July 2026. Newcastle.
Trips to Newcastle produce a wealth of blog material, even when the pace of new pubs dry up and you start to feel you’ve seen Grey Street just a few too many times.
That picture from the top of one of the UK’s great streets outside the Theatre Royal is instructive.
It’s a place that doesn’t get the summer tourists it deserves, and felt very quiet that August Monday. And although it’s gorgeous, it was also very scruffy outside the centre.
I’d arrived with the city in mourning for King Kev, by a distance the Messi or Ronaldo 7 of his day.
Still a great place to wander, and find the inspiration for holes 11-13 at the home of the US Masters.
One thing I’m still waiting for is a really good Chinese takeaway (as opposed to the lethal dishes in the Chinatown restaurants). Oodles Wok is the most central option, and has the most complex order,
but it was a bit of a squidgy late night mess. As was I.
It always seems to surprise “southerners” (folk below Stoke) that Newcastle has always been a great place to eat, as Chris Dyson regularly notes.
I should have popped back to Zucchini’s,
though I doubt I’d have found it in the jumble of flyovers and building works either side of the tiny A167(M).
Rather like the City of London, you go from the very old,
to the futuristic, in this case the cafe at Northumbria University.
And it’s to Northumbria that we head now.
retiredmartin 