This Costa Express machine is in my local Asda, but they’re spreading all over the place at the moment. When they were first announced, I ridiculed the idea: Costa, Britain’s biggest coffee chain, had just spent a whole heap of money on ads to convince us that their coffee was different because it was made by highly trained baristas, not monkeys with machines. Then they decide to brand, erm, machines. It didn’t make sense to me.

But it turns out that I was wrong. I recently read that these machines have been doing a roaring trade, and sales have soared in places where they’ve displaced other machine brands. Which just goes to show that I know nothing about retail branding!

This rain greeted me as I reached the supermarket earlier today: I sat and sheltered in the car for ten minutes or so while it passed!

Inspired by this article, today’s picture is a cup of coffee. In 1999, there were 700 branded coffee shops on Britain’s streets; there are now 5,000. Independents have also increased in number, but to a lesser extent: there were previously 4,100, now 5,633. So I guess I should probably have featured a photo of an independent… Look back to photo 113 if you feel bad about me featuring Starbucks!

This is a little welding shop across the river from work. I don’t know any more about it than that: I’d never really registered its existence until today!

It’s been a really awful day for weather here today – absolutely bucketing with rain for much of the day, and thick mist covering the city this evening. The Town Moor has become so waterlogged that The Hoppings, due to kick off tomorrow, has been delayed for what might well be the first occasion in its 130-year history.

Let’s hope summer comes soon – or all nine days of The Hoppings could turn out to be a complete washout!

Last week, Wendy needed something posting quickly, so I took it to the local Post Office and coughed up £7.55 to send it via Special Delivery, expecting it to arrive the next working day.

Unfortunately, on this occasion, Royal Mail’s definition of “special” fell short of both my expectations and their service specification: it took almost a week. Their website clearly reports the postage and delivery date.

So given that Royal Mail know from their tracking system that the item was delayed, claiming the refund to which I’m entitled should be straightforward, right? Sadly not. It turns out that I have to fill in a form giving all sorts of details about the parcel, including the posting and delivery dates and times which they clearly already know, and submit this along with my original Post Office receipts (luckily, I’m a hoarder of Post Office receipts after previous bad experiences). I then have to wait 30 days – thirty days – for them to consider the claim, when it is already abundantly clear from the data they have that a refund is appropriate.

Why can’t I just go to the local Post Office, or phone a number, and get an immediate apology and refund based on the data they already have? The current system seems convoluted, illogical, and puts a totally unnecessary burden on the consumer. Rant over!

Designed and built entirely on Teesside, and opened in 1934 by the Duke and Duchess of York (later the Queen Mother), this is the Tees Newport Bridge. It has a span of 82m, and two 55m lifting towers with counterweights of nearly 7,000 metric tonnes.

The little hut perched on the middle of the bridge is the winch-house, from where the up-and-down movement of the bridge was controlled. I say “little hut”, but I understand that it’s actually a quite beautiful oak-pannelled control room, modelled on the bridge of a ship. The bridge was winched by electric motors, though did have petrol backups. The third-line backup was to winch by hand, but it’s said that this would have taken twelve men eight hours.

22 years ago, after a final ceremonial raising and lowering (which is actually on YouTube), the road bridge was bolted in place: there was really very little point in continuing to maintain the lifting mechanism given that the innavigable (at least to big ships) Tees Barrage was just about to be constructed a little upstream. There was initially some speculation that the massive steel counterweights could therefore be detached and sold as scrap, until some bright spark realised that they were still actually supporting the weight of the road bridge, even though movement was prevented by the bolting process.

The bridge remains busy with traffic, as it’s part of the A1032.

Last Sunday, I showed you the DNA sculpture which stands in Newcastle’s Times Square. Today’s picture shows another angle on Times Square – note the huge Life logo in the brickwork of the floor, and the couple of bars that are visible beneath the biomedical offices on the right of the photo. The DNA sculpture can’t be seen as it’s off to the right of this picture. The church in the background is St Mary’s, which I featured in February.

The feature of Times Square which is perhaps most useful to know is that it has its own nearby multi-storey car park, which is one of the few in Newcastle that’s open (and manned) 24hrs. That’s the sort of knowledge that sometimes comes in very handy!

I featured Weetslade Country Park as my photo-a-day picture in both April and May, as it’s probably our nearest Country Park.

Today’s picture comes from the Tyne Riverside Country Park, which is another green space owed to our industrial heritage – it’s another landscaped ex-colliery, but this one sits on the bank of the Tyne. It’s really quite lovely, and there are lots of picnic spots if you’re that way inclined. I imagine it gets pretty cold and windy in the winter, though!

I had thought that this was the third of the North East’s Country Parks that I’d featured, because I thought I’d featured Herrington Country Park back in February, but I actually gave that day over to the Penshaw Monument next door. So, for the purposes of boosting the numbers, here’s a shot of Herrington Country Park from 11th February, as seen from next to the Penshaw Monument (it’s the bit across the road).

As it’s Father’s Day, and dad’s a twitcher, I’ll point out that at Riverside you can see water rails, cormorants, and goosanders (according to the council); at Herrington, you might spot black terns or marsh warblers (according to the Fog Blog); and at Weetslade, you could see meadow pipits or grey partridges (according to the Northumberland Wildlife Trust). As a non-twitcher, I wouldn’t know any of those birds if they flew into me!

One question visitors to Newcastle upon Tyne never seem to tire of asking is “So where’s the castle?”

This is part of the answer: the Castle Keep of Newcastle upon Tyne, built 834 years ago by King Henry II. Well, not so much by Henry as on his orders, I imagine. The Black Gate, the castle’s gatehouse, also still remains – though that was built a little later, by Henry III.

I doubt either Henry foresaw that the East Coast Mainline would one day cut through their castle’s grounds – it’s this development in the mid 19th century that led to the destruction of most of the Castle’s buildings except for the keep and gatehouse. Clearly, planning permission for railways was easier to come by 200 years ago than it is today, going by the furore over HS2’s route!

If you are visiting Newcastle and want to pop in, it’s open almost every day of the year, is free for kids under 18, and costs only £4 per adult.

Interestingly, the folk who currently look after the keep are almost as ancient as the building itself – the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne dates back to 1813, and is the oldest antiquarian society in England. They also operate a bagpipe museum in a former ladies’ toilet in Morpeth, which I’m afraid I’ve absolutely no desire to visit.