Some of the attractions of The Hoppings just poking above the trees. The Hoppings is the world’s biggest fair of travelling attractions, and it congregates annually on the Town Moor here in Newcastle each June. This is its 130th year.

I’m sure I’ll get along at some point this week for a closer look!

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!

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 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.

I was a little amused to watch people battling the wind and rain as they passed this sign in the window of the Northumberland Street’s branch of the Newcastle Building Society today.

I read the other day that early June is the European monsoon season. The warmth of April and May causes the air to rise, and windy wet winds from the Atlantic sweep back across Europe to fill the vacuum. Apparently, this effect was first identified in the 1950s. Climatology couldn’t be further from my specialty, but let’s hope this theory is right: after all, it suggests that summer’s on the way!

Newcastle’s quayside seaside, a temporary beach on the iconic quayside, has returned for a second summer. It seemed very successful last year – there were kids playing and adults sunbathing every time I passed.

The monument is to Charles Wesley, and the beach occupies the Square named in his honour. I do wonder quite whether he’d approve of his monument being surrounded by relatively scantily clad sunbathers… but I guess, given that he’s been dead for 224 years, he’s unlikely to register any complaint.

As Olympic preparations continue apace, the country’s biggest metal Olympic rings have been clamped to the Tyne Bridge to celebrate Newcastle’s status as one of the host cities. They look really quite smart. They are the correct colours, of course, though the contrast with the bright sky in this photo makes that hard to see.

At first glance, from a distance, they didn’t look much different in size to the ones at St Pancras. But closer up, it’s clear that they really are quite huge: 25m wide, in fact, 50% bigger than the ones on The Mound in Edinburgh!

It seems I forgot to take a photo yesterday… oops! Instead, here’s one of the Tyne from South Shields, including some totally massive electricity pylons carrying cables over the Tyne at a height that allows huge ships to pass beneath. I don’t think I’ve seen pylons as tall anywhere else!