Whitby Sunday

The main reason for visiting Newcastle upon Tyne was to see the Millenium Bridge, and watch it open. It is a pedestrian bridge that pivots up to let boats pass under. Very clever idea and looks great. It opens at noon every day, plus other times that can be booked. When we got there there was a Steel Band playing. The instruments are steel drums, dish shaped, originally from Trinidad. The drums are beaten and moulded and so have tuned lumps within each dish that make different notes, one drum can play a whole tune, all of them together were spectacular. Hopefully this will be a link to the video I took and uploaded to youtube. If that doesn’t work, here is the URL. https://youtu.be/f32CuU8L08E

The bridge was fascinating to watch.






There are 5 bridges across the Tyne in a very short space.





We then headed south along the coast and called in to Saltburn. There was a cliff tramway. We’ve seen a few of these cliff lifts, but all the others were electrically driven. This one still uses water to operate. The tank of the top car is filled with water until it is a little heavier than the lower one, so it moves down the track, pulling the lower one up. Water is releaded at the bottom and the process starts again. Very simple system.

Tonight’s “hotel” is a complete change from last night’s. We’re in a very small room on the 3rd floor, but it is somewhere to put the head. Whitby is very attractive and the light at 8pm tonight is beautiful.