Touring Tynemouth and Cullercoats

I took a mid-week break and made my way to the Newcastle coast with my friend Kat as my guide. Just 6 miles from the city centre, it’s the Newcastle’s answer to Sydney’s Manly, only with less congestion and people.

Hopping off the Metro, Kat and I found ourselves on the quaint streets of Tynemouth.



Tynemouth is a coastal village lined with shops, pubs and cafes, bending it’s way towards the mouth of the River Tyne with lighthouses and ruins of the Tynemouth Priory at the tip of the headlands.





We grabbed some lunch at a café and hit the quirky shops such as Razzberry Bazaar.



We then made our way to the heritage-listed Priory, a 7th century Anglican monestary, which sits majestically on the headlands, despite only having ruins left to hint what had been many centuries ago.





Kat and I explored and climbed around the sandstone walls nestled in the lush green lawns, discovering the remains of the Priory such as the kitchen, the chapel and narrow stone stairwells leading to floors of rooms where one could only imagine the untold stories.



When we left the Priory, we made our way along the curving coastline to Cullercoats.



Cullercoats is a neighbouring coastal town with a sprawling beach, Grand Hotel, Robinson Crusoes café, and proud St Georges Church demanding attention with it’s tall black steeple.



We popped into Robinson Crusoes for a drink and walked along the beach to see the smugglers caves in the rocky hillside of Cullercoats. During the 18th century, fishermen used smuggling to help provide for their families, and today you can make out the caves and imagine the tunnels leading up to the terraced houses built along the winding roadside high above the beach.





After a stop off at Kat’s house, we walked back to Tynemouth and down to Fish Quay for the evening. The streets were quiet as the fish outlets were closed and the fisherman had all returned home for tea. What remained were a few open cafés and restaurants serving catches of the day.



Kat took me to dinner at a humble café serving huge plates of fish and chips. We had a ball trying to finish our meals and staggered out of the café to walk off our meals along the beach.





The sun was setting and we watched with amusement as the sail boats attempted to catch the evening wind. We walked along the grassy hillside and stopped to rest at some seats admiring the sweeping views, before heading up and around the hill, past the Collingwood statue and back into Tynemouth.







We ended our day with a drink at the Turks Head Hotel, a lively and local pub, where Kat once worked years ago.



I headed back to the city as dusk drew the day to a close, feeling revived and refreshed from my seaside tour.

The Dott07 Design Camp

I had a fabulous opportunity on Friday afternoon to attend the last day of the Dott07 Design Camp. The idea of the camp was to get together designers from around the world and for 10 days have them explore the region and generate ideas for sustainable tourism. Today was the presentation day for the designers and their ideas. These ideas are to be taken and implemented by the Dott07 team for October's Dott07 Festival.

The camp was held a an absolutely gorgeous location in the tiny town of Allendale, an hour’s drive west of Newcastle, at a place called Deneholme. Deneholme is a rambling Edwardian house, situated on acres of woodlands in the peaceful English countryside. I was finally starting to see what making up for the weather in England! The Deneholme house is a conference centre/holiday place that provides accommodation and a personal chef who makes wonderful home-made scones we got to enjoy this afternoon! It was the perfect site for the designers to get well acquainted.



Rachel (from the Dott office, who kindly drove to Allendale) and I walked into Deneholme and felt the positive energy flowing around the group of 16 designers who had come from as far as the USA to take part in the camp. The designers floored us with their big ideas and visually rich presentations for what sustainable tourism in the region could look like. All of which had been researched, generated and put together in just 10 days.



Rachel and I hung around afterwards to get to know the designers and every one of them had had a wonderful time and made new friends for life as they were all busily exchanging contact details.

Rachel and I sadly left Deneholme and headed back to reality. We could not stop talking about design all the way home and what a fabulous time we had just experienced at the Dott07 Design Camp.

Watch this space for the realisation of ideas come October 2007!

Eating Out in Newcastle

I can’t remember the last time I ate so much (OK maybe in Paris). This past week has been marked by several food moments, beginning with Monday lunch time at Tony and Frankie’s with Kat.

Tony and Frankie’s is a sandwich shop in Newcastle city, where you can find a line, snaking out the door of the shopfront every weekday lunchtime.



About 2 weeks ago, some of the CfDR-ers (Centre for Design Research) took me to this tiny green sandwich shop, with a blackboard of endless sandwich concoctions for around 2.50 pounds. Standing in line, battling with the masses of choice, I was not prepared for what was to land in my hand- a mammoth chicken and sweet corn sandwich on Italian ciabatta bread. So big was this sandwich that I had to eat most of it with cutlery back at my desk!



Anyway, on Monday, Kat and I made a trip to Tony and Frankie’s and enjoyed demolishing the Herculean sandwiches on a bench in the park. The day after, we would continue more food consumption at Kat’s farewell lunch at Wagamama’s.



It was Kat’s last day at the CfDR, as she heads off to become Miss Henderson, a Design and Technology teacher at a Newcastle private school. All of us had a great time, but I think Bo hit the mark with his choice of dish.



To top off the foodie week, last night Kat, Emma, Stuart (Emma’s boyfriend) and I, indulged in some lovely Italian food at Pani’s.



The pasta dishes were so big that I could only eat half of mine (the other half did well to fill me up for dinner tonight)! Even though the dishes were enormous, we couldn’t go past the tempting Italian coffee and dessert.



We rolled out of the restaurant, onto the cobbled street and down to drinks at the nearby bar, Secco, for the very special event of Joyce’s graduation as a PhD student of Northumbria University (hopefully I will be in the same place in 3 years time).

Congratualtions Joyce and all the best for your future endeavours!

More Adventures in London

So I arrived home late on Sunday evening to find an email from my supervisor requesting I visit London for a big Thursday afternoon meeting.

Wishing I could have known this earlier (as I could have stayed in London with Pete or my cousins, who are both due to leave at the end of this week and save myself 6 hours of travel) I set about making arrangements for my trip. I guess, in the end, it wasn’t that bad heading back down to London seeing as I had some great opportunities on my mid-week trip to touch base with 2 designers in London, have dinner with Wendy, hang out with Pete, find Sydney-coffee and also do a spot of shopping in Covent Garden.

London really has a vibrant design scene. There always seems to be something on in the city that has to do with design, and I have begun to meet lots of designers who’s studios are based in London. One being radarstation. I met Toke, co-founder of radastation, at Said Business School, Oxford University the other week. We had some good chats there and exchanged contact details, so we arragned to meet when I got to London. From Pete's, I took a walk through the busy streets of London’s business district.



Radarstation are located on the fringe of the urban jungle. Here things got quieter, the buildings got smaller and older, and little pubs, cafes and independent design stores began to emerge.



I reached the radarstation studio to meet Ré, the other founder of the company just as he was setting off to where I had just come from to do a workshop with the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

Toke took me to a nearby pub/café and we had a drink and long chat about what we have both been doing in the design and business worlds. Toke studied Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA). His CV includes work with Lego and developing concepts for Lego toys (yes, how fun!) and a year-long research engagement with Ré at the RCA on building a framework to help embed innovation into organisations. The resulting product was a neat little book called, Food for Thought.



After this research engagement, Toke and Ré set up radarstation, a design firm that works with organizations to develop future opportunities and directions in services, systems and strategy.

Our one hour went by really quickly I had to rush off and meet Mary, part-time PhD student at University of East London, and co-founder of Uscreates. Uscreates offices are just a 15 min walk down the road near the Spitalfield Markets and we popped into a nearby café for peppermint tea and Belgium hot chocolate. The weather in London was great, so we sat outside.



Mary and I chatted about the progress of our PhD’s. I see that we will be great sounding boards and support friends to each other during out PhD journey! Only she has the added job of setting up and running Uscreates (ambitious and busy girl no doubt).

Seeing as I walked from Pete’s to Spitalfields, I decided to walk back through the peak hour pedestrian traffic of London. The plan for the night was for Pete, Wendy and myself to catch up over dinner. Seeing as it was Pete’s last week and he had a lot to tie up, Wendy and I ended up enjoying a great catch up over a pasta and pizza at the nearby Italian restaurant Strada.



It has felt like ages since we last caught up one-on-one so it was a bit of reminiscing on life back at home and talking about how we were both finding life in the UK.



Thursday morning was drizzly and I accompanied Pete on his way to the Deloitte office as I had a morning of shopping at the nearby Covent Garden planned.



In great need of a coffee I chose a crisp-looking, white and green organic café called Org-e. It must have been my lucky day because I have finally found decent coffee in the UK (too bad it’s a 3 hour train trip from where I live)! It was authentic Sydney-coffee, because it wasn’t weak, nor burnt and was made by Mischa, a born and bred Sydney-sider, who has been travelling and working throughout Europe and the UK for many years now, even doing a stint in Newcastle!

Mishca and I enjoyed a good chat over my coffee and banana bread. It was great to make a new friend in this new country and feel like I was at a café in Sydney. The other great thing is that Org-e is located straight down the road from the Design Council office (I can see where I will be heading for lunch and coffee when I am doing my weeks at the Design Council office). So, for all you Aussies who think the coffee in the UK sucks, try Org-e next time you’re in London. Might catch you there ;)



After my time at Org-e I had a bit of time to shop at Covent Garden picking up a pair of black Zara shoes. At around lunch time, I headed to the Business Design Centre, where I was to meet Andrea and Bob.

The Business Design Centre is located close to Angel station and is a buzzing place this time of year with students, academics and industry as it is the location where all the design universities and colleges display the graduate degree show work at a big event called New Designers. What a great concept- to have one place where one can view the diverse and vast talents of the year’s design graduates. But I was not there to see the shows, rather spent the afternoon of chatting about my PhD in the lounge of the neighbouring Hilton Hotel with Bob and Andrea. It was a good chat and also good to get to know Andrea better as the last time I met her at the Design Council, everything was a bit of a whirlwind.



In the late afternoon, I had to pop back to Pete’s and catch my train back to Newcastle. I must be getting used to the 3 hour train trip as today I am not feeling as tired as I usually am. Lucky thing as I have an interview at the Dott office and am moving flats today and tomorrow!

A Sunny London Weekend

A rainy Friday evening I left Newcastle, London-bound for a packed weekend with close friends and family. Friday night, stepping off the 3-hour GNER trip, I was met with the people-packed Underground, making my way to Pete’s before our late arrival at dinner in London’s banking district with Wendy and Will. Pete promised great food at the posh Conran restaurant Coq D’Argent and I already knew I’d be up for great company and conversation.

We arrived to a patient Wendy and Will at a crisp white table with big buds of blushing pink roses in the centre. The waiters buzzed around us, attentive and efficient as we indulged in our courses of food with conversation swirling between life in England, budding careers (and study), cars and expensive watches.





Fashionable Londoners began to disappear from the tables and the busy restaurant began to quieten down. We polished off dessert and a couple of strong coffees (the strongest I’ve had in England) and parted ways. Pete and I walked back to his apartment in the cool night, past the young drunks, music and chatter spilling onto the sidewalks of the city.

Saturday morning I was awoken by sun streaming into Pete’s apartment. I couldn’t believe it- clear blue skies and sun! I have been tiring quickly of the rain everyday, so it was refreshing to finally see a change in the weather!

Due to our long chat till the early hours of the morning and strong coffee from night before Pete and I stumbled to get ourselves together for a light breakfast and talk on the phone to Geoff in Sydney. We headed out to a local café to get coffee, watching the world pass us by at the big bay windows.



I headed to the Hilton Metropole to meet my cousins who were on holiday in Europe from Sydney. It was great to see the familiar faces of my family so soon.

We had a great day out beginning with a cruise down the Thames passing the sights of Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the finance district down the river called Canary Wharf.







The ferry pulled into the village-y, vibrant hub called Greenwich, full of market stalls, boutique shops and a big park where at the very top, the Prime Meridian is located.





The Prime Meridian Line is an imaginary line that runs from the North to South Pole, marking the separation of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. It is the location where longitude is 0 degrees and all other longitude lines align to it. It is also most well known as the place that set a standard for times all around the world.



The Prime Meridian Line is located at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and it a popular attraction with its free entry to its little museums on the history and development of time and astronomy. We spent most of our day wondering around the site, setting our watches to Greenwich Mean Time, checking out the interactive museums and listening to a free local tour around the cobbled courtyard. Christopher even picked up a certificate to say the exact time he was at the Prime Meridian.



We took the ferry back into the city and hit some shops along the busy Oxford Street. It is the height of summer now and the locals and tourists flock to the stores for the big, big sales. We popped into the Gap to pick up some bargains and then spent the rest of the afternoon in Selfridges.

Starving from our sight-seeing, walking and shopping, we headed to SoHo for dinner. We randomly selected Burger Shack and were pleasantly surprised to find great burgers at great prices, though I surrendered to a pasta fix of Penne Chicken.



I had a bit of a sleepover with Gerard and Christopher at their hotel seeing as their room was a triple. A unique and lucky coincidence for my visit!

Sunday morning didn’t work out as well as we had planned. We took the Tube to Buckingham Place to see the Changing of the Guard and the Tour de France, which was to be happening around London city that weekend (just a note also that unless you are living under a rock, the Wimbledon finals were on over the weekend too. It really was a sports persons dream city last weekend!). We waited for hours in the crowds and hot sun and saw the red and black marching band, but no Tour de France. It was a bit of a disappointment, but we popped into the cooler Royal Mews to check out the Royal stables, carriages and a display of a royal limousine. It was nicer to be in a less crowded and cooler place, and absorb some of the Royal heritage and tradition at the same time.






My afternoon departure was creeping up on me, so Gerard, Christopher and I headed back to the hotel so I could pick up my stuff while Peggy and Garry headed off for more excitement at Wimbledon.

Accompanied with a magazine and my iPod, I fell into my seat on the train, exhausted from the sun, sightseeing and fun, of a sunny London weekend!