Day 36 Romans and Angels!

Tuesday Rivers Hotel Gateshead Room 1004

Today we start of with breaky in our room, as no breaky in this Hotel as part of the deal...
I really am getting slower and slower, with being organised to set off for the day. Between writing my blog and doing the outs, but I guess while I am doing the pics it’s one less job I have to spend a lot of time o when the trip is over... I can tell myself that anyway....

So today we are seeing how the Romans lived here in England back in the AD 100’s ... fortunately it’s just not far from where we are staying so no big trip to get there....when we found it, the site is in a School yard, well it was a school yard, with some of the old buildings still in the area not being moved but used as display. The rest of the area has been excavated.... it funny because it’s fair smack bang in the middle of suburbia. The bonus of the day it’s free to get in and after we go in and spend as long as we did exploring it and all that’s been done to the site we really did wonder why it was free when nearly everything else like this we had to pay a good admission fee, but as they say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.... it was so interesting and well worth our visit...
Built in AD160, this important site would have stood guard at the mouth of the River Tyne controlling the main port of entry to the Roman Empire in Britain. Originally built to house a garrison, Arbeia soon became an important military supply base for the 17 forts along the length of the mighty Hadrian's Wall. South Shields Roman Fort, known to the Romans as Arbeia, was an important logistical depot that sustained the troops garrisoning Hadrian’s Wall and supported the military campaigns of Emperor Septimius Severus during his invasion of Scotland in the third century A.D. The site now boasts several reconstructed Roman buildings including a Gatehouse and Commanding Officer's House. South Shields is located near the mouth of the River Tyne at its confluence with the North Sea. The area had significance to the Romans for two reasons. Firstly, it formed a key part of Hadrian's Wall, the frontier system that ran along the Tyne-Solway isthmus. South Shields was located just four miles beyond the eastern terminus of the wall at Wallsend (Segedunum) and prevented anyone by-passing the linear barrier by simply crossing the River Tyne. Secondly, the fort's proximity to the North Sea meant it was an ideal location for large sea-going vessels to offload supplies for onward movement to the inshore garrisons via smaller river barges. For both these reasons, a fort was established at South Shields circa AD 129 and remained garrisoned even when Hadrian's Wall was (briefly) decommissioned in favour of the more northerly Antonine Wall.

The thing is it has been over the years built over a number of times, it was only back in 1876 that a group of locals convinced the powers that be to start to excavate it that it started at all.... But they felt the history of the area was worth the effort..... in 1970 there was a bigger effort to discover the treasures below and it has been ongoing ever since with the locals always being part of the process.... and they are continually finding hidden treasures... they are guessing to really find it all it could take another 150 years... they have evidence there are another civilisation remains below the fort as well.... In Turkey on one of the places we visited they had found evidence of 6 different civilisations one below the other and we could see each one as they dug deeper.... so interesting to me maybe not to others....

Our next stop was to head to the Angel of the North but after we got there John was looking at the map and realised the Angel was actually in the South so we just aren’t sure why she is the Angel of the North.....
The Angel of the North is a contemporary sculpture, designed by Antony Gormley, located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Completed in 1998, it is a steel sculpture of an angel, 20 metres (66 ft) tall, with wings measuring 54 metres (177 ft) across. The wings do not stand straight sideways, but are angled 3.5 degrees forward; Gormley did this to create "a sense of embrace". The angel like much of Gormley's other work is based on a cast of his body. It stands on the hill of Birtley, at Low Eighton in Lamesley, overlooking the A1 and A167 roads into Tyneside, and the East Coast Main Line rail route, south of the site of Team Colliery.

No matter what way you look at here you just feel so small because she is just so VERY BIG...... as I was wandering around to take a better pic I came across a huge area of small trees with memorial flowers soft toys ect all in amongst the trees.... there wasn’t anything to indicate what it was or why they were there, but it had been a long time ago as e everything looked very old and tattered....... As we arrived I had noticed 2 elderly gentlemen sitting on a set.... today is very cold, very windy and very showery..... so it fascinated me that they would be out in It on such a day.... they looked like something out of a movie set.. I would say they were locals because as we were leaving so were they just walking back up the road.... to be honest and it’s a guess but it appeared it might be something they do regularly.... another fascination I have is guessing why people do what people do.... and I never do find out....

We drove back up the Hwy a bit to a Hotel I spotted as we were heading to the Angel... it looked really quite and had character from the outside, plus on the far side of it there were 2 Teepees, why we never did find out as it was now raining and I didn’t want to wander around in it as it as quite cold.... Our meal was just a Lamb roasted sandwich with gravy and chips.... more stodgy food.... but John enjoyed his so that’s good.... The inside of the Mill House as it was called was really lovely... I so wanted to take more pics but there were too many people around to do it comfortably....

So feed and watered we headed back to the city to see the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and The SAGE concert hall... both these buildings are absolutely fascinating to see.... the way the bridge sits over the water is in itself unreal to see, we had just missed it being raised by an hour and half what a shame....

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is a pedestrian and cyclist tilt bridge spanning the River Tyne in England between Gateshead's Quays arts quarter on the south bank, and the Quayside of Newcastle upon Tyne on the north bank. Opened for public use in 2001, the award-winning structure was conceived and designed by architect WilkinsonEyre and structural engineer Gifford.The bridge is sometimes referred to as the 'Blinking Eye Bridge' or the 'Winking Eye Bridge' due to its shape and its tilting method. In terms of height, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge is slightly shorter than the neighbouring Tyne Bridge, and stands as the sixteenth tallest structure in the city. The bridge was lifted into place in one piece by the Asian Hercules II, one of the world's largest floating cranes, on 20 November 2000. It was opened to the public on 17 September 2001,and was dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II on 7 May 2002. The bridge, which cost £22m to build, was part funded by the Millennium Commission and European Regional Development Fund. It was built by Volker Stevin. Six 45 cm (18 in) diameter hydraulic rams (three on each side, each powered by a 55 kW electric motor) rotate the bridge back on large bearings to allow small ships and boats (up to 25 m (82 ft) tall) to pass underneath. The bridge takes as little as 4.5 minutes to rotate through the full 40° from closed to open, depending on wind speed. Its appearance during this manoeuvre has led to it being nicknamed the "Blinking Eye Bridge". The design is so
energy efficient it costs just £3.96 each time it opens.

I wandered around the area taking shots of the different statues and interesting pieces along the Quay, but the rain started and was cold, windy and just awful wreaking my time of discovery... so we headed up to the top leave where the massive concert hall called Sage Gateshead was. This building was just as fascinating once on the inside... as it was on the outside.

Sage Gateshead contains three performance spaces; a 1,700-seater, a 450-seater, and a smaller rehearsal and performance hall, the Northern Rock Foundation Hall. The rest of the building was designed around these three spaces to allow for maximum attention to detail in their acoustic properties. Structurally it is three separate buildings, insulated from each other to prevent noise and vibration travelling between them. The gaps between them may be seen as one walks around inside. A special 'spongy' concrete mix was used in the construction, with a higher-than-usual air capacity to improve the acoustic. These three buildings are enclosed (but not touched) by the now-famous glass and steel shell. Sage One was intended as an acoustically perfect space, modelled on the renowned Musikverein in Vienna. Its ceiling panels may be raised and lowered and curtains drawn across the ribbed wooden side walls, changing the sound profile of the room to suit any type of music. Sage Two is a smaller venue, possibly the world's only ten-sided performance space. The building's concourse was designed to be used for informal music-making. Below the concourse level is the Music Education Centre, where workshops, community music courses and day-to-day instrumental teaching takes place in over 20 individual, largely sound-proofed rooms, one of which is also a recording studio.

Silly us didn’t realise we could have looked at more of it, such a shame as it would have been worth it, we did have a cuppa as it’s atmosphere was really peaceful felt like we were in a big library, quiet and relaxing... could have just sat here for ages but our paid parking was about to run out sadly....

I had gone outside to take some pics of the old bridge we drive over yesterday, it looks so much like the Brisbane Bridge and the Sydney one a bit of a mixture of the 2 but did remind us if home again.... under this bridge you could see another Red Pivot Bridge a Rail Bridge and another Bridge the other dude of it, so all up from up River it looked like 4 bridges tired together. Also on the other side if the river was little buildings beach huts like Brighton Beach plus deck chairs along the Quay, wonder how often they get used with the weather they have... but knowing the Brit’s I bet they would sit on them in any weather... They must have thicker blood from all this cold... our must be thinner from all our heat... Thats my opinion and I’ll stick to it ha ha.... No I just think they are braver and use any bit of an excuse to be outside.... Good on them...

So our day has been filled again, time to hear back to our abode... another day of interesting sites both old and modern...

A little sleep this arvo and tun soup for dinner... a good day had by all....Read more