After a moderately hearty breakfast, it was time to leave. Yan, the champ that he is, dropped me and Bink at Wool. Upon reaching London Bink and I parted for the second time (the first time being when we arrived in Hong Kong separately), she on her way too
Berlin and me to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Incidentally, Bink missed her flight due to complications following the previous night’s festivities when she got stuck with caretaker duty.
Newcastle was a six and a half hour train ride north. The day was one of those perfectly blue sky days that you wouldn't expect to see, but there you have it. The countryside was dominated by rolling plains broken with small clumps of trees. It was a really delightful trip north. The first impression of Newcastle is of a singularly dreary place, no surprise given that it is one of the northernmost cities in England. An impression reinforced by the dullness of the buildings. see for yourself.
In the south it had been a very balmy 24 degrees and thus I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, stepping out onto the platform a few hundred kilometers north of the south coast, the weather differed markedly, by about 10 degrees. It was damned cold and I was shivering by the time I reached my accommodation, a nice little hostel called the Albatross that had been voted the best in
England last year. As it was a week day I got lucky and had a 6 person room all to myself. So I promptly started spreading my stuff all over the place. And bonus of bonuses, right across from my room was the laundry! So my gear got a good clean, or at least as good a clean as I was going to get without washing powder.
Having hauled my carcass into some decidedly warmer gear, I took a bit of a stroll around the place. Newcastle is a fairly small city of around a quarter of a million people. The first thing that struck me was that it looked old. There were a lot of the old style buildings, but there were a disproportionate number of bars, pubs and clubs. Also the people were fairly rough, not in the sense that they were getting into fights and what not, but there was a very raw quality to the people. The people mostly speak a dialect called Geordie, which is Scottish sounding English with a few words changed. They made the place feel like a frontier town. 
It was a far cry from the polished politeness of London. The whole place felt like a cross between Gosford, Newcastle (at home) and Old Sydney Town. This is the rather uninspiring monument quite simply known as Monument, below which is... you guessed it...Monument Metro Station.
No matter where I go in the world, I come across odd sights and not many got odder than this. The Sydney Deli. Offering an Australian style self service sandwich bar. Since when was there such a thing? It looked more like a Subway...
Despite such oddities, there are some nice looking buildings in Newcastle, such as this one. 
However, as nice as it might be to keep strolling around, the sun was setting and I began to have doubts that it would be all that safe to move around town when there were so many pubs, bars and clubs around. I've never seen so many people standing around drinking in a city before.
I found this city to be distinctly disappointing and so rather than brave the streets alone at night I returned to the hostel and settled down for some tea and a long bout of blogging.
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