The GardenDespatches from The Satyrs’ Forest

Posts in EnglishPage 16

Autumn

¡ Tagged as autumn, life ¡ Leave a comment
A small covered shelter in a park surrounded by auburn-leaved trees.
Jesmond Dene in the autumn, courtesy of Newcastle Libraries.

It often feels like, as soon as the calendar ticks over from 22 to 23 September, that autumn, having hidden its face for months upon months, all of a sudden decides to come out all at once. Auburn leaves begin to fall, telling the time until winter like an hourglass; the days get shorter and the nights come earlier, the air gets that particular autumn crispness, and, of course, it begins to rain.i

Not that i’m complaining. Autumn is, in my view, the most wonderful season of the year: yes, summer is nice and warm, and winter is the time for comfort and gezelligheid with family and friends, but autumn is when our festivities are perhaps the closest to how they were millennia ago. Echoes of the last harvest festivals of the year still ring (school assemblies for the young, pumpkin spice for the jaded), and whatever you want to call it — Hallowe’en, All Hallows’ Eve, Samh­ain, Day of the Dead — the atmosphere about that midautumn celebration beats even Christmas for the best time of the year; for a whole month, the western world lets itself get a little morbid for a changeii, and the celebrations have the good sense to get out of the way quietly once November shuffles along.

So. Happy autumn, everyone! Enjoy it while it lasts.

Links for the 27th of September

¡ Tagged as links ¡ Leave a comment

It's been far too long, hasn't it? (Rest assured, i have been continuing my walk along the Blyth and Tyne railway — just at a rather glacial pace…)

Walking the Blyth and Tyne, part one: Northumberland Park to Seghill

¡ Tagged as Northumberland, transport, Tyne and Wear, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ One comment

Last time on The Garden: the axe falls on the Blyth and Tyne line, and i foolhardily decide to walk its length…

A modern looking metro station divided into two platforms, opening up to the sky above.

Our journey begins at North­um­ber­land Park, in North Tyneside. Though it’s the first station we’ll be visiting, it was the last to be constructed, having only opened in 2005 — and it’s quite easy to tell, even after sixteen years of wear and tear; the place is outfitted with modern amenities, lifts, ticket machines flush with the wall, and, more lately, pandemic-themed graffiti opposite the platform. This unassuming metro station will, according to the county council’s plans, serve as the interchange between the old and new lines, heavy rail and metro meeting one last time before splitting apart and going their separate ways.

A colourful graffito of the word "Pandemik", spelt with a K for reasons unknown.
A modern car park with frosted glass panels juts into the cloudy sky.

Setting off from there, the first thing that caught my eye were twin giants: a frosted glass-covered car park and a red-brick Sainsbury’s, unexpected icons of the modern British condition. It didn’t get much better from there; down the road lies an American-style strip mall lined with bookmakers trying to get people to piss away all their money.

A shopping trolley lies half submerged in a sorry looking scummy stream.
This sorry-looking trolley was, i presume, abandoned from the local Sainsbury’s.

This southernmost tip of North­um­ber­land is criss-crossed by innumerable public footpaths, cycle paths, bridleways, and other routes for non-metal-box-related transport; ducking onto one of the reclaimed “waggonways” once used to transport coal, i found myself on the site of the second station on the list.

Twin rail tracks stretch into the background.

The leafy suburb of Backworth has a habit of burying its history. A hoard of offerings from Roman times was found underground in the 1810s, the last vestiges of the colliery that once was are long gone, and the tale of this sorry ex-station is rather similar. Opened in 1864 to replace a nearby station closing the same day, Back­worth station served its community for over 100 years, surviving the Beeching cuts. But when the Tyne and Wear Metro was announced to come to town, the old station finally closed… for good. It wasn’t until the opening of North­um­ber­land Park that there would be a replacement.

As i wandered through the village's verdant streets, i couldn’t help but think of its resemblance to the straight, cycle-friendly streets of my old hometown. A little greenery can go a long way.

Behind wire fences and train tracks, a van belonging to Network Rail is visible.
A jet-dark pedestrian underpass, its entrance covered in graffiti.
The graffiti reads “Monty Brown is a grass”. I would never say such unkind things about Mr Brown.

Network Rail were hard at work at the site of the aforementioned original Back­worth station, whose plot of land now sits vacant, marking the city’s last hurrah; the further i walked along the dirt back roads, the further the sounds of bustling cars receded, until, ducking under a shady underpass, i found myself utterly alone amongst pastoral fields (and the overwhelming scent of manure).

Hay bales cover a rolling field of wheat.

That peace and quiet was swiftly interrupted by a troupe of boy racers on motorcycles and quad-bikes, but you can’t win them all, you know?

The border between Northumberland and North Tyneside is highlighted in the middle of an unmarked dirt path.
After the county borders were hacked up in 1974, this line became the divider between rural Northumberland and ostensibly-urban Tyne and Wear.

The (post-1974) border town of Seghill occupies only the tiniest fragment of the collective English consciousness, popping up briefly in an anti-scab miners’ folk song called “Blackleg Miner”:

It’s in the evening after dark,
when the blackleg miner creeps to work
With his moleskin pants and dirty shirt
there gans the blackleg miner!

[...]

So, divvint gan near the Seghill mine
Across the way they stretch a line,
to catch the throat and break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner

[...]

So join the union while you may
Divvint wait till your dying day,
for that may not be far away,
you dirty blackleg miner!

A corner shop by the name of "Station House Stores"

For our purposes, it’s chiefly notable for the fact that it’s the first disused station on the list whose buildings are still intact and in use, this time as a corner shop, from which i of course bought a copy of the local rag — prominently including a Q&A about the restoration of service on the line, which i thought a fitting reminder of why i set out on this silly old journey in the first place.

After getting some well deserved rest, i headed on off towards the next town over, awaiting what fresh stories i would find...

Next time on “Walking the Blyth and Tyne”: your author is reminded of her own mortality, finds himself in the company of a noble family, and shudders at the thought of having to go to Blyth, of all places on Gods’ green Earth

Walking the Blyth and Tyne: an introduction

¡ Tagged as Northumberland, transport, visits, Walking the Blyth and Tyne ¡ Leave a comment
A montage of scenes around Northumberland, with the caption: "Walking the Blyth and Tyne (a railway odyssey on foot)"
Photo credits: Martin Beek, Reading Tom, bazzadarambler, yellow book

It’s March of 1963. The island of Great Britain is in the throes of its coldest winter in two decades, senior frontbench MP Harold Wilson was recently handed the reins of the Labour party, the Beatles have just released their debut album, and, somewhere in the bowels of Whitehall, Dr Richard Beeching is writing a report that will change the country’s connecting tissue forever.

Dr Beeching, you see, is the chairman of British Railways, the state-owned company in charge of rail transport, and they’re in a spot of financial trouble. British Railways are in charge of running fifteen thousand miles of track shuttling between about four and a half thousand stations, and the only way they can do that is via generous subsidies from Her Majesty’s Government — something which the governing Conservatives, as a rule, are never too happy about.

So, pen in hand, he takes a metaphorical axe to the network, marking about half of the island’s stations for closure. It’s not pleasant, but it has to be done — and, after all, people can just take the car to their nearest station if their town’s is shut.i I’m sure it won’t be too bad.

An old map displaying the former lines of the Blyth and Tyne Railway, along the coast of southern Northumberland

That's how, a year later, the last passenger trains ran along 5,000 miles of railway across England, Scotland, and Wales, including those connecting the mining heartland of industrial Northumberland. The Tyne and Wear Metro, opened in 1980, allowed some of these lines to reopen in Newcastle’s suburbs and (relatively) affluent coastal communities. But just a few miles north, the former Blyth and Tyne Railway has lain dormant ever since the axe fell… until now.

In recent years, the stars have aligned, and both the county council and Westminster have agreed to reopen the line, finally bringing these proud towns back together. The Blyth and Tyne Railway, now rechristened by the more attractive name of the Northumberland Line, is set to reopen by 2024. To celebrate this historic moment, i thought i’d see what has become of the stations and towns that were. I’ve identified fourteen stations, past, present, and future, along the line, and i’ll be walking between each of them in turn, seeing what stories they tell. The list includes:

  • Northumberland Park, the metro station ready and waiting to become the new line’s interchange
  • Backworth (the second)
  • Backworth (the first), already long closed by the time the axe fell
  • Seghill
  • Seaton Delaval, planned for reopening
  • Hartley Pit / Hartley, two old stations just metres apart
  • Newsham, planned for reopening
  • Blyth, on an old branch line
  • Blyth Bebside, planned for reopening
  • Bedlington, planned for reopening
  • North Seaton, now subsumed within Ashington’s town area
  • Ashington, planned for reopening
  • Woodhorn, listed on early plans for reopening but mysteriously disappeared since
  • Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, no longer in existence but with the route there safeguarded just in case

Won’t you join me?

August 2021 recap

¡ Tagged as monthly recaps ¡ Leave a comment

As the month winds up and summer draws to a close, it's time again for the menstrual (not that kind!) look back on the month that was.

Films watched

A ticket stub for The Suicide Squad
  • Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — I want to live inside of this film, and if that is not possible, i will somehow find a way to hang the entire thing on my wall. A strong contender for my second favourite film ever. (A+)
  • Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) — You do have to wonder if their German and French was actually any good. (A)
  • Ilya Naishuller’s Nobody (2021) — A good action film with fun setpieces which i’ll probably forget i ever watched. (C)
  • James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021) — I went to the cinema for the first time since the pandemic began to watch this — I think i would have taken just about anything! (B)

Albums listened to

  • The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — I am not entirely sure i could give this album an objective ranking after all these years of it being talked up, so, uh, (Classic/10) [Best track: A Day in the Life]
  • Chvrches’ Screen Violence — It’s.... fine, i guess? Not their best, not their worst. (C) [Best track: Better If You Don’t]
  • Lucy Dacus’s Home Video — Beautiful. Just beautiful. (B+) [Best track: Triple Dog Dare]
  • Green Day’s American Idiot — By the end of it it all starts sounding a bit same-y. (C+) [Best track: American Idiot]
  • Will Wood’s The Normal Album — Chaotic good. (A-) [Best track: I / Me / Myself]

Miscellaneous photos and videos

Suburban buildings rise from above a farm full of horses, including a pub and a block of flats.
The dull but eminently photographable town of Bedlington.
On the roof of a building in a crowded city, some chairs, a plastic table, and a ladder up to a small wooden platform.
Surreptitiously taken from the Tyne Bridge. I can only hope the shop owner isn’t going to sue me.
The giant label of Monument metro station stretches into the background.
The beautiful view from the Metro over the river Tyne.
A mosaic of clouds overlooking a mountain is set above the signage at Gateshead's underground station.

Links for the 28th of August

¡ Tagged as links ¡ Leave a comment

Can you guess the Radiohead song from under a second of audio?

¡ Tagged as music, Radiohead ¡ One comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5h7nQdWhKg

Best i could do was 8 out of 15, only one better than the gentleman in the video.

You could make a good webpage out of quizzes like these — i don’t know if i’d be willing to risk the copyright claims, but if anyone else wants a go at it, you’re very welcome to the idea.

The Victoria Tunnel

¡ Tagged as Newcastle, Northumberland, Ouseburn, tunnels, Tyne and Wear, visits ¡ Leave a comment

The Victoria Tunnel runs beneath the streets of Newcastle, from the Tyne up to the Town Moor. It traverses not only space, but time, through nearly every corner of England’s history: built to transport coal in the Industrial Revolution, on the site of an old Roman spring, it was used during the second world war to house those fleeing German bombs. It was even considered for use in the cold war, before the government realised that some musty old coal tunnels would probably not provide the greatest protection against a nuclear blast.

And now you can go down it. In 2007, Newcastle City Council decided to refurbish the tunnel and open a small stretch of it — the rest is either unsafe for sending humans down or currently in use as a sewer — up for public tours. Entry is via a side street along the Ouseburn, where the guides will cheerfully show you a map and some old photographs of the entrance. Once you get inside the tunnel itself, hard hats and torches are compulsory, and covid restrictions are still in full force. This was both a benefit and a malefit: yes, the tour was shorter than it would otherwise be, and masks get quite uncomfortable when you’re wearing them for an hour in a dank, dark tunnel, but on the other hand, our small group of family and friends got the place practically all to ourselves, without having to be shepherded alongside other members of the public.

The water from the ancient Roman spring is directed through a side channel, to avoid it getting all over the tunnel floor. Sometimes it even works!

The tunnel is just barely wide enough to fit three people side-by-side, and if, like me, you’re of a certain height, bumping your head on the roof is practically guaranteed. By every blast door, there’s a plaque about what’s above you, and how it factors into the tunnel and the city’s history, stories with which the guides will gladly regale visitors (including some rather grim tragedies).

Coming back out the entrance, i felt more informed about this wonderful county’s industrial history — just in time to pop over to a gentrified vegan “superfood pub”. The wonders of modern life.

Information for prospective visitors

  • Tours can be booked on the Ouseburn Trust’s website.
  • Price: ÂŁ9–11 per adult depending on the length of the tour; ÂŁ4 per child
  • Address:
    Victoria Tunnel Entrance, Ouse St., Valley, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 2PF
    — just next to the CrossFit gym.
  • Accessibility: The tunnel was built in the 19th century and without accessibility in mind, so is not wheelchair-accessible. The Ouseburn Trust do, due to the pandemic, offer a virtual tour.
  • Getting there: The Q3 bus from the centre of town stops nearby; otherwise, getting there poses a bit of a hike, due to its location.

Links for the 20th of August

¡ Tagged as links ¡ One comment

Links for the 14th of August

¡ Tagged as links ¡ Leave a comment

High Force

¡ Tagged as County Durham, visits, waterfalls ¡ Leave a comment

Nestled amongst County Durham’s moors and Pennine peaks lies England’s mightiest waterfall. The waters of High Force tumble over 22 metres and 300 million years of stone, down into the plunge pool below. The falls were formed where the river Tees meets the Great Whin Sill, a tough slab of igneous rock covering much of the north of England.

When the water level is high enough, the force splits into two streams, one going the other way around the rocks — after storms, it can even overflow the plateau entirely. Alas, despite recent showers, my group were not so lucky.

The Raby family, owners of the estate, charge £2 to see the view from the base of the falls. The falls tower over any mere human who dares navigate down, demanding one’s respect and attention… and making it unmissable that, at the top of the falls, there are several people who walked their on their own via the Pennine Way, not having to pay a single dime. Drat.

Information for visitors

  • Address:
    High Force, Forest-in-Teesdale, Barnard Castle, County Durham, DL12 0XH.
  • Getting there: Public transit connections are few and far between this far into the countryside, so your best bet is to take a scenic drive via car through the Pennines and the nineteenth-century village of Middleton-in-Teesdale.
  • Price: The Raby estate charges ÂŁ2 to access via the bottom, but the top can be freely accessed by a hike along the Pennine Way.
  • Opening times: 10:00–16:00.
  • Accessibility and facilities: The trail is not, to my knowledge, wheelchair-accessible. The site contains toilets and a hotel for anyone wanting to stay the night.

July 2021 recap

· Tagged as Fargo, Inside №9, links, monthly recaps, Paddington, The Big Lebowski · Leave a comment

The month of July is almost over, so it’s time for the traditional wrap-up of all that happened.

On the nineteenth of the month, with just over half of our population fully vaccinated against the virus, England finally opened up and embraced full covid anarchy, come what may. For me, the primary feeling was an overwhelming sense of relief: no more having to suffocate myself with a mask at the shops, no more will-they-won’t-they, just… getting on with life.

I’ve taken the opportunity that is the unlocking to (vaguely) plan a series of posts which may come to this blog in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled!

Films and TV watched

The Big Lebowski — A film about three dudes who just want to bowl. I have heard great things about this film since roughly the moment i clicked on the “Internet Explorer” icon for the first time, and i can’t help but feel i would have enjoyed it a little more had it not had all the hype about it. It’s an excellent film, and one i’ll be rewatching soon, but i suspect years on the internet inflated my expectations to an unreasonable extent. (Very good/10)

Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Paddington — Watched with some friends over Discord. A fine family film, and a decent contender for the dictionary definition of “wholesome”. We could all strive to be a little more like Paddington Bear. (Hard stare/10)

Fargo — A film about a man who just wants to sell a used car. A great black comedy thriller with even better accents (oh yah). (Super/10)

What’d this guy look like, anyway?
— Oh, he was a little guy… kinda funny lookin’.
— Uh-huh. In what way?
— Oh, just a general kinda way.

Inside №9 — This comedy-horror-drama-plot-twistiness-is-that-a-genre?-probably-not anthology show just doesn’t miss. Almost every episode is uproariously funny, slightly creepy, and has a twist that will leave you with your mouth hanging open at the screen.

Highlights include The Riddle of the Sphinx (the one with the crosswords), A Quiet Night In (the one without the dialogue), Cold Comfort (the one with the Samaritans), Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room (the one with the washed-up comedians), The 12 Days of Christine (the really sad one), and, of course, their exceedingly meta live special, Dead Line. (40 tablets/10)

Links for the end of July

Links for the 25th of July

¡ Tagged as links ¡ Leave a comment