A few days ago, I mentioned the Royal Victoria Docks Bridge – and since I’m in London today, I thought I’d share a picture of it. As I said, it was built with the capability of running as a transporter bridge like the one in Middlesbrough, but this facility hasn’t been used.

Just a little way from that bridge is the new Emirates Airline. The consensus amongst Londoners that I know is that this is far more a tourist attraction than a serious transport proposal. As a tourist of sorts, I didn’t want to buck the trend, so I hopped on here, at the station on the North bank:

And here’s a pretty picture of the venue formerly known as The O2, but which the IOC now insists on us all referring to as the North Greenwich Arena:

But the most pressing question I had after my brief “flight” was: what’s in the box?

I assume it’s some sort of emergency equipment, but it’s a pretty small box. Do any of my well-informed readers know what’s in it? I’m intrigued…

This is a bit of Newcastle’s ancient town wall – specifically, the Durham Tower bit. The wall was built in the 13th and 14th centuries, and was once 2 miles long, 2m thick, and over 7m high. There were 17 towers like this one, all within shooting distance of each other to repel attackers. The construction of the wall was funded through a special tax – a murage – which was levied for a hundred years.

The wall kept the town reasonably well protected from invaders, seeing off attacks from David II of Scotland and the Earl of Douglas among others. By the 18th century, the wall had fallen into disrepair, and Scottish armies were able to invade Newcastle a couple of times. By the late 18th century bits of it started to be knocked down, because it started to get in the way.

These days, it’s a scheduled ancient monument which is also the home to a notable literary landmark: Morden Tower, where many great 20th century poets came – and still come – to read their work. Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Basil Bunting, and Seamus Heaney are just four of the hundreds of previous poetic visitors! It’s also the place where the band Whitehouse once gave a performance in which the entire audience walked out. I don’t think that’s ever happened to any of the poets!

As I’m coming to the end of my time working on Teesside, I think it would be impossible to leave without featuring one of the most iconic sights of the area: the Tees Transporter Bridge. The photo below might give a more familiar view, but it’s very difficult to fit the bridge into a single frame when this close up!

The bridge was built 101 years ago, and remains in perfect working order. It is the world’s largest operational transporter bridge, and it carries people and vehicles along the A178, connecting Middlesbrough to Port Clarence. It remains the furthest downstream crossing of the River Tees.

There are only eleven transporter bridges left in the world, and still fewer that actually work. In the United Kingdom, only Newport boasts another working transporter bridge; there’s another bridge in Warrington that’s been out of use since 1964, while London’s Royal Victoria Dock Bridge was designed with (as yet unused) transporter bridge capabilities.

As with all transporter bridges, it works through loading people and vehicles onto a gondola, suspended from the main structure. This then moves back and forth – in less than two minutes each way – allowing traffic to cross. Here’s the gondola in action:

The current tolls are surprisingly small: just £1.30 for a car, or 70p for a pedestrian or cyclist. For a smaller fee, it used to be possible to climb the steps at either end and walk across the top of the bridge. A restoration project going on at the moment will install glass elevators to transport visitors to the top, making the reportedly extraordinary views accessible to everyday visitors once again.

Today’s photo shows another bit of the Ouseburn, on its meandering path from somewhere near Newcastle Airport to the Tyne.

I’ve featured various bits of the Ouseburn in the last 190 days, and Wendy reckons it’s now become boring and repetitive. She suggested I photograph and feature this foxglove:

So two for the price of one today: the Ouseburn and a foxglove!

Wendy went to her first ever cake decorating class today, and this is what she brought home (along with a huge smile!). I wouldn’t have guessed it was her first class from this alone! It looks pretty incredible to me, although the greenhouse had melted a little by the time I got the picture!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the seemingly unstoppable spread of Costa Express machines. Today, I thought I’d throw caution to the wind, and – against my better judgement – try a hot chocolate produced by one of these machines.

My previous experience of machine-produced hot beverages has been dominated by overpriced and undrinkable rubbish from hospital vending machines. I’m not quite sure what I expected from this Costa machine: Something resembling coffee shop hot chocolate? Something undrinkable? Something inbetween?

As I pressed the button for a Costa hot chocolate, the one thing I didn’t expect was a cup of warm milk… yet that’s what I got! Not a drop of chocolate in sight! My faith in machine-crafted hot drinks isn’t exactly restored…!

I’ve featured the Millennium Bridge a few times: once with bollards, once during the removal of the bollards, and once without them. But today is the first time I’ve featured it tilted!

It cost £22m to build, and tilted for the first time in 2001. It’s so energy efficient that it costs just £3.60 in electricity to open. One thing that many people don’t realise is that the tilting of the bridge has a secondary function, beyond letting ships pass: it tips any litter dropped on the bridge into special traps, making the bridge uniquely self-tidying!

I know lots of councils put stickers not dissimilar to these on their lampposts, but the personality of these ones in Gateshead never fails to make me smile!

Located just behind The Sage, this is the CoMusica Legal Wall, a space for graffiti artists to legally share their work. The designs on the wall change frequently, but always seem to be high quality.

Check out this section based around Romeo and Juliet, which ties in with a couple of things The Sage is currently hosting with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of the World Shakespeare festival:

This is the ruin of Holy Trinity Church, which stands in Trinity Green in Stockton. I used to walk past this every day when I lived in Stockton and walked into uni.

Holy Trinity Church was an Anglican church consecrated in 1835. In the 20th century, it suffered a series of unfortunate events.

Those of superstitious mind might date the start of the troubles to 1955, when the church decided to remove all of the headstones from its churchyard, and convert it into an open space for fun and frolics. Perhaps eerily, one of the final headstones to be removed carried the prophetic inscription

Death to me little warning gave,
And quickly called me to my grave

Just a year later – 1956 – stone began to fall from the church’s steeple, and it was soon found to be structurally unsound. The congregation failed raise the £20k needed to repair it, and so, in 1958, the steeple was dismantled.

A decade on, the Anglican congregation dwindled here as elsewhere. The vicar launched a “getting to know you” campaign in which he went door-knocking in the local area, which did enough to keep the church going for a while.

But 1979 brought another huge blow to the church after its organ – worth some £100k – failed. The church could not afford to repair it, and over time, the congregation and the collection plate shrank to an unsustainable level. The church was forced to close in 1982.

Respite in prospect appeared in 1985, as the Greek Orthodox Church took over the building and spent £30k on overhauling the organ. But not long afterwards, the church was ransacked by vandals who stole candlesticks and communion wine – and destroyed the newly repaired organ.

In 1991 – just six years after its reopening – the church was burned down in a fire, the cause of which was never discovered.

Since then, the church has stood as a landmark ruin. The ex-churchyard, now known as Trinity Green, is used for all manner of cultural events. But with its grim history, how long can it be until another disaster befalls the Holy Trinity Church?