Evening "do" was at a place called "Close House". A bit of a trek, it is near Heddon-on-the-Wall, but ideal for us oldies. There is a nice room with a blazing log fire, to sit in away from the noise of the music. Yes I know, bah humbug and all that. Food was good too!
Enroute home (we were being driven by Dana), we had to collect Emily and Lauren (they had been to a pop concert). The excitement was we saw not one but two foxes as we drove through urban Newcastle-uopn-Tyne.
We just went in the immediate area near where we live. A circuit, initially by the River Don, past Bockley Whins Metro station, into the not so scenic Brockley Whins housing estate, then into Low Simonside, still not so scenic, then under the A19 beside the Tyne Tunnel, to walk alongside Jarrow cemetry, and then back towards the Robin Hood Pub.
This part is quite scenic, you are still in the not so attractive Jarrow, but you would not know it as you can see, particularly if you avert your eyes from the odd supermarket trolley, discarded in the stream which is the River Don.
Eventually under the metro line, at Fellgate Metro station and back through Hedworth to the Boldon Lad Pub, again carefully avoiding the temptation to go in (not too difficult in the case of the Boldon Lad!), and home.
Now here is a thought. "Brockley Whins" is an odd name, I wonder what the origin of that is?
Sunday dawns another beautiful day.
More walking, this time on the edge of Boldon, taking in Downhill Lane and back via Boldon Colliery, and then Sunday Lunch, surely the most enjoyable meal of the week.
A little gardening, I am in the process of removing a small hedge. It is going to be a drawn out affair. Not so much the work involved in digging out the individual shrubs (although the first one was a monster, which broke the spade!), but more in the need to dispose of the results. I have resolved to dig out one shrub per week and consign it to the "green waste" bin. The object of the exercise is to remove the need to trim the hedge, it is all about work reduction now.
I return to the search for information about Brockley Whins.
My initial efforts, ie a search on Google, have not turned up anything really. There was a railway accident there in 1870, in which 5 people died and 57 people were injured. There is a report, including a list of the dead and injured. There is even a "Reay" in the list of injured. Finding out about "Brockley Whins" is clearly going to take more than five minutes.
A little more persistence, and I discover, there has been a mainline railway station there since 1839. Quite why there was a station there, is another mystery to me. True there is a lot of housing development in the immediate area now, but that has all been built in my life time. Surely in 1839 the station must have been in the middle of nowhere?
The station was apparently renamed Boldon Colliery in 1925, at which time I suppose the coal mine at Boldon must have been in full flow. It was renamed back to Brockley Whins in 1991, and become a Metro Station in 2002. Now only Metro's from the Tyne and Wear Metro stop there.
Interesting (?) as this may be, it does nothing to explain where the name came from.
I had thought that the term "Whins", related to coal mining, but it would appear I am wrong, hardly surprising, since I am a man.
No it would appear the word "Whins" is of Scandinavian origin, and means "Gorse", akin to Norwegian kvein bent grass. This is not a total surprise since many colloquial words in this region are of Scandinavian origin, dating back to the days when the Vikings were the Football hooligans of the day, and raped and pillaged their way through the area.
I do recall, in my youth, the immediate area was extensively covered in gorse bushes, or at least the area which, at that time, was not covered in spoil heaps from the colliery. So perhaps this is the origin of the name.
Before the colliery closed, and the surrounding land was "reclaimed", we (as children at the time) used it as our adventure playground, climbing the spoil heaps, and sailing on the pit pond in home made rafts. All long before the days of computer games, television in every house and of course "Health and Safety"
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