The North East Again - Not a Lot!

With a dodgy weather forecast I decided today would be a good day to go into Newcastle. The original plan had been to go through on the Metro but whilst I could have done so with the small mobility scooter, which folds, I can’t take the large one on so I had to drive. For simplicity I parked in the Eldon Square multi-storey, and found a disabled space right by the entrance to the shops which made life easy, the only problem was it wasn’t a very long space so I had to park in forwards and unload the scooter in the roadway. 

The two objectives were a revisit to the Discovery Museum and to check out the revamped Grainger Market. Once I actually got into the former (there’s building works going on and it’s not very well signposted) I spent a couple of hours just browsing round the displays starting with Turbinia - I first saw the ship back in 1982 when she was sat in a building on the Town Moor by where we were canoeing. 

This was the first turbine powered steamship, built by Charles Parsons in 1894 as an experiment. She was the fastest ship in the world at the time and was famously demonstrated, without an invite, at the 1897 Spithead Review; by 1905 the Admiralty decided all future Navy ships would be turbine powered, and in 1906 The Dreadnought became the first such warship - the turbine continues to this day driving nuclear submarines. 

It’s not often you see a signal lever frame with the safety locking on view and described on the information board.

The Grainger Market, back in the 1980’s when I shopped there, was a busy, and noisy, retail hub with everything from fresh meat and veg to tools and underwear (it’s got the oldest surviving M&S branch). Last time I visited it was mainly full of vape shops and second hand record stores with just a few of the original stalls left but recently it’s been reinvented as a street food venue, still with a couple of butchers and greengrocers and several other stalls. I ended up having Mac and Cheese Carbonara for lunch but could have chosen food from five continents if I’d wished (there were no kangaroo burgers 😀). 

I was proved right on the weather, it started raining just as I left the museum and stopped just as I drove out of the car park! It was so bad at one point I considered getting the anorak out of the scooter bag but that would have meant admitting to being a southern softy - when in Newcastle…