Short North East trip

It looks like you had a great time. It is lucky you were in a Copen, any bigger and the object would have hit the windscreen.

 

The house (errrr hovel) my mother lived in is at Beamish. They numbered the bricks, demolihed the whole street and rebuilt it at Beamish. She was tickled pink.

Ned

 

Did you go on the glass roof of the glass centre? It's a bit unnerving walking across it.
Your picture of the tram has shop at binns on the front and up untill not too many years ago all the buses up here had that advert on them. Binns was an old fashioned are you being served type of department store that started as a sunderland drapers in the early 1800's. It was eventually bought out by House of Fraser but they closed it down when times got a bit hard. A little bit of sunderland died when Binns closed and they stopped putting the logo on the front and rear of our buses. Our brewery (Vaux) went the same way, bought out and then closed, all in the name of progress.
Its a shame as well about the damage to your car. The A66 is a road I try and avoid. Too many idiots decide to overtake when they shouldn't overtake and there has been a lot of accidents.

 

There was a Binns in South Shields also.

The story goes that on Saturday mornings the wives of the Merchant Navy officers would meet in Binns cafe for coffee.

The skippers wives on one table, the 1st officers wives on another table, the chief engineers wives on another and so on.

Of course, none of their husbands went to sea. They prefered to say 'My husband travels in oil' (Many worked for Shell and BP).

The retort to that was, 'What is he - a Sardine?'

By the way, William Wouldhave who invented the lifeboat was from Shields anthough he was dead before Binns was built

 

Binns started out as a sunderland store but expanded over the years to have shops in quite a few North East towns.

The lifeboat monument in your picture is at the bottom of ocean road where the fourteen curry houses are. I can remember it being there back in the sixties when I was a little kid. I've never before given it much of a thought and assumed it was an old South shields lifeboat that they had preserved. I never knew it was to commemorate the inventor of lifeboats, I should have read the plaque.

Seaham another coastal town up here has a claim to lifeboat fame as well. I looked around the recently opened lifeboat museum and got talking to an ex lifeboat man who worked there. He told me a number of lifeboat men were killed in heavy seas when their boat turned over during a rescue off seaham harbour. They were just yards from the harbour entrance but the sea was just too heavy for them to get back. Their boat rolled over and stayed afloat but there wasn't anything for them to hold onto. After that accident lifeboats were fitted with rails along the underside to hold onto if the same happened again.

 

Beamish is great isn't it my great Grandmothers house is one of the pit cottages and has the family bible on the table.
Make sure you pressure wash all that salt from under the car especially the wheel arches as it is the undoing of many a Japanese car (The tin worm that is)
Lucky escape with the UFO near miss, make sure you prime & touch up the damage asap as the roof is aluminium & will corrode quickly, some of the bonnets of early Copens have suffered with corrosion from inside.

 

Well, how about that ! I grew up in Shields and on a Friday night we would go to the Beacon folk club on the Lawe Top and afterwards sample the 14 curry houses in Ocean Road. I remember one night we didn't care for the menu in one place so we went next door and were served by the same waiter !!

Good times before King Street was pedestrianised and infested with pound shops.

Talking about King Street there was a pub there called the 'Mechanics' with a fearsome reputation for violence. As a teenager I went in there once to see what it was like and ordered a pint and the barman said 'got a glass ?' err No. 'Well when you have a glass you can have a pint'.

The Mechanics was only 100 yards from Binns.

 

I've had a few good pub crawls around shields it used to be a very good and popular night out. Haven't done it for over 6 years now, it's not so good these days. The only names that come to mind are the The Kirkpatrick which used to be a marine college on Ocean road and the Voyager. The Voyager was really rough, only pub I've been in with a female bouncer.
I work with a lad aged about 60 who was brought up in shields. I'll mention those places you drank in to him tomorrow, he's bound to know them. If it was rough he drank in it.

 

If he is a Sanddancer he will recall the Scotia, North Eastern, Criterion and the pub that became a Chef and Brewer (What was its name ?) all at the intersection of Mile End Road, Fowler Street, King Street and Ocean Road. I was into music at the time and didn't much frequent old-style pubs.
Now, the Marine School in Ocean Road is where my father got his Masters ticket and I took classes there also before I moved up to the new Marine school in Grosvenor Road. Its a restuarant you say. Well, how predictable is that? No chance of a wine bar making profit in Shields eh ?
Ned

 

I've asked him about the pub that became a chef and brewer he thinks it was the mermaid. I mentioned the mechanics arms and he knew it well. Next door to the Douglas both as rough as each other. He was brought up on the cleadon park estate Ashgrove avenue which from his description was a place to bring your food up in as opposed to your children. I'm sure its a lovely area these days though.
The self righting lifeboat inventor by councidence was a great uncle of his who was also the town clerk, whatever that is. As he put it there was once some brains in his family.