Living on the ledge

摘要

The kittiwakes of the Tyne Bridge arrived in Newcastle and Gateshead's quayside district in the 1960s, drifting upriver from foothold colonies at A South Shields, where the river opens to the North Sea. The quayside was a forlorn place then: Newcastle was nearing the end of its industrial heyday and the Tyne's years as a key manufacturing and trade artery almost at an end. These neat white gulls, usually cliff-nesters, made homes on the rundown Gateshead buildings and on the iconic parabolic arch of the steel-framed road bridge. Since then, the quayside beneath the kittiwakes' nests has undergone a regeneration programme ushering in a new focus on culture, leisure and tourism. The Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre - formerly the Baltic flour mill -and the Sage Gateshead music centre have brought cutting-edge culture to the postindustrial Tyneside landscape.