It was August. Four months ago. I had attended a little social group that day at the cafe in Exhibition Park. It was run as the Sunday Assembly Newcastle event on the grounds that the assembly wasn't able to meet that month as usual. So some of us met up, shared drinks and food if we wanted them and chatted for a while before going our separate ways.
Afterwards my only plan had been to get home. I would walk to Jesmond Metro station, catch a train, go home, drink more tea. Simple as that. I felt I needed to be somewhere quiet pretty quickly because although I had enjoyed seeing good people I was pretty shattered by being there among them and having to focus so hard.
So I walked. Briskly. Out of the park. Under the main road. And into Jesmond. Just a couple more minutes walking and I would be at the Metro station and could get home.
That's when my plan went wrong. Or went right. I saw this path.
I've seen it before of course and have wondered where it led. I wondered again. And decided to find out. It led here. Or rather the place it led to led here:
I think I've found the houses where I'd want to live in Newcastle. I'd have one of these. They would be pretty expensive though because they're nice houses in a very desirable area of the city. There was no way we could have afforded a house anywhere in Jesmond when we moved to Newcastle. Not even a very scummy house. If such houses exist in such a location.
I walked on and decided that I might as well keep walking to West Jesmond Metro instead of turning back on myself and heading for Jesmond. On the way I passed the entrance to Jesmond Cemetery.
When I used to walk my child to and from school everyday I would sometimes walk on from the school into the city centre. At my pace it would take another 45 minutes from the school gates to Haymarket. I walked a lot in those days. To the school and back twice a day - four miles. And I would often go to Mass on the way back which took it up to five-and-a-half miles. That's before shopping trips and those walks into town. On the walk to the town I would pass the gates of Jesmond Cemetery and every time I would think to myself, "I really should go in and explore sometime."
On that day in August I decided to do it. I needed a quiet place. A cemetery would be appropriate. Now I am thinking to myself, "I really should go back with my book about the cemeteries of Newcastle and explore sometime." I will. Sometime.
The following are photos taken in the cemetery. I'll be posting again with more photos taken there and also photos taken in the community orchard that adjoins the cemetery. You will spot that I like cemeteries - just as you would have done if you saw my posts, some months ago, about a wilder graveyard in Durham.
I found my quiet. And I found that my thought on all those walks from school had been entirely correct.
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