Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne sits on the north bank of the River Tyne, about ten miles inland from the North Sea, and it is the largest city in the North East of England. People have been building here for a very long time. The Romans threw a bridge across the river and called the fort beside it Pons Aelius; the Normans put up the new castle that gave the place its name in 1080; and from the eighteenth century onwards coal, glass, locomotives, armaments and shipbuilding turned Tyneside into one of the great industrial engines of the world. Almost none of that heavy industry survives, but the confidence it produced very much does.

What surprises most first-time visitors is how handsome the centre is. In the 1830s the developer Richard Grainger and the architect John Dobson demolished a tangle of medieval lanes and replaced them with a planned quarter of classical stone terraces. The result, now called Grainger Town, includes Grey Street, a long sweeping curve of columns and pediments that regularly turns up in lists of the finest streets in Britain. Walk downhill from there and the mood changes completely: steep stairs and cobbled chares drop you onto the Quayside, where seven bridges cross the Tyne within a mile of each other and the arch of the Tyne Bridge frames the whole view.

The city is also unusually easy to get around. The centre is genuinely walkable, the Tyne and Wear Metro connects it to the coast and the airport, and the Gateshead side of the river is a two-minute stroll across the Millennium Bridge. Add a population of students, a serious football culture centred on St James' Park, and a reputation for going out that is entirely deserved, and you have a city break that works equally well for culture, shopping, eating or a weekend with friends. Prices, by southern standards, still feel reasonable.

Top things to do in Newcastle upon Tyne

The centre packs a lot into a small area, and much of the best of it is free.

• Newcastle Castle - the Norman keep and the thirteenth-century Black Gate are all that survive of the fortress that named the city. The climb to the roof of the keep is rewarded with a view straight down the river and across the bridges.
• The Quayside and the bridges - a level riverside walk takes in the Tyne Bridge of 1928, the Swing Bridge, the High Level Bridge and the tilting Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Sunday mornings bring a long market of street food, crafts and secondhand books beneath the arches.
• BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art - a former flour mill on the Gateshead bank converted into a huge free gallery. The rooftop viewing box gives one of the best panoramas of Newcastle you will find.
• The Glasshouse International Centre for Music - the curved glass concert hall beside BALTIC, home to the Royal Northern Sinfonia, with a programme running from chamber music to folk and indie.
• Great North Museum: Hancock - natural history, a full-size model of Hadrian's Wall and a substantial Roman collection, all free and a short walk from the city centre.
• Victoria Tunnel - a nineteenth-century waggonway built to move coal under the city, later used as a wartime air raid shelter. Guided tours run regularly and are worth booking ahead.
• Ouseburn Valley - the city's creative quarter, a former industrial cleft full of independent breweries, live music rooms, an urban farm and the Seven Stories centre for children's books.
• Tynemouth and the coast - twenty-five minutes on the Metro brings you to a ruined priory on a headland, a long sandy beach and a Sunday market inside the Victorian station.

Getting to Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle Central Station is on the East Coast Main Line and is one of the easiest northern cities to reach by rail. Fast LNER services from London King's Cross take a little under three hours, with roughly two departures an hour through the day. Edinburgh is about an hour and a half north, York around an hour south, and Manchester roughly two and a half hours across the country via the TransPennine route. The station itself is a Dobson design with a magnificent curved train shed, and it sits five minutes on foot from both Grainger Town and the Quayside.

By road, the A1 runs down the western edge of the city and links to the A1(M) for the south; the A19 carries traffic up the eastern side through the Tyne Tunnel; and the A69 heads west along the line of Hadrian's Wall towards Carlisle. Driving into the centre is possible but rarely pleasant, and the one-way system takes some learning. Multi-storey car parks at Eldon Square, Dean Street and Manors are the usual options, and several hotels charge separately for parking. Many visitors do better to leave the car at a Metro park-and-ride site such as Regent Centre, Four Lane Ends or Callerton Parkway and ride in.

Newcastle International Airport lies about seven miles north-west of the city and has good European coverage plus domestic links to London, Belfast and the Scottish islands. The Metro runs directly from the terminal to Central Station in around twenty-five minutes, which makes it one of the more painless airport transfers in the country. Ferries from Amsterdam dock at North Shields, roughly a quarter of an hour from the centre by road or Metro.

Best time to visit Newcastle upon Tyne

Spring is a good, quiet season. The parks at Jesmond Dene and Leazes come back to life, the Quayside is pleasant without being crowded, and hotel rates are at their most reasonable before the summer. Bring layers: the wind coming up the river from the North Sea has a bite to it well into May.

Summer is the busiest stretch, helped by long northern evenings that stay light past ten o'clock in June. This is when the beer gardens of the Ouseburn and the tables outside the Quayside bars come into their own, and when the coastal Metro run out to Tynemouth and Whitley Bay is at its most appealing. The Great North Run, the world's largest half marathon, fills the city in September and books out accommodation months in advance.

Autumn suits anyone here for food, galleries and football. The weather turns changeable, but the city's indoor attractions are strong and the matchday atmosphere around St James' Park is at its best under floodlights. Winter is cold and often damp rather than snowy. The Christmas markets around Grey's Monument and the illuminated bridges give the centre real character, and January and February are the cheapest months to book, though short daylight limits what you can fit in.

Where to stay in Newcastle upon Tyne

Grainger Town and the streets around Grey Street put you in the middle of everything - theatres, the Grainger Market, restaurants and the main shopping area - and suit visitors who want to walk everywhere and do not mind some noise on Friday and Saturday nights. The Quayside is the other prime choice, quieter after midnight than the streets above it, with river views and a two-minute crossing to BALTIC and the Glasshouse.

Jesmond, a mile north of the centre, is the pick for a calmer stay. It is a leafy Victorian suburb of wide avenues, independent cafes and good restaurants, with its own Metro stops and a fifteen-minute walk into town. Gosforth, further north again, is similar in feel and handy for the racecourse and the airport road. Both work well for families and for anyone driving, since parking is far easier than in the centre.

Across the water, Gateshead offers riverside rooms with the classic view back towards the Tyne Bridge, often at slightly lower rates. Out at the coast, Tynemouth and Whitley Bay make an appealing base if you would rather wake up to a beach and treat Newcastle as a day trip - the Metro makes that entirely practical. Budget travellers will find plenty of chain hotels clustered near Central Station and around the Stephenson Quarter.

Food and drink in Newcastle upon Tyne

Start at the Grainger Market, a covered Victorian hall from 1835 that still functions as a working market. Butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers trade alongside a growing number of small kitchens selling everything from dumplings to Persian stews, and the tiny original Marks and Spencer Penny Bazaar stall survives inside. This is also the place to try the local staples: a stottie, the flat round loaf traditionally split and filled with ham and pease pudding, and the pease pudding itself, a smooth yellow spread made from split peas that Tynesiders take seriously.

At the top end, House of Tides occupies a sixteenth-century merchant's house on the Quayside and holds a Michelin star for tasting menus built around northern produce. Peace and Loaf in Jesmond does inventive modern British cooking over three split levels, while Blackfriars claims to be one of the oldest dining rooms in the country, set in the refectory of a thirteenth-century Dominican friary. For something less formal, Pani's Cafe on High Bridge has been serving Sardinian home cooking to Newcastle since the 1990s.

Drinking is a serious business here and the range has widened enormously. The Crown Posada on The Side is a narrow Victorian pub with stained glass and a following among real ale drinkers; Wylam Brewery occupies the Palace of Arts in Exhibition Park and combines a taproom with a gig venue; and the Ouseburn pubs, among them the Free Trade Inn with its unbeatable view of the bridges and the Cumberland Arms up on the bank, are where locals go for good beer and live music. Newcastle Brown Ale, brewed here from 1927, is no longer made in the city, but you will still find it poured. Quilliam Brothers Teahouse near the Great North Museum is the reliable non-alcoholic alternative, with a menu of several hundred teas.