Last week the good lady and I took ourselves off to North East England for a couple of days.

We’d meant to make the trip a couple of weeks ago but a certain news event there gave us pause.

We actually passed through Ponteland – which has a brick Art Deco town hall but there wasn’t an easy place to stop to photograph it – and saw signs for Rothbury. I can’t say I’d ever heard of either until early last month.

First stop was Newcastle (upon Tyne.)

Well, it was actually Gateshead where we parked adjacent to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. This is the view from the west side of the building.

And this is from the Millenium Bridge.

The interior of the gallery is impressive – they’ve done a good job of converting the original flour mill but the contents left me cold.

One of the exhibits was art work by John Cage, more famous for musical compositions (or more accurately for 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence.) His pictures consisted of muddy daubs, streaks and circles. The good lady opined that he must be a genius; he can take the piss in two disciplines, music and art.

The Tomas Saraceno spider web left me cold (as did the fish tanks with spiders in them.) Cornelia Parker’s circle of squashed brass/silver instruments was quite effective – especially when viewed from the floor above.

I’ve enjoyed visits to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on Belford Road, Edinburgh and its companion the Dean Gallery over the road so I’m not a complete philistine but this was distinctly underwhelming.

Then it was over the Millenium Bridge to Newcastle. The first picture is from the walkway just by the Gallery.

The second is from the Newcastle side further up the river.

I quite like modern bridges like this. The Clyde Arc (or Squinty Bridge) in Glasgow is another in similar vein.