Coast and Castles - July 2025 - Tyne and Wear

I know this is hard to fathom but I was excited to arrive in Tyne and Wear. It is not somewhere I have ever really visited even though I have driven through it I don't know how many times on the way to Scotland. EBird - the fount of all knowledge may it live forever - suggests that I last visited in October 2020 whilst twitching a Taiga Flycatcher. I remember that day well. I had been birding at Spurn - by bicycle as it happens, and staying in a caravan at Easington - when it came up, I think late in the afternoon. I couldn't get there that evening so I returned to my caravan to plot. This resulted in me getting up in the middle of the night and arriving at Trow Quarry for first light. My only other recorded visit, remarkably to exactly the same quarry, was eleven years previously when Bradders had kidnapped me in Devon. When the drugs wore off I was in South Shields looking at an Eastern Crowned Warbler. This is a very roundabout way of saying that my Tyne and Wear list is totally pathetic, extreme rarities notwithstanding, and I was excited to be able to finally start birding there semi-properly.

The amber rain had other ideas. We had just about dried off from our utter soaking between Tottenham Court Road and King's Cross when we arrived in Newcastle. On getting out of the station it was clear this cosy state of affairs was not to last long. Indeed some sniggering occured as we stopped outside a watering hole on the quayside, my 'waterproof' trousers the object of this mirtth. I don't think I noticed, Mrs L told me about it later, but these hardy lads from the north-east were quite right. Not that they ever cycled anywhere I suspect, but the trousers were completely pointless, serving only to channel water down my legs and directly into my shoes. These are helpfully waterproof too, and so by the time we reached Blyth a few hours later I had water sloshing around my ankles and they weighed about 3kg each. I had apparently also missed some snide remarks from a young chap who had got on the train at Darlington, already half cut, for a night on the Toon. As we had pulled into Newcastle Mrs L had overheard some comparisons with Bradley Wiggins being made between this guy and his giggling waif of a companion, dolled up in approximately 3cm of gold fabric. I was too busy putting on my lovely waterproof trousers to notice, but had I done so these jibes would have simply rolled over me like water off a duck's back. Given what was about to come, would that I too had had the water-repelling abilities of wildfowl.

On the quayside at Newcastle. It is pissing down and I am already soaked. Note the look of glee on one of the faces.

It was not a happy ride. We headed east along the river via North Shields and Tynemouth to Whitley Bay, and then onwards through Seaton Sluice and up to Blyth. Fifteen minutes in I could not have been any wetter and in a funny way this did somehow improve the situation. Rather than worrying about how wet I was I took the fact that peak soaked had already occured as a positive. Things could only get better from here on in, I could only get dryer. Of course this appalling level of moisture persisted all the way to Blyth, the heavy rain did not let up once, but nonethless I felt cheerier than I expected to. Disappointed perhaps that this was supposedly a 'holiday', and here I was soaked to the skin with a hurty bottom, with my lungs about to burst out of my chest, my legs on fire, and no doubt all sorts of chafing occuring in undesireable places, but ultimately I was pleased to be here. I think.

Obviously the birding was not all it might have been. I enjoyed the Kittiwakes on the bridge and the side of the big building in Newcastle, cheered the Blackcap I heard near Redbourn Dene, and actually stopped to count the Common Terns at the Royal Quays Marina which is where I got my binoculars out for the first time. But ultimately it was a very damp squib, the focus being on getting to Blyth as quickly as we could. The final tally was 13 new species, taking me to a paltry 29 species for Tyne and Wear. The cards were stacked against me, a rematch is needed.

We squelched into the Commissioner's Quay Inn in Blyth at around half seven. Drowned rats looked on in sympathy. The amount of water that came out of my socks and shoes was quite something. Happily the room had a working radiator and, even more usefully, a large oscillating fan. The combination of these two things allowed us to fully dry out all of our stuff overnight, including our waterlogged shoes. Amazing. I had no spare footwear, and in any event was so exhausted I had no desire to walk further into town, so instead I went barefoot down to the bar/restuarant and treated myself to a deep-fried roast potato and a pint. As we ate some of the most miserable food I can remember in a long time we congratulated ourselves on having started a cycling holiday on the worst day of weather seen thus far in 2025. Things could only get better.