This is a bit of Hamsterley Forest, County Durham’s largest forest.

It was planted in the 1930s, and housed one of Britain’s work camps – formally an “Instructional Centre” – where unemployed men were forced to do heavy manual labour. At the time, unemployed men were seen as “soft and demoralised”, and were forced to attend these camps to be “hardened and reconditioned” for twelve weeks under threat of their dole payments being stopped. Conditions were grim: the men were unpaid, lived in wooden huts, and did heavy manual labour for twelve hours a day. They were subject to military-style discipline under the guidance of retired police officers and sargeants major. The camps were so reviled that some newspapers of the day called them concentration camps.

In all, 200,000 men were sent to these camps – only 10% secured employment afterwards. It is, perhaps, surprising from our point of view that these camps were introduced by Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Government.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, some of the camps – including Hamsterley Forest – became prisoner of war camps.

Perhaps surprisingly, part of the Hamsterley Camp still exists – though these days, it’s been converted into a Visitors’ Centre for the forest. The forest offers a range of activities for visitors these days, including mountain biking, the RAC rally, and fell running. I wonder, though, how many visitors are aware of the forest’s dark past?

Tonight’s the Last Night of the Proms, so I thought it would be appropriate to feature something musical. This is Roman Bar Column, one of a number of bottle-themed waymarkers in the Ouseburn Valley created by local Fine Art graduate Lewis Robinson. I say he’s a Fine Art graduate, but that was nearly a quarter of a century ago, and he’s done an awful lot since then.

Here’s a closer look at that violin:

Now I did say that these sculptures were bottle-themed, and you might be wondering how this ties in. Well, on the other side of the sculpture, you’ll find this:

When the sculpture was first plonked here in 2002, this was a neat visual pun as it was opposite one of Byker’s most famous pubs, The Plough Inn, which dated back to the late 1800s. Unfortunately, this closed down a few years ago, and the building is now occupied by Albaik, a (highly rated) Lebonese restaurant. This rather ruins the gag.

Now, given that I was at the top of the Ouseburn Valley, and given this blog’s history, how was I supposed to resist a picture of the Ouseburn?

This was taken from the top of Byker Bridge, and shows the river curving round Ouseburn Farm. There’s more about Byker Bridge, and some photos from the bottom, back on day 224.

This is the Gateshead office of Schawk!, a global brand development company. I only know that because their name is so arresting that I felt the need to take a photo of their building, so they clearly did a good job of branding themselves.

Right next door, there’s a bit of branding that I think is unique to the North East:

Wadds is a local glazier. When businesses had their windows smashed, Wadds would (of course) temporarily board over the windows whilst manufacturing a replacement. Wadds would decorate these boards with a distinctive stencil saying “Wadds was here”. I don’t think they do it any more, but still, the “Wadds is here” sign on their HQ is a bit of an in-joke as well as a statement of fact!

And finally, just down the road there is a bit of branding to which I think the man from Del Monte would say “no”:

Emily Young is a renowned carver of stone, who has created a number of “Angel” sculptures, now scattered across the globe, all of which show the faces of angels.

This particular angel – the Golden Angel – is in Maingate in the Team Valley. It’s much bigger than it appears in the photo above! It was hand-carved from a huge piece of Persian yellow travertine stone, and weighs seven tons (not including the plinth). It was installed in 2005.

These are all practice OSPHE stations that I’m using to help prepare for my MFPH Part B exam. I put them in coloured folders to make them more fun. It wasn’t a terribly successful strategy.

When coming to post this, I’ve realised that I forgot to post a photo yesterday, so I’ll do two tomorrow to make up for it! Sorry!

I can’t quite put my finger on why this sign always makes me smile. It could be the fact that it’s on its own little podium. It could be the detail of the message, versus “staff only”. It could be the thought of the amusement promised by entering the window. It could be the absurdity of the use of the word “window” versus “window display”. Whatever it is, it never fails to amuse whenever I catch it out of the corner of my eye.

I know we’re supposed to love Sainsbury’s for embracing traffic light labelling, but when those traffic lights show data for a single liquorice comfit in a bag of 44, it’s difficult to conclude that they’re really entering into the spirit of the exercise. Especially when the same packaging claims that a single serving is 11 comfits…!

This is the M6, looking North from Southwaite services. Southwaite’s Wikipedia entry has me convinced that it is the place to be: it’s most notable features are a railway station on the west coast mainline that closed 60 years ago and a phone box. What more could the modern tourist want?

Meet Woody, Annabel, Maxwell, Lady Hillary and Sir Nathaniel Westminster, the original family of five piggy banks given away by NatWest between 1983 and 1988. Each successive figure was earned by reaching a child’s saving account balance of £5, £25, £50, £75 and finally £100. I’m not entirely sure whose these belong to – possibly my sister, maybe my brother? Maybe some of them are mine? Might be best not to ask!

These days, a complete set sells for about £200 – the prices of the individual figures reflect the account balance required to collect the figure, as that’s obviously proportional to their rarity.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a Cousin Wesley, who’s worth a similar amount alone and was released in 1998 to reward those investing £1000 in a children’s savings bond. He’s now worth £200 alone! We also don’t have the grandparents, Lady Margaret and Lord Henry, who were released in 2011, or Master Richard (another cousin), released just this year. But then, there’s only so much room on the shelf!

This is what’s left of Penrith Castle, built between 1399 and 1470 by William Strickland, who later became the Bishop of Carlisle. Richard III lived there for a bit, but William III gave the castle to his good friend Hans Willem Bentinck, though the King’s subjects weren’t all that impressed with his decision to give a castle to a Dutchman.

The King wasn’t particularly bothered about what his subjects thought, and went on to give Bentinck 135,000 acres of land in Ireland, too. he wanted to give him a fair chunk of Wales as well, but got scared when the whole House of Commons was united in opposition.

If Elizabeth II has a spare castle or hundred thousand acres she wants to give away, I’ll happily take them off her hands…!