Walking: North Seaton, Wansbeck Estuary to Newbiggin by the Sea, Northumberland

This is the second half of a walk from Stakeford to Newbiggin.  The previous post took me until I'd just passed the North Seaton road bridge over the River Wansbeck and had caught my first sights of the North Sea in the distance beyond the river estuary.  The full walk is mapped here.

A beached boat above the estuary.  A woman was passing in the opposite direction with her dog and she stopped to take pictures of the boat too.

She said it had been beached only three to four months ago and was gradually being buried by the sand and being destroyed by the weather.  It doesn't take long.

Her pictures may have been better than mine.  She was using her phone which had a 23 megapixel camera and a 5x zoom.  She felt a little regretful because while walking the dog she couldn't use her proper camera because that needed both hands free.  Yes, her phone is a much better camera than my camera.




I'm not complaining.  The camera on my phone is much, much better than the one on my old phone.  I need to explore it more as there are a load of settings and features that I haven't played with before.  The old phone almost had a single setting - point, click, and hope - and a much lower resolution but I was still able to take some pretty decent pictures.  In one way I felt it was a bit like a film camera.  With my digital camera I would take pictures and then crop them to exclude all the bits round the outside I didn't want.  With the old phone I had to think about framing and the content of the whole because I couldn't trim much without ending up with a very grainy result, just as I would have had to think about framing with a film camera.  With the new phone I can play around, and crop a lot more.  I am enjoying the new phone a lot.  Of course, I haven't actually got round to cropping or editing anything - everything I've been posting on the blog is just as it was when downloaded from the phone.

Right.  Digression over.  Back to the walk.

Arriving at the beach I found this.  Sand and more sand leading up to rocks and cliffs.  And a distinct lack of people.

That, if you can click on it to enlarge it, is a panorama of the beach from the cliffs at one end to the river estuary at the other and beyond it Cambois beach stretching towards Blyth.

If you could enlarge it enough you would see just how quiet the beach was.  There was me.  Just me.  Nobody else at all.  Wonderful.  Yes, it was a cold day.  But to be there and hear the sea and the wind and be walking at that point in sunshine was a marvellous experience.  I was alone with nature.  And that is a wonderful place to be.  Walking on that beach I was so completely pleased that I'd come out and ignored the rain, sleet and hail from my few minutes walk to the Metro.  In such aloneness, together with the elements, I am more at peace than at any other time and the hum and noise and constancy in my head fades.  I need to get out a lot more this year and seek to be alone with the alone.

The sandy beach comes to an end and is replaced with rocks and rock pools that would all be covered at high tide.  It was a privilege to cross them all at lowish tide and then climb up an easy bank to get to the start of the cliff path.  The cliffs there are subject to erosion.  You can see from the beach that structures have fallen as the cliff has been worn away.  The cliff top often overhangs and for a while you need to walk in the field rather than on the path because the path has moved from the top of the cliff to the bottom. 

But it's wonderful up there even in the strong wind that was blowing at that point.  I will return.  Looking down I note that at low tide I think it's possible to follow the rocks round the cliff.  But that wasn't something I was going to consider doing without having a tide table and without knowing I had plenty of time and an ebbing sea.

As I walked along the cliffs the weather changed.  It began to hail.  Oh no!  But I was very fortunate.  It only lasted a few minutes.  Later I thought how fortunate I had been, since just after I got home it snowed quite hard.  Not lovely crisp snow but slushy sleet that would have made me less happy to be outside a long way from shelter.

Given the changing weather, the walk after the cliffs to Newbiggin was a brisk one.  By the time I got there the sun was out again and I walked along the prom feeling warm and took pictures of some of the pieces in the Newbiggin Art Trail which I now learn has fifty-four pieces for me to go back and discover sometime.  I'll post the art pictures in the next blog post, but I would recommend going to see them for yourself.  It's something to do that's both pleasing and free - and totally free if you have a bus pass.  God, I love my bus pass!

Just a few pictures of Newbiggin for now.  I love the gravestone for William Buddles.  I don't think I've ever seen one that shape before.

I'll go back and explore Newbiggin better later in the year.  But for that day I'd had enough.  I'm extremely unfit and not used to walking distances.  I'd only walked 5 1/2 miles.  It's not much.  But my feet were tired so it was time to get the bus home.  I now plan to get out a lot more and walk.  It's good for my body and also for my head and my soul.  If you're in the area I can recommend the walk from Stakeford to Newbiggin via the Wansbeck estuary.  It doesn't take too long and it's very varied.  Plus, there is a good choice of cafes at the end which is always a bonus.

One last photo.  It's almost a family tradition to take photos of post boxes.   And I found this small wall mounted box to be really cute.  I don't know about post boxes.  One day I might turn into a post box geek.  It's possible.  This one is a lamp box.  It's in a wall but lamp boxes were originally designed to be attached to lamp posts.  This one, like many of the graves at the church, has been weathered over the years.  I think it's an LB212 box from early in the reign of George VI.  Of course it's not the oldest box around but I liked it.

Walking: River Wansbeck from Stakeford to North Seaton 25th April 2016

In previous posts I wrote about how I'd randomly got on a bus and ended up walking round Northumberlandia and Plessey Woods.  The two bus routes I used that day were the X21 from Newcastle to Newbiggin and the X22 from Newcastle to Ashington which, for much of their lengths, follow the same journey.  I'd noticed some other places that day including an attractive railway bridge.

Rail bridge as viewed from the road bridge over the Wansbeck at Stakeford

So I made a plan:  Go and see the bridge.  That was the entire plan to start with but I got organised and looked at a map.  A proper plan.  It looked from the map that I might be able to have a good walk.  From Stakeford I would follow the River Wansbeck to the sea and it looked as if I might be able to head north from the river estuary to Newbiggin.  At the very least I'd see the railway bridge even if the paths didn't work out.

The weather forecast wasn't great.  Cold with some showers.  But I wanted to go out anyway.  As I put my shoes on it began to rain.  And as I walked to the Metro, just a few minutes away, the rain turned to sleet and then to hail.  I thought, "What the hell am I doing?"  But I caught the Metro anyway, both determined and in possession of a good coat that Amanda and I call my "adventure coat."  It's just a coat.  But we call it that anyway.  And then I caught the bus knowing that if the weather was too bad in Stakeford a cafe and hot drink would await me ten minutes later in Ashington.

I got off the bus at Stakeford in dry weather.  Yay!  And began the walk.  The pictures here are some of the photos I took on my phone in the first part of the walk, from Stakeford towards the estuary of the River Wansbeck.  It's strange.  I do have a dedicated digital camera.  But it seems I hardly ever get it out of my bag.  I could probably take better pictures with it and using the phone means I miss out on having a half decent zoom lens to play with.  But I'm enjoying using the phone camera, especially at the moment because I still find it exciting that the new phone has a reasonable resolution and actually has a camera on the front.

I reached the bridge.

This is the North Seaton Railway Viaduct.  It carries the Blyth and Tyne line that runs from Tyneside to Ashington.  This carried passengers until 1964.  From then on it only carried freight, mainly from coal mines until the industry fell, and until 2012 to and from a smelting plant and power station.

The bridge replaced a mid-19th century wooden bridge and was built in the late 1920s.  It is black.  Hence its nickname, "The Black Bridge."

It's certainly prettier than the road bridge I had come from - which was built of concrete in 1994.

Many thanks to the "Bridges on the Wansbeck" website for information about the bridges.

This is Blob Thing.

He's started to come out on trips with me.  He'll be getting his very own blog post soon from a day out.  It'll be of interest only to me, a specific friend, and strange people!

One thing that's quickly becoming apparent is that I like trees.  I took several pictures of them that day and several more a couple of days later on a walk I'll be posting about soon.

Since I've talked about bridges I'll end with this picture.  I took this not for the bridge but because I was just wondering how far away the sea was when I rounded a corner and saw it.  Not far at all.  Beyond the bridge there is the estuary and sandy ground.  I'll talk of that in the next blog post and of the walk from the River Wansbeck to Newbiggin by the Sea.  I'd really enjoyed walking down this little bit of river.  Much of the coast walk was even better - and a lot colder.  Up until this point I'd stayed totally dry too.

The bridge here is the North Seaton Road Bridge.  It's actually two bridges, the second one being built 25 years after the first when the road was widened.  Just in front of it is a foot crossing above a weir.  There is no public access onto that concrete crossing but I was very tempted to ignore the sign for the sake of taking photos from the middle of the river.  I resisted temptation but only just.

This is out of order for the story, but when I got home I looked at Google maps online and thought - as I have thought quite often in the last year - what a pity it is that they took away the distance measuring tool when they updated their map software for something I still think is worse.  I wondered if there was another site that would help.  Yes, there is.  It's gb.mapometer.com and you can use it to map your walks or runs or cycle rides or whatever else.  You can make notes on your routes, see roughly how many calories you've burned, and look at the altitude and gradient changes.  You can then save your route map and, if you choose, make it available for other people to find if they're looking for a route in the same area.  I am very pleased to have found that site.

If you want to look at my journey from Stakeford to Newbiggin, here it is, all 5 1/2 miles of it.
http://gb.mapometer.com/walking/route_4303356.html

Pictures of Plessey Woods Art Trail, Northumberland, 22nd April 2016

There's an art trail in Plessey Woods.  I didn't know that when I was there.  How could I?  I hadn't even heard of Plessey Woods until that morning.  I hadn't known I was going to visit the Country Park until that afternoon, as related in the previous post.  But I still enjoyed the trail, or at least the parts of it I saw.

If I'd visited a year ago I wouldn't have seen the trail.  It's very new.  The official opening was on April 2nd 2016.  If you want to read more about it, the trail has a website.  Most of the work has been done by young people involved with a charity called Leading Link.  They've done a good job.  Good enough that I kept taking pictures of things I happened to see.

Mystical Avenue

 

Bog House Swamp.  The ogre has their very own outside loo.

The Wise One

Willow Angels in Enchanted Hollow

Quarry Henge

Marra and his Bone

Walking in Plessey Woods Country Park, River Blyth, Northumberland

Continuing my day from the previous post.

I got off the bus in Ashington.  I have yet to find the joys of the place.  But it does have quite a few charity shops and I found a rather nice craft shop too.  Wandering around Ashington isn't unpleasant and I expect I'll be back there for the charity shops again and might discover more appeal there on subsequent visits.

This photo is not of Ashington.  All the photos are from Plessey Woods but I've placed them between paragraphs rather than putting them all at the end.  The story isn't of the happiest thing in my life and the photos add light to something I found hard.  I've been lazy again and not edited them.  The photos are just what was taken on the phone.

Pegwhistle Burn, where it flows into the River Blyth

My zeal for buying things or eating lunch was curtailed though by a phone call I received while I was there.  It was from the consultant psychiatrist at the gender clinic, calling with bad news.  In order to be referred for any form of surgery, a transgender person must receive a diagnosis from not one but two consultants.

River Blyth

I've been pushing for an appointment with a second consultant for quite a while.  Legally, you need to be "full time in your gender role" for a year before you can have surgery, which in practice means that you need to have changed your name through deed poll or a statutory declaration.  I have been "full time" for two years and nine months and have been having appointments at the clinic for two and a half years.  It's rather more than the legal requirement.  I've seen some pass through the system quicker.  A woman who had her first appointment two weeks before mine and who went full time fifteen months after me has already had surgery.  And I am still waiting for a second opinion even though I have jumped through every hoop they asked me to.  Of course I am totally pleased for her.  It's excellent that she's had the surgery that she so much wanted.  But it can be frustrating that I am still waiting.

The phone call was not the news I wanted to hear.  They have decided that, at this time, they won't refer me for that second opinion.  After my next appointment they might consider the possibility again.  So it's a minimum of another four months before they would decide to refer me.  Yes, I'll have passed the three years full time mark before referral and there are quite a few steps after that before surgery would happen.

They're not referring me because I was diagnosed as autistic last year so I have "a lot to deal with" and because I've been having some anxiety issues.  It's all total bullshit of course.  Gender is something that I have pretty much no anxiety about whatsoever and right from the beginning I've felt totally calm about the possibility of major surgery.  It's the kind of news that increases anxiety rather than helping my situation in any way.

Yes, the call put me off shopping or eating.  I wasn't happy.  Another setback in the process.  Part of me was really cross about it.  Of course, that's natural.  More delays.  Part of me really couldn't care less, for reasons related to my thought processes in the recent post on surgery.  More and more, I care less and less.  Penis, vagina, none of the above.  Who really cares?  Apart from all those crazy Republicans in America who seem totally obsessed with other people's genitals.

I returned to the bus stop a little sad, a little pissed off, and a little angry, all mixed in with a sense both of defiance and knowledge that it doesn't actually matter much to me.  I may even end up deciding not to have surgery at all.  It's possible.  But even if that's the case I still want that second opinion.  It's not a complex thing to get and it would mean one less big hurdle should I change my mind and decide that I absolutely need surgery.  Just get it done.  An hour appointment during a day trip to Edinburgh.  Simple.

Heading back to Newcastle, I stopped for a little food in Bedlington where I just managed to restrain myself from following a signpost that pointed to Blyth via the river.  Back on the bus I came to a decision.  "If this is the bus that passes Plessey Woods Country Park, I'll get off and have a little wander before going home.  There's a 50/50 chance."  It wasn't that bus.  But I realised that the two bus routes meet again at the next bus stop and I got off there, at Hartford Bridge, which is by another entrance to the park.

I am so glad I did it.  The Park is set in 100 acres of woodland and meadow and it runs alongside the River Blyth.  It's so pretty and on that day it was very quiet.  From start to finish I passed half a dozen people.  I just loved being able to sit by the river for a while and all I could hear was the water and the birds singing.  No traffic.  No towns.  No electricity humming.  Just birds and water.  That's like a massage for my brain.  It's wonderful.

The park is pretty and I felt very much better for having got off the bus and explored a bit.  I know I'll be back there.  Using public transport I can be at the park about half an hour after I leave home.  And there are six buses an hour that go to Hartford Bridge so it's very, very easy.  I hadn't heard of the park until I saw the sign.  Now I have and this is one piece of knowledge that improves my life.  If I'm feeling down, there is another place I can visit and find some peace 

My wife that morning had said to me as I went out to find at least one thing that would give some joy.  I'd found more than one.  Walking round the park is easy enough.  Nothing is very far - although I have a circular walk planned from Hartford Bridge, through the park and then on to Stannington, which will be quite a bit further.  From bus stop to bus stop, ignoring twiddly little detours, it was about 1 3/4 miles.  If you want details of the route, I've put it here, on this excellent website I've found.  You can map your walks (or runs, cycle rides and so on) and see the distance.  And then you can save your routes for anyone else to see and can look at the routes others have taken.  I'm happy to have discovered it.  Yes, I was happy.  Or possibly deranged if this picture is any guide!

 

Northumberlandia, Lady of the North - 22nd April 2016

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have some mental health issues.  On this particular morning I got up feeling pretty low with my head screaming loudly.  I was not a happy woman that morning.  But I was a determined woman.  I wasn't going to go back to bed and snuggle under the duvet for the day.  I wasn't going to sit in front of the television all day.  I knew though that if I stayed at home my productivity levels would be zero.  I wouldn't be able to write or play music or do anything useful.  So I was determined that, at least for a little while, I'd leave the house.

The plan was made.  I'd catch the Metro into the city centre and wander a bit and then come home.  At least I'd be able to say I'd been out, been active.  I'd be able to pretend I hadn't almost wasted another day of my life.

But on the way to the Metro my plans changed.  I had an idea.  A spontaneous, unplanned idea.  Totally unstereotypical for a good autistic person!  I'd just get the Metro to Regent Centre and from there I'd get a random bus, the first that came and I'd go somewhere.  I thought, "Who knows, I might get as far as Morpeth.  I've not been there before."

The first bus to arrive only went to another part of Newcastle so I rejected it.  I looked at timetables to see what might come.  The next bus to arrive was the X21 to Newbiggin.  I could see it stopped at Ashington on the way and I knew there were charity shops there.  The Ashington charity shops were to be my spontaneous adventure for the day.

But then the plans changed again.  The X21 buses often announce the name of the next stop and it said "Next Stop:  Cramlington Lane End - Northumberlandia."  How could my plan not change.  I watched as the bus passed by Northumberlandia herself and took the next turning left where I could see a bus stop.  It was time to get off the bus and wander.

I'd been to Northumberlandia once before, on a day out with my child and my parents during the only week in which my mother was both healthy and saw me living openly and freely as a woman.  I am so glad that week happened.  She saw me happier than I'd been in my life and I know she was totally accepting and proud of what I was doing and who I was being.  My mother posted about our trip to Northumberlandia, and in other posts about most of what we did that week.  That day also took in Ashington for lunch, Druridge Bay, and Amble.

So what is Northumberlandia, the official website says:

Northumberlandia is a unique piece of public art set in a 46 acre community park with free public access and 4 miles of footpaths on and around the landform.

The centrepiece of the park is Northumberlandia, a stunning human landform sculpture of a reclining lady. Made of 1.5 million tonnes of rock, clay and soil, she is 100 feet high and a quarter of a mile long.
Far from being a rigid manicured art form Northumberlandia is a living part of the countryside that will mature over time and change with the seasons. What you see when you visit is only the start of something that will evolve through generations.

I don't know that she is maturing well.  Comparing my mother's photos to mine I note that she has gone blind - the pupils of her eyes having pretty much faded or been worn away.  And there was a sign saying not to go up the path to the top of her head any more due to unstable ground.  They must have meant it.  They must have done.  Because I had to climb over three barriers to get to the top!  And yes, the ground is not as good as it was in late 2013.

Some of my photos follow.  I've been really lazy.  I haven't edited or played with any of them.  They're all just as they were on my phone.

The bus stop is across a field from the park but there's a solid path and it takes only a few minutes to walk.  Half an hour after getting on the Metro I was in the park.  It felt good.  With a bus pass it hadn't cost a penny to get to and here was somewhere I could escape to and wander in whenever I needed to.

I enjoyed the park for a while, very glad to have caught a random bus, and then walked back to the bus stop.  The charity shops of Ashington still awaited me.  I didn't know it at the time but the day was going to get much worse for me.  And then - because I refused to feel too bad - it got a lot better.   The bus to Ashington passed some pretty places and a few minutes past Northumberlandia I spotted a sign, "Plessey Woods Country Park."  Something for another day.  That's what I thought at the time anyway.  But, as I say, the day was going to get a lot better.  I'll write about it soon.

Well, it was very cold and windy standing exposed on her nipple.

Shotton opencast mine, next door to the park.

Panorama of the mine - not sure if you can click and zoom in.

From front to back:  Nose, breasts and knees.