Newcastle.

Day two away in the North East. I forgot that the reason I pay my money to the inn keeper is to recover - £50 - to return to sanity for the next day. OK in Europe I can stay somewhere for much less than that, and indeed almost nothing with monks, nuns and priests, but I am sat pondering the day ahead in a hotel The Dunes on South Parade, Whitley Bay, and recovered from the appallingly bad ex-YHA in Newcastle (Kabannas).

Back to Newcastle for Thursday night and visited two bars. One in Gateshead near the High Level Bridge (Station East) and one below the Tyne Bridge (Crown Posada) and had an average Spanish tapas 'meal' before retiring to Sleeperz. I'd definitely visit Newcastle again. It's 15 years since Glenn and I got wasted there and 30 since I ran away from the end of my third year at the University of Northumbria - at the end of a really crappy year.

Fortunately, the weather was good for those three days and I feel quite enlightened, enthusiastic, inspired. But now I am on my way back to Leeds and a quiet night sorting out laundry and preparing to a face for the other faces I meet. Walking went well, but the foot still plays up around 10 miles, or a couple of hours into some heavy rucking, and it does my head in! But the operation to correct it(and also to correct my left eye cataract) is just up ahead.

Jarrow was a little disappointing... But what was I expecting from an ex- shipbuilding village decades after the last ship departed to join the waves beyond South Shields. An awful shopping centre, just like the Eldon Centre, the Metro Centre and anyone of a million 'malls' destroying cultural centres with their concentration of crud. The Core in Leeds is in the process of being demolished... Don't build another one - Leeds has all the crud it needs...