My Top 10 Places

By David Almond - award-winning local author

1. Home, in Northumberland, just to the north of Hadrian’s Wall
It was known as wilderness when the wall protected civilisation from we northern savages. Much of it is wilderness still – moorland stretching north forever; stunning light; huge skies; angry storms; castles and bastles (fortified farmhouses left over from the days of the border raids). Gorgeous.

2. NewcastleGateshead’s Bridges
Standing on the quayside, bridges are all around and all above: the platform of the Tyne Bridge thrusting out from the city roofs, then its green curve high above; the massive brick-and stone built railway bridge; cast-iron High Level; and the elegant Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

3. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
A gallery with a stream of exhibitions of the beautiful, the new and the strange. Best recent work? Marcus Coates’ eerie and hilarious transmutation of people into singing birds.

4. The Sage Gateshead
A magnificent building with two wonderful concert halls and the stage for the première of the opera of my story Skellig this November (Mon 24 - Sat 29 Nov 2008).

5. Seven Stories, The Centre for Children’s Books
A visionary place, that puts writing and illustration for children where it should be - right at the heart of our culture. Skellig will feature here (in November 2008), too – an exhibition to document the story’s various transfigurations – book, play, now opera.

6. ‘The Ouseburn’
A magical valley, like something from a storybook itself. It once contained fume-belching workplaces. There’s an ancient
pitman’s tunnel that goes right underneath the city. The stonework is colossal. Now there are The Cluny artists’ workshops, excellent pubs, a riding stable, and a city farm.

7. Tynemouth
On the splendid Longsands beach, with the Priory and Castle on the headland, I will take my shoes off, roll up my jeans, step into the icy water, gasp at the cold, and plodge.

8. North Shields Fish Quay
As the name suggests, just the place to stock up on sardines, haddock, squid. If it’s lunchtime, a packet of Kristians splendid fish and chips is irresistible.

9. South Shields
Another lovely beach, and a fun fair, and a proper seaside park with paddling pool and rides on a miniature steam train; and Minchella’s ice cream; and with a string of some of the North’s best (and best value) Indian restaurants on Ocean Road.

10. Wreken Dyke / Fell Dyke - just above Windy Nook in Felling
The past is just below the surface. The marks of mines are everywhere – disturbed earth, tracks of old mineral lines, turfed-over pitheaps now turned to playing fields and parks. Descendants of pit ponies graze in little paddocks. There are allotments, pigeon crees. All of Tyneside’s spread out below, the river snaking to the sea, the far-off Cheviots half-hidden in a haze. All the tough and tender beauty of the North.

Look out for more celebrity Top 10s in our quarterly What's On Guide, your essential guide to the events, performances and exhibitions in and around NewcastleGateshead.