Byker Redevelopment Walk: Trees

Today we had our first walkabout. It was arranged to coincide with the superb cherry blossom display we have at this time of year. Seamus Tollitt, Walker Park Manager and myself led the walk: I did a bit on the architectural context and Seamus give us all sorts of information about trees and how to identify them.

We covered a tiny section of the estate and the walk took 1.5 hours! We identified: Scots pine, beech, ash, holly, poplar, cherry, silver birch, leylandii, acers, lime, alder and elm.

About 12 people came along and joined in. It rained just before the start, dried up and the last part was in glorious sunshine - which sets Byker off to perfection!

A success!

Hare and Hounds For Sale

The Hare and Hounds pub - one of the original 'community' facilities from Old Byker - is now closed (hurray! because it was a right charva dive). What can we do with it? A good restaurant/cafe/etc?

This is a photograph taken in 1975 looking up Raby Street towards Rabygate. The Hare and Hounds is on the right.

Talking of 'The Byker Phoenix'

I guess it would be good if The Ralph Erskine Society had a web based newsletter. This could cover the residents of ALL of his developments.

But it would also be good to have a local newsletter for The Byker Redevelopment, written and produced by residents. This could be the new Byker Phoenix. Cool, eh? Will have to think more of this and have a look at the old ones to see what kind of thing they covered. How often could be produce one? Say every 2 months? What's happening in Byker, what groups are active, housing issues, environment, all those local things.

Meeting more people...

I was at Marilyn Charlton's leaving do yesterday. She has been the Byker Co-ordinator for several years so has developed many links within the community. So of course there were plenty of people there - and didnt have time to eat because I was too busy talking. There are so many people with such good strories to tell and so I collected more contact details. Also met up with Peggy who lives next to the Hairdressers on Raby Street. She was keen for something to happen in there so that was a good sign. And one of the group HAS A COMPLETE COLLECTION OF THE 'BYKER PHOENIX'! How amazing is that. I am planning to get it digitized.

Oh, also met up with Sirkka Liisa Kottinen to chat about having a photo taken as part of her current project on Byker. Its good to talk with interesting people with different experiences.