Training with the TVLB on a Lovely Evening in Tynemouth
Do you remember a programme in the 1980s called ‘Duncan Dares’? In the show, Blue Peter presenter, Peter Duncan, would find himself enduring all sorts of self-imposed scrapes in the name of entertainment. That’s what it felt like for me as I was being lowered down a cliff towards the rocks beneath the Spanish Battery.
Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade Through the Ages
I sat down with Brigade Chairman, John D. Wright, who illuminated the history of this famous institution — the first, and one of the few remaining, shore rescue brigades in the country.
Checking Out NEMT’s New Boat-Building Project
Viking is a double ended coble, with what could be described as a bow at each end. By contrast, the standard coble design has a flat stern or transom. So these double-ended cobles are a rarer style that were mainly found in Scotland and North Yorkshire, rather than Northumberland. They are also known as ‘mules’ because of their function as foyboats and workhorses of the waterways, but they are also very much an antique today and having served as a pilot boat, Viking may be one of the few remaining vessels of her type in the country.
A Great Day’s Fishing on JFK II
We sailed south to Souter Point and reached as far as Sunderland later in the day as the fishing really got going after the sun came out and the sea flattened. By the time we headed back to the Tyne, the weather was absolutely glorious and the fish started coming aboard in good numbers. You only had to drop your line in the water to pull out a writhing string of silver mackerel.
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No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
