IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Station Approach, SOUTH SHIELDS, NE33 1HR

Detail of the Ordnance Survey cut benchmark on the north east abutment of King Street Railway Bridge. The benchmark marks a height of 9.5738m above mean sea level (Ordnance Datum Newlyn) last verified in 1963 (location photograph Image).

Cluttered by a scruffy assortment of signs, notices, pipes, advertisements and equipment cabinets this bridge does little to enhance South Shield’s main shopping street. There is an Ordnance Survey cut benchmark low down near the corner of the abutment (photograph Image). The bridge carries an extension of the Tyne and Wear Metro leading to the South Shields Depot.

The metro station is located above the street, on the bridge.

The final station on the Tyne and West Metro line from Pelaw. Trains from here travel to the station at St James via a loop around the coast of North Tyneside.

I have just been to a local butchers, called Dicksons, and enjoyed 'a saveloy with everything on', which is a pink saveloy sausage, skinless, in a 'bread bun' (snapped in two, so it fits), and 'everything on' translates as the bread bun ALSO being filled with a generous helping of pease pudding, applied with a pallet knife, plus a helping of sage and onion stuffing and last but by no means least, a healthy dollop of bright yellow mustard. I ate it in the street, whilst walking. It has to be eaten to be fully appreciated. The flavours and textures combine in a slightly miraculous way; it is definitely more than the sum of its parts, and unite to give your taste buds a tantalising tease, tweak and titillate. It is a local delicacy. Though my wife, a local, didn't have one. I received many admiring glances as I ate and walked (no mean feat when you are tasting something very new, and which wants to escape the confines of its bun and jump onto your clothing or make a bid for freedom and fall into the street to become seagull food). I felt like a walking advert for Dicksons - and I may well have been - as passers-by saw me munching and set their faces towards the shopfront to copy me and order their own 'saveloy with everything on'. By the time I reached this part of King Street, I was in a mild torpor or trance-like state, induced by my new experience. I felt a kindred spirit with all my fellow shoppers, as if I had somehow been inducted into a new community of like-minded people. WE all know about the 'saveloy with everything on'. I smiled benignly at teenagers hanging about, bestowed friendly nods at passing elderly couples and felt compelled to pick up passing babies and hold them aloft. I obviously highly recommend the experience. I am replicating them at home. You cannot get anything remotely like it where I live I'm afraid...

The Metro Station platform is at a high level on the bridge to the right Image