Taking a Walk: along the

from The Oldie issue 421 January 2023

On the Road: Hugh

The fog on the Tyne was all mine

patrick barkham

I love a great northern city – and Newcastle must be England’s greatest.

It has an abundance of fine stone buildings, a proper river, most shops are bars and the shops that remain sell the cheapest toothpaste ever found on sale in the 21st century. To everyone’s surprise, the city now even has a decent football team.

Newcastle wooed me on a dank autumn day when I took a riverside walk from its big, bustling railway station to its tiny, tranquil city farm.

Streets close to city stations are usually tatty, but Newcastle immediately propels you into avenues of honeyed stone terraces reminiscent of Bath.

On elegant Grey Street and down Dean Street, Newcastle’s thoroughfares buzzed with students – if young people in hoodies can buzz in the drizzle.

I reached the banks of the Tyne, where a footpath followed the river as it flowed east. Glancing back, I admired a layer of colour-coded bridges: a low red bridge, a medium blue bridge and, in the distance, a high beige bridge. In the foreground, most magnificent of all, was the tealpainted Tyne Bridge framed by towers of Cornish granite, just like a miniature Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In its day, the Tyne Bridge was not so mini. It was the longest-span bridge in the world, and a prototype for Sydney’s bridge, which was designed by the same team and completed four years after Newcastle’s opened in 1928.

The riverside path signposted the North Sea Ferry only eight miles beyond. The sea was more than a rumour.

The Tyne was a swirling brown, its seaward current forming lethal-looking rips in its battle with the tide. On my return, I realised the tide was winning when I encountered the most realistic loggerdile I’d ever seen: a sinister reptile of oak trunk sliding up-river with the incoming tide.

The sinuous white footbridge of the Millennium Bridge linked the north to the south bank, where towered the Baltic, a vast former mill that is now a centre for contemporary art, and the silver armadillo of the Sage Gateshead concert hall.

The only building that didn’t sing with regional pride was a nautical-themed block of flats that could have been transplanted from London’s Docklands.

Before I reached the Free Trade Inn, a river-cliff pub with the best views in the city, I turned left onto a path beside the Ouseburn, a side stream which winds down to the Tyne in a hidden gorge. This little tributary was a muddy-bottomed delight.

It housed a scooter, long dead, lying in the mud and the imprint of tyres slowing sinking in, and then more old tyres strapped together to make a soft base on which an ancient fishing boat called Rosie Too rested at low tide beside a small wharf.

Its hidden valley seemed perfectly balanced on the cusp of gentrification. Attractive new flats were going up and BMW convertibles were driving in, but there was still spray-paint about class struggle, and battered yellow industrial cranes laboured above a scrap yard.

The air sang with a sense of possibility, of newness and oldness side by side, neither yet dominating. In old warehouses were camped new charities and microbreweries, staffed by earnest, moustachioed young men and bespectacled women dressed like young fogeys.

But each gentrifier kills the thing they love, and the view from the Free Trade Inn is threatened because a developer wants to build more riverside flats in front of it. At some point, the luxury flats will win.

Until then, there’s a wonderful climax to this walk: Ouseburn city farm, an oasis of tranquillity, rampant vegetation and a strongly scented pig. Five fecund acres provide food for the local community, with growing opportunities for children and adults, and a cup of tea for walktakers. Then it was back down the Ouseburn to rejoin the Tyne and the bustle of the Geordie nation.

Follow the slope from the railway station down to the Tyne, take Hadrian’s Way eastwards along the north bank, then turn left to follow the first waterway, the Ouseburn, up to Ouseburn Farm

It was very considerate of Mr and Mrs Eddis to have four children – the perfect number for our game. Charlie (South), Hugo (West), Harry (North) and Johnny (East) all play to a high standard – witness this deal from an online game.

Dealer South Neither Vulnerable

West ♠ A 10 5 ♥ J ♦ A K Q 7 4 2 ♣ 8 7 2 North ♠ Q 8 4 ♥ 8 4 2 ♦ 10 3 ♣ K 10 6 5 4

South ♠ K J 7 6 3 2 ♥ A Q 6 3 ♦ 6 ♣ A 9 East ♠ 9 ♥ K 10 9 7 5 ♦ J 9 8 5 ♣ Q J 3

The bidding South West North East 1 ♠ 2 ♦ 2 ♠ 3 ♦ 3 ♥ 5 ♦ pass pass 5 ♠ end

West led the singleton knave of hearts versus 5 ♠, declarer winning the queen. By leading declarer’s second suit, West had telegraphed his intentions. He planned to win the ace of spades, put his partner in with a diamond and score a heart ruff. Declarer needed to pull off a Scissors Coup, or as Ely Culbertson termed it in his Contract Bridge Red Book (1934), the Coup without a Name.

At trick two, declarer cashed the ace of clubs. He then crossed to the king of clubs and led a third club, hoping he could lose the trick to West while he discarded his diamond from hand, thereby preventing West from reaching his partner for the heart ruff.

It was not to be – East following to the third club with the queen. Declarer now had to ruff the club and lead a spade (the jack). However, West won the ace and gambled the diamond-underlead – his only chance of scuppering the game. East won the jack (Charlie suggested he may have been a tad surprised) and soon worked out his partner’s cunning plan. He led a heart (the nine), West ruffing out declarer’s ace. Although declarer could ruff West’s top-diamond return, cross to dummy’s queen of spades (drawing trumps) and cash the two long clubs discarding his two low hearts, that was one down.

As Charlie put it to me, ‘After giving Hugo [West] due credit, I said that, had he held queen and two small clubs, he would obviously have continued his fine defence by dropping the queen on the second round. The brief pause before he agreed was, I’m sure, due to delay in Zoom transmission…’ ANDREW ROBSON

TESSA CASTRO

IN COMPETITION No 287 you were invited to use given rhymes to make a poem in a game of bouts-rimés, popular since the 17th century and popular with you. The rhyme words came from ‘Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood’ by John Masefield, published in his collection Sonnets in 1916. They really provoked your imagination. Max Ross cleverly reworked Robert’s Frost’s snowy poem. John McTavish described a Lancaster bomber crashing. Sue Smalley told of a couple who, after a woodland encounter, shared a cigarette that started a forest fire. Commiserations to them and to Iris Bull, Judith Green, Anthony Young, Con Connell, Paul Elmhirst, Sue Dickie, Dorothy Pope and Teresa Charman, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going to Peter Wilson.

Remember Tommy Spottiswood? He seemed to feel misunderstood. That day he climbed the Douglas Fir And fell. Thank God, our minister –Dad used to call him ‘Banksy’ Moon – Picked Tom up, not a jot too soon. With tender strength I’ve rarely seen, Such passion. ‘Lord, my life has been Just for this moment. By Thy grace…’ Then Tom and Banksy face to face… A miracle! Limp body gives One twitch. Another. Spotty lives! Sing Hallelujah! With one breath Moon saved our cat from certain death. Peter Wilson

I wandered in a winter wood Through pathways barely understood, When underneath a standing fir, I met a black-clad minister. Opal and silver shone the moon; Sharp frosts and snow it augured, soon. A winter such as never seen Would grip the grass where flowers had been. I asked him, ‘Father, of your grace, Tell me why summer’s fairest face Should pale and die? Why winter gives A blow to all that blithely lives?’ He said, ‘That nature may have breath, She first must bear the wound of death.’ G M Southgate

The school that started in the wood Demanded infants understood That as in Nordic lands of fir There was no need to minister To Christian gods – just sun and moon. Shocked parents found out all too soon And, much disturbed by what they’d seen, Began to wonder where they’d been. Despite their orders to say grace, Their toddlers burned a carved oak face And danced round chanting, ‘Fire gives Its life so woodland spirit lives.’ But once they’d sung and taken breath Their forest school had burned to death… David Dixon

The boy meanders through the wood. He’s never really understood The night. He passes pine and fir And thinks how they all minister To wren and wood thrush. Now the Moon Appears. She says, ‘Come, boy. You’ll soon Escape these hills with me.’ He’s seen Her wholesome nakedness. He’s been Seduced by magnetism, grace, Gripped by the radiance of her face. Dancing, dressed in light, she gives The boy her hand. He soars where lives The golden eagle. In a breath, Moon’s dragged him to the Land of Death. Martin Elster

Sometimes I walk at night into a wood When feeling fearful or misunderstood. It’s no more than a local stand of fir, Yet seems to have the power to minister To paranoid distress. The flirty moon Winks through the cones and needles. Pretty soon Selene’s gorgeous chariot will be seen, Dispensing empathy where stress has been. Her wispy veil’s an augury of grace. A mellow glow illuminates her face. I never have to ask myself ‘What gives?’ This wood is where hallucination lives. Let’s bless our altered states while we draw breath. No cosmic visions happen after death. Basil Ransome-Davies

COMPETITION NO 289 Horses figure less in most lives than they did. But you are invited to write a poem called The Hobby-Horse. Maximum 16 lines. We still cannot accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 289’, by Thursday 12th January.