#96 September 3, 2022. Nomad Diary. Newcastle on Tyne. Transplanted Alabama Family. Tynemouth. Hadrian's Wall. North Shields. South Shields.
Saturday Activities. 3. Today I want to go back to South Shields and tell Darrell. I want to go to a restaurant for lunch that doesn’t open until 1pm that we saw on Friday while there. It’s called Italianish Spanish, and the menu looked really nice with vegetable options. So we decide to go later and start with lunch then walk south along the coast, but not overdo ourselves. Lunch was really good and our walk brought us to some scenic rocky coastline. It was a nice slow day for us. I did some wash today that I have to hang dry over two days so that it’s ready to pack on Monday morning when we travel to Edinburgh.
Week’s Highlights.
Friday. 2. Today we take the short walk from our flat down to the river and get the ferry across to South Shields. There is quite a crowd of people taking the ferry over, and we arrive close to an open market with tents and vendors set up on our walk into town. We look around a little and then head on into town. I want to go to the North Sea coast and walk out to the lighthouse at the end of their 1 mile long pier! We enjoy stopping for a cappuccino, then walking by shops and restaurants and through a park on our way to the lighthouse. It’s a beautiful sunny day. As we walk back toward town, Darrell is wanting to eat fish and chips for lunch here near the sea. So we google to get a restaurant and ratings and agree once we walk by a couple of the places and pick the one we want to go to. This restaurant is mostly serving fried fish and french fries called chips. We get our orders and peel most of the fry coating off to avoid all the excess fat. The fish is fresh and hot and just needs a little salt and lemon and it’s tender and filling. We walk back to the ferry, take the 7-10 minute ride across the Tyne to North Shields, then walk straight uphill most of the way back to our flat.
Thursday. 1. We feel ready to see a little more of Hadrian’s Wall today. We take the metro to Manors Station and walk east mostly along the Tyne River to Wallsend and the Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum. The day is sunny and the walk is mostly through the woods. The path is paved and lined with blackberries ready for picking. We eat some along the way. We spend about an hour at the museum and then walk a block into town for lunch. After a fabulous gyro we take the Metro back to North Shields.
Wednesday. 31. Today is recovery day from our long walk yesterday. We sleep in until at least 6am! Lol. Then we do our daily exercise ddp yoga routine. Darrell makes pancakes. He seems to be making pancakes more often here, 2-3 times a week rather than 1 time on Saturday. It may be a subtle or not so subtle source of comfort for us. We hang out at our flat doing duolingo Spanish and other computer things like reading the news and checking in on Facebook for our social updates. Part of the time of living this way includes hand-washing dishes. It takes a bit more time to do it this way. With Darrell cooking often, I am freed up to do other things like keep the laundry organized and circulated. It is such a challenge to what we are used to in the US with a full separate dryer and laundry room! Around noon Darrell finds a restaurant on google that we can walk to down by the waterfront. I look at the pictures and info and agree to this Italian restaurant. We get there and are pleasantly surprised that there are a bunch of nice looking places on this block and we are still in North Shields. We enjoy meandering around the waterfront after a delicious lunch. We read the history information markers and take pictures. As we take a different path back to our flat, we see some parts of North Shields that are being refurbished. It’s nice to know that this town is investing in cleaning up this way. The flat we are staying in seems to be on the border of this balance in this town. It’s pretty nice, but the neighborhood is challenged with trash and graffiti. We call and talk to Darrell’s Mom. She’s been getting used to getting our calls on different day than Saturday. She always gives us the update on Dad who has been challenged for several years with his short-term memory. Mom has been his main caregiver, but with her health challenges it’s been especially tough. A few years ago, they moved into Darrell’s sister’s home, and she is their main helper even though she still works full-time and has a daughter still at home. They are stretched for energy many days, but they are doing as best they can to live together. Cyndy’s daughters, including the two who have moved away, show up to help in so many ways. We so appreciate their family and care of Mom and Dad.
Tuesday. 30. We have spent some time looking into how to get to Hadrian’s Wall and where to go for our time there. Today is the day that we take the metro to Central Station. From here we get a train to Hexham. In Hexham we wait at the bus stop for the AD122 bus. On this bus we ride to Housesteads Roman Fort and arrive around 9:20. The shop opens at 10am but the restrooms are accessible. There are 3 other people who get off the bus there with us. We have plotted out to walk from this place going east to Chesters, about 10 miles. At Housesteads we enter the gate and follow the path directing us up the large hill toward the Roman Ruins. The clouds are grey today with a bit of chill in the air. There are sheep grazing throughout the mountainside. We can see for miles. The sweeping valleys and farms are beautiful. Darrell is carrying a backpack with our filter water bottles and a light lunch. We get to the old fort and walk around the walls toward the border wall that is stretching out over the mountain ridge. It’s astounding and amazing to think that this is 1900 years old! Some of the wall is preserved. Some has been torn down through the centuries and the stones used in other buildings and projects. Some is ground level or below the earth overtaking the soldiers work from times past. It’s an exhilarating experience to see this far reaching view in all directions. We pass a father and son who stopped to eat their breakfast. The people who got off the bus with us went off walking to the west as Housesteads is 2 miles east of the famous sycamore tree. We walk on.
Monday. 29. Today we take the metro to Tynemouth, the next stop towards the coast from North Shields. We have really good coffee, and buy some fancy in-house made chocolates. This town is set up for tourists with restaurants as you walk toward the coast and see the Priory ruins and the old castle. We tour the peninsula with the ticket price covered on our English Heritage Pass. It’s a beautiful day to be on the North Sea at 55 degrees latitude. We have lunch, fish and chips at a highly rated place. Then we walk north going along the coastal sidewalk with so many others who are enjoying the beaches and sunny weather. We pick up the metro at Whitley Bay and get back to North Shields.
Sunday. 28. This is our first morning in North Shields. North Shields is on the end of the Tyne River just before it flows into the North Sea. It is a fishing town, and there are fish markets and restaurants next to the river. We are about a block from the local Metro train that runs two lines in circles with Newcastle on Tyne being the central and largest city just inland. We know that there is a church of Christ here that Darrell has contacted. A member has emailed him back about when and where to arrive. They meet at a community center just off of a Metro stop that will take us 20-30 minutes to get to. We make our breakfast from our grocery shopping haul last night. We arrive at the community center around 9:30 am. The sign says that they start at 10:30, and no one is here yet. We begin to explore the neighborhood for restrooms, coffee, and an atm. We go for a walk and find all of the above, but don’t stop for coffee. We get back to the center before 10:30 and meet Graeme who is carrying his just shopped groceries, and is here to unlock and set up. We help put out chairs and he gets the communion trays ready for our worship. He explains how people arrive and how it isn’t a solid time to start but a flexible time between 11 and 11:15 am. We meet the members as they arrive, Paul, Jacob and Katy with 4 kids, Amos and his wife and 3 kids from Nigeria and another man from Nigeria. Jacob is leading the Bible class and Katy takes all the kids to class with her. We finish our class and following worship with singing (Amos), preaching(Paul), and communion(Graeme) around 1pm. We have had time to get to know each other. Jacob is a chiropractor and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama about 90 miles from where we lived the last 14 years near Huntsville, Alabama. He and Katy moved here about 3 years ago after trying to live in Norway and deciding to come here instead. I get his chiropractic info and set up a time to get a treatment this same afternoon because he is taking the family on vacation to Loch Ness for the week. The chairs get put away and Graeme asks Darrell to preach next Sunday. He accepts. We go on the metro to eat lunch on our way to find Jacob’s house for chiropractic treatments. We have a very good pub lunch! Lol. As we know, some pubs are really poor at food and service but you can’t always tell until you’ve invested yourself for a significant amount of time. Today’s lunch was fab! We walked up to Jacob’s house and he was ready with his table set up in the small living room. Katy was getting lunch served to their kids and we chatted about their trip to Scotland tomorrow, and some of their activities getting ready today. I got my adjustment and Darrell decided to get one too. We booked for another treatment next Sunday afternoon too. Katy offered us a cup of coffee and we accepted because we really wanted some good coffee and she had it! Lol. Somewhere in our visiting together, Katy realized that she knows our daughter in law Andea. In fact, they share a birthday and knew one another as children in Tennessee for many years. Darrell sends a text photo to Andrea and asks if she knows this woman, and Andrea texts right back with glee! That was fun! We ride the metro back to North Shields, make ourselves salads for dinner and chill with some British tv shows like “Salvage Hunters”, similar to American Pickers.
Looking out of our flat in North Shields. We always felt safe, but there was spray paint damage to our building front while we were here.
Nomad Notes: Being in England we have discovered that people generally sleep later into the morning and eat breakfast later in the morning. We have found very few early breakfast places to go to. So we are usually making our breakfast early in the morning which we enjoy and do quite well. In addition to restaurants opening for breakfast between 8 and 10 am, lunch begins at noon at most places. Lunch can linger into late afternoon and end at 3-4 which runs into ‘tea time’. Cultural meal times and what food is available is quite humorous to me as it is so different from what we are used to in the US.
This flat is a story of extremes. Extreme good and extreme bad (lol) with some redemption in the middle parts. We arrive situated a block from the metro and we don’t hear it! This is excellent in location and convenience. We can’t find the key box, “beside the door”. A pizza maker from across the street sees us and knows our familiar dilemma. He comes and shows us where the key box is, down about 2 doors, around the corner in a parking carport and facing the back wall. We would not have found this with the original description. We get inside. The lock on our apartment door is fiddly. I’ll leave it at that, but because of Darrell’s experience in home repairs and house building, he is able to figure out how to work the fiddly part! We are inside and looking around and discovering that this place is mediocre at best. Why? Well, the carpet is vacuumed but has some stains. Still everything looks clean, and even cleaner than some other places we have been in the US. So, I remove comparisons and we have no bath towels. Darrell notifies our host. Other things are: a microwave with rust and a melted door (really!), a hole in the fabric in the back of the sofa, the washing machine is locked closed with a lot of suds inside it (?), no salt, no pepper, or oil or coffee maker. We are a bit disappointed, but I remind Darrell that it is clean and we are paying a bargain price too. They deliver the towels. I get the washer rinsed out and working. The rooms are quiet. We have our own french press and it is just 9 nights. As I write this a week later, I am comfy here and I am quite content. We have found this an excellent location and eventually we have been able to find fabulous restaurants for lunch or dinner meals. We also found a supermarket closer to our flat too.
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