08 Oct 08 - The Tyne, Sunderland and Hartlepool

13th October 2008

On Wed 8 Oct 08, QE2 visited the Tyne, making the final port call of her farewell Round Britain cruise. I had hoped to be able to get up there to watch her arrival - a relatively simple plant, but one that turned out to be a lot harder to achieve in practice than it ought to have been. The first problem was that I couldn’t find a reliable ETA for the ship. Offerings ranged from 0500hrs on the Port of Tyne 2008 Cruise Schedule to 1100hrs (source not known). On the morning in question the Port of Tyne shipping movements list had her booked to arrive at 0700hrs and I estimated that this would be too early for any kind of serious photography. A check on AIS before leaving for work at 0630hrs showed the ship about 20 miles offshore and standing in towards the coast. The bridge cam showed total darkness, apart from the lights of Tynemouth only just visible at the top of the frame. So I went off to work somewhat disappointed at a missed opportunity. At around 0720hrs I decided to do a quick check on the bridge cam again and, to my surprise, found that the ship was just approaching the Tynemouth breakwaters in full daylight. This was even more disappointing! Having now comprehensively bogged up any chance of obtaining arrival photos, I decided to check the berth. The Port of Tyne site gave this as Northumbrian Quay. That wasn’t a name I was familiar with, but some fairly intensive digging revealed what I should have known all along – Northumbrian Quay is, in fact, the old Tyne Commission Quay with a new name. By this time the weather had turned into one of the best days we’d had in ages, and a little bit of creative diary management resulted in me taking a slightly foreshortened flexi day and heading for South Shields. In the events, the crowds weren’t excessive, it was still possible to park near the various viewpoints, the weather was fantastic and, in total, 13 new sightings were obtained (although I had to stop at Sunderland and Hartlepool on the way back to boost the numbers). All in all a great day out and one that serves, in some small measure, to justify the name of this site that was set up in some haste before I realised that my opportunities for visiting the Tyne would be rather more limited than I had originally anticipated.

Please note that I have loaded these photos this morning to take advantage of a fast internet connection. The detailed captioning and notes will have to wait till this evening.

QE2	QE2	QE2	QE2
QE2	QE2	QE2	Princess of Norway
Princess of Norway	Princess of Norway	HMS Example	Spirit of the Tyne