A writer in an old-time Northern magazine appears to have been jolted into a bad humour respecting Newcastle’s precipitous old approach:—“We have no connection whatever with the coal-trade, and were never at Newcastle but once, passing through it on the top of an exceedingly heavy coach, along with about a score of other travellers. But, should we live a thousand years, it would not be possible for us to forget that transit. We wonder what blockhead first built Newcastle; for before you can get into and out of it, you must descend one hill and ascend another, about as steep as the sides of a coal-pit. Had the coach been upset that day, instead of the night before and the day after, there would have been no end and, indeed, no beginning, to this magazine. We all clustered as thickly together on the roof of the vehicle (it was a sort of macvey, or fly) as the good people of Rome did to see Great Pompey passing along:—but we, on the contrary, saw nothing but a lot of gaping inhabitants, who were momentarily expecting to see us brought low. We remarked one man fastening his eye upon our legs that were dangling from the roof under an iron rail, who, we are confident, was a Surgeon. However, we kept swinging along, from side to side, as if the macvey had been as drunk as an owl, and none of the passengers, we have reason to believe, were killed that day—it was a maiden circuit. But, after all, we love Newcastle, and wish its coals may burn clear and bright till consumed in the last general conflagration.” [Picture: Old Newcastle: Showing the now Demolished Town Bridge]