It might not be immediately obvious from the picture, but it was snowing fairly heavily when I took this shot! Luckily, the snow doesn’t seem to be lying, at least so far. It’s quite a change from the sunny weather of last week!

Today’s photo shows the old bus station on Worswick Street in Newcastle. It’s been disused for almost 15 years, and is now something of an unofficial, and presumably rather inefficient, car park.

This whole area of the city centre has been ear-marked for regeneration for a long time, but nothing seems to have happened as yet…

This is the “restaurant directory” outside the flagship store of the Fenwick chain on Newcastle’s Northumberland Street. Listed are the ten restaurants in the store: the Northside Diner; the Terrace Restaurant; Café 21; Johann’s Coffee Shop; the Majorca Café; Tivoli; Pret a Manger; Yo! Sushi; Caffé Nero; and the Patio Restaurant.

I reckon that ten restaurants within a single department store must be close to a record. I know that Harrods famously has 25 restaurants – not that I’ve counted and independently verified the claim – but I can’t think of any UK department store other than Harrods or Fenwick with anywhere near ten. Can anyone else think of any?

Local legend has it that this branch of Fenwick is the most profitable branch of any department store chain in the UK. The Sunday Times Rich List is often the cited source of this information, but I can’t see it under the Fenwick family’s entry in any of the Rich Lists in the Times’s archive, so I’m not absolutely convinced.

The flagship M&S virtually next door – which houses five restaurants of its own (an M&S Cafe, Kitchen, Restaurant, Deli and Food on the Go) – has a food hall which is frequently authoritatively cited as the chain’s most profitable, so the claim about Fenwick isn’t as outlandish as it might first appear.

Anyway, as interesting as all that is, I thought the picture was a bit rubbish. So here’s a bonus one of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge now that the ugly bollards have been removed.

I’ve featured three shots of the Ouseburn previously – and today’s photo is the fourth, from the fourth different location! This one’s just a little bit downstream from this one. At this rate, I might have photographed every centimetre of its course by the end of the year!

This is the Killingworth Centre, in the centre of Killingworth, built in 2000. As this picture shows, it’s not the most happening place on a Saturday night, but it was certainly a quiet time to get the groceries!

This striking building is Newcastle University’s Business School, completed last year as one of the first buildings in the £200m Downing Plaza development, which connects the city centre’s business quarter to the developing science quarter.

I spent this morning here listening to Alistair Campbell, who was supposed to be talking about strategic communications, but mainly talked politics. Still, it was interesting and free, and it was lovely to be invited along!

This is John Dobson’s 19th century “lying-in” maternity hospital for poor women. It’s located next to the Blue Carpet which I’ve previously featured. It opened in 1826, and remained in use until 1923.

Far from offering care to all-comers, like the modern NHS, this hospital wouldn’t admit those too poor to afford baby clothes, the homeless, those with infectious diseases, or those who had fallen pregnant outside of wedlock. And, yes, marriage certificates had to be presented prior to admission. It all seems so medicoethically bankrupt by the standards of today’s UK.

I understand that the building had a later life as the regional headquarters of the BBC, but I’m not quite sure what it houses these days.

I’ve featured the Ouseburn a couple of times before – most recently, of course, yesterday.

This picture, which shows the Ouseburn as it passes a few hundred metres from our house, is a few miles or so further upstream than this one.

This is Newcastle’s monument to 19th century Prime Minister Charles Grey, who of course gave his name to a splendid blend of tea. The statue was sculpted by Bailey, who also created the statue of Nelson atop Nelson’s Column in London. I rather wonder whether this guy’s sculptures being stuck on top of huge columns, far from close public inspection, is a compliment or an insult…

I read earlier this week that, in some fluke accident, this statue of Earl Grey was struck by lightening during the war, decapitating him. During wartime, repairs weren’t considered a priority, and so the smashed fragments were stored. After the war, the fragments were reconstructed, and a replica made and attached to the statue.

But, bizarrely, the tale of Earl Grey’s head doesn’t end there. In 2000, a cast was taken of the head, and an artwork created and embedded in the Monument’s plinth, which allows anyone to see his head from four different sides. So now everyone can get up close and personal with Earl Grey!

This is the first of today’s two photos, since I forgot yesterday! It shows some boats, just at the point where the Ouseburn meets the Tyne at the Quayside here in Newcastle. I’ve featured the Ouseburn once before in this series, a couple of miles or so further upstream at Jesmond Dene.

These boats are actually on the Tyne side of the Ouseburn Tidal Barrage, so are possibly technically on the Tyne rather than the Ouseburn, but who am I to say where a tributary ends and the larger river begins?