Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK. Thursday 17-November-2021.
Now we have moved from London to Penrith our local venues are no longer the O2 Arena, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club or the Royal Albert Hall. We have to go further afield to see well known artists, in this case to Newcastle to see Seasick Steve for the fourth time.
Billed as "Just Steve, a guitar and you" that is exactly what we got. An excellent stripped back show with a number of old favourites plus some new songs and plenty of chat in between.
Support from Kitty Macfarlane who was charming. She sang a song about eels, specifically the European Eel. I have a slight soft spot for eels from my time volunteering with the Wandle Trust. As part of their monthly community clean ups we would keep an eel tally as they wriggled out of old tyres, tins and scaffolding poles. The count of eels was an indication of the quality of the water.
Our friends drove back that night but we treated ourselves to a stay in the Maldron Hotel close by. We spent the next morning doing a tour of the town. Being a great fan of Wallace and Gromit we enjoyed the Fenwick's Christmas window display.
The castle was impressive and would have been more so had not the Victorians decided to drive a railway viaduct slap bang through the middle of it!
We learned about Grey's Monument built to honour the man responsible for the Reform Act of 1832, the first of many acts gradually extending the voting franchise and removing "rotten boroughs".
Then home via the iconic Angel of the North.
It is 20m high by 54m wide! That's me in the picture to give an idea of scale.
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