Day 2: Gateshead
First thing’s first. For anyone who feels like heading to Gateshead at some point, don’t make the mistake that I made this morning. I asked a local man if Gateshead was part of Newcastle. It seems that it was the equivalent of me asking him for a candlelit supper beside the Tyne Bridge that evening. In fact, the offer of a dinner date may have been met with a more favourable response. So I can now, quite clearly and categorically, state that Gateshead is NOT part of Newcastle. It may be separated by less than a kilometre, and both share the same river – The Tyne – but people in Gateshead feel very much separate and apart from their larger and more heavily publicised neighbours. Gateshead was once jam-packed with Industry – rope works, shipbuilding, and various other manufacturing enterprises. It was literally the heart of manufacturing in this region. It was difficult for me to imagine this as I looked at a very different Gateshead in the 21st Century. Over the last ten years the whole landscape has altered and changed. Make no mistake, by the early 1990s Gateshead appeared dead on its feet. Most manufacturing firms left to either go to more spacious premises on the edge of the city, or even left the country altogether. For instance, so much shipbuilding went to South Korea. But more of that later.
So. What’s changed? Well, firstly, having got off at Newcastle Central station after a harassing and frankly miserable train journey my first job was to get across to the other side of the river (to the south side) to Gateshead. I decided to take a longer route to visit the Newcastle Quayside first. When I arrived it was early on in the day – around eleven o’clock – but despite being quiet now, you could easily imagine the hustle and bustle of a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. Or actually, any night in Newcastle. Every night seems to be party night.
I arrived at the Pitcher and Piano bar. Close by was the new bridge for a new millennium. Not surprisingly, it is called the Millennium Bridge, or the winking bridge because of the fact that it tips sideways to allow boats to pass beneath. This was expensive. I managed to pick up a leaflet with information about it. Apparently, the bridge cost around £22million! For a bit of metal! And you’ll never guess how many permanent jobs it created; one! Evidently, this person’s job is to press the button when the job is to tilt up, and presumably to check that there are no people on the bridging being tilted at the same point. However, it was important for other reasons. It joined up Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides and has encouraged people to visit the attractions on the other side of the river.
So, I crossed the bridge. And what an experience it was. It was like….well…crossing a bridge. I wondered if I had missed something. But it did its job, looks quite pretty and got me to where I wanted to go – the Baltic Flour mill. I had heard all about this. It used to be a Hovis flour mill; I had to put up with some terrible jokes from my Geography teacher about this, who said that the people who owned it were upper crust…that they used their loaf when they decided not to knock it down, but to renovate it instead…that there have been few crumbs of comfort for the people who lost their jobs. Oh dear.
So – its now a Visual Arts Gallery. And it was actually quite good. For a start, it was free.
And I’m from Yorkshire and am half Scottish, so the word ‘free’ is a marvellous and much under-rated term. From the top of the Baltic Flour mill, you could see for miles. That is, you would be able to if the world’s widest man wasn’t stood right in front of me. He also had an uncanny knack of waving his arms in front of my face. In between, I could see the new Music Hall – The Sage – glistening in the sunlight. Its metal shell made it look a bit like a metal slug. But its created a fair number of jobs, attracted lots of tourists (they reckon half a million a year) and artists such as Sting and classical performers have been there. As I scanned the skyline I could see the Baltic Quay private housing development. I overheard an American couple in the lift talking about a guy who had bought an apartment there for a million pounds thinking that Newcastle/Gateshead would get European City of Culture for 2008. But Liverpool stole it from underneath their noses. And the same guy lost hundreds of thousands on his property in days. Gutted.
The apartments have attracted more young people back into the city though. Of course, they pay taxes, go drinking and for meals (which creates more jobs) and it has helped to revitalise the area. There’s also a Hilton Hotel there and a twenty screen cinema. I went there on the afternoon, mainly to escape the rain. As I went into the cinema, I did notice a lot of youths hanging around and I did wonder what these developments have done for poorer, local people. But it is an improvement, and it is a start. I’m sure I’ll see worse problems when I arrive in Rio.
