still wanted us to look up and admire the bridge saying it reminded him of Sydney Harbour bridge in Australia.

Sandeels are doing very badly - partly over fishing and partly climate change - but clearly the waters of the River Tyne have enough good food to keep a kittiwake & its three chicks powered up.

A few metres along the quayside Nell spotted a cormorant (a big black bird) drying its wings on the Millennium Bridge (known locally as the blinking eye) ignoring all the pedestrians and cyclists crossing to the Gateshead side by the converted Baltic flour mill which is now an art gallery. As it says on the building's giant wall: "YOU CANNOT HELP LOOKING AT THIS".

Start of Hadrian's Wall

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola


We're breaking ourselves in slowly to the challenge of walking 84 miles along Hadrian's Wall http://www.hadrians-wall.org/ by visiting the start (or the end) in Newcastle upon Tyne. You can get to Wallsend easily on the Metro (like the London tube) and that's where the surprises start: the signs are in Latin (see pic)!

I learnt Latin at school but really only remember the first lesson given by a grumpy teacher who resented telling us that:

"Latin is a language,
As dead as dead can be.
It killed the ancient Romans
And now it's killing me!"

But at Segedunum http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/ the Romans' life in the comforts of a fort is made very real. The bath house - with communal loos (lavatores) and an underfloor heating system (hypocaust) are there to see. You can also go up nine floors to an observation tower and see an overview of the Roman fort where the soldiers and their horses lived. The north side of the site is sliced through by a busy road but looking the other way you can see an original chunk of wall next to the cranes of the Swan Hunter shipyard.

Inside the museum there are loads of computer games including one where you make up a menu for a visiting Roman dignatories. Lola choose snails, then dove, followed by egg custard. I thought dormice, then suckling pig, then omelette with honey poured over the top might be more disgusting. But in the end Nell's choice of squid stuffed with calf brains made us say yuckus louder!

It just proves that school dinners aren't that bad.

Experimenting with life

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola

Our first mission in Newcastle is to go to Chinatown and eat all that we can at one of the 60-dish, all day buffets on offer. After guzzling noodles, seaweed, egg fu yung, stir fried veg, bean sprouts and chips (!) there's a downpour so we decide to cancel the trip along the Quay, and then over Newcastle's fab millennium bridge to the Baltic art gallery. Instead we go to Life - a newish science show, very near the station, that is an absolute cracker. Here science is push and pull, repeat what you did, ask questions, try on, try out. Before the two talks given by young blokes in red aertex shirts (just like the ones staff wear at Woolies, see pic above) on the difference between humans and chimpanzees & stars in the night sky we have enough time to:

• find out that Karachi traffic police are likely to go deaf because the city is SO noisy


• stand under a heat lamp and feel the desert burn


• try and harpoon a seal


• brush dirt and stones off a skeleton


• walk like a gorrilla (with big gorrilla gloves)


• design a human and then watch it walk (mine lay down defeated by its pelvis)

The only drawback was that it was an expensive entry (#22 for a family) and the machine that ages you (as if I need one, that's what a mirror is for isn't it?) wasn't operating. Still, thanks to our famine-feeding at Lau's Buffet King we don't need any dinner money...