Art and football flourish on Tyneside. While Stan Abbott of Gill Airways led a squad of Irish journalists to see Newcastle United trounce Aston Villa recently, I absorbed the Victorian atmosphere of Laing Art Gallery. Declining such an invitation sounds inexplicable, but all this diarist knows about football is that Newcastle - like Clarecastle GAA team - are known as the Magpies because of their black-and-white strip.
From its origins as an outpost of the Roman empire, Newcastle grew through centuries of blood and sweat to become a bastion of 19th-century industrial Britain. Now the cliche about bringing "coals to Newcastle" is becoming obsolete as the city finds a new image - and Britain casts off its imperial past. The Grainger urban renewal project, inspired by the 19thcentury developer Richard Grainger, is helping to transform Newcastle into a European regional capital.
Newcastle and its sister town of Gateshead are hoping to become the European Capital of Culture in 2008. More than £250 million is being invested in developing visitor attractions, centred on Gateshead Quays at the heart of Tyneside. The Millennium Bridge, a stunning pedestrian and cycle bridge, is due to open to the public later this summer. It will lift like a giant eyelid to allow shipping to pass.
The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, housed in a disused grain warehouse, is being transformed into the largest British centre for the contemporary visual arts outside London. The Music Centre Gateshead will provide a new home for the Northern Sinfonia and for Folkworks, the agency which promotes traditional music. Valuing all kinds of music equally, the North Music Trust connects performance and participation, education and entertainment
Angel of the North
Antony Gormley's sculpture Angel of the North, standing by the A1 near Gateshead, symbolises the regeneration of northern England and celebrates its engineering skills. Britain's largest sculpture, made with 200 tonnes of weathering steel, it was assembled in 1998.
Gormley comments: "People are asking, `Why an angel? The only response I can give is that no one has ever seen one [William Blake excepted] and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions. Firstly, a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for 200 years. Secondly, to grasp hold of the future, expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears."
Nearby attractions include: the Museum of Antiquities of the University and Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, the principal museum for Hadrian's Wall; and the Metro-Centre - Europe's largest shopping centre. After visiting it, you may need to explore the world of the Venerable Bede (673-735) in Jarrow. With the latest addition, there are now seven bridges on Tyneside. Bridges have spanned the river since 120 AD when the Romans built the first link between Gateshead and Newcastle. The electrically-operated Swing Bridge (1865-76), one of the great engineering achievements of its time, stands on the site of Roman and medieval bridges.
The Tyne Bridge (1928) was the world's largest single-span bridge until the erection of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932. The six-arch High Level Bridge, a Victorian monument in cast and wrought iron, opened up Newcastle to the railway. Designed by Robert Stephenson, son of George the locomotive inventor, it has trains on top and a road underneath.
The castle from which the city took its name provides an excellent viewing point. Founded in 1080 by Robert, eldest son of William the Conqueror, it includes a restored Norman chapel. Its three floors contain exhibitions recording the drama of Newcastle's 2,000-year story. Besieged by the Scots during the Civil War in 1644, its garrison room was used as an air-raid shelter in the second World War.
Another landmark is the monument to Earl Grey, of the 1832 Reform Bill and tea fame. History, Eliot observed, is a pattern of timeless moments.
Laing Gallery
One of the most evocative pictures in the Laing Gallery is The Women by John Charlton. It illustrates an event in 1861, when the women of the fishing village of Cullercoats dragged a lifeboat along the coast during a storm to St Mary's Island to rescue the crew of the Lovely Nellie. In St Andrew's Church near the gallery, we were invited to reflect on Julian of Norwich, the 15th-century mystic. Described as the great encourager, she believed "there is no anger in God". Do not accuse yourself too much, writes Julian, all will be well. Though we be "storm-tossed, work-weary, discomforted", God is always at work "bringing us to everlasting peace".
Over in the Cathedral of St Nicholas they were preparing to give thanks for 250 years of the Newcastle Infirmary. The 14th-century cathedral was being searched with the aid of a sniffer dog, a dismal sign of the times when one recalls that it escaped bombing during 1939-45. A lighted candle remembered "all caught up in the foot-and-mouth crisis".
Besides the excellence of its brown ale, Newcastle has much to offer. Good luck to the Geordies, the most unpretentious people in England, in their ambition to share a rich cultural life with the world.