If you like your meat free-range, your bread fresh and fragrant and your vegetables plump and tasty, then bring a little bit of cash with you to Tynemouth market and enjoy food the real and proper way.And if you like the buzz of people enjoying their commerce, that alone will bring you back.
But if food and atmosphere don't do it for you, how could you not enjoy the floating iron tracery of a renovated Victorian railway station?
Usually when we go to Tynemouth market, it's the books Himself looks at, the plants, trinkets and crockery for me and the multiple toy stalls for the boy, who has a penchant for transformers and science-fiction figurines, selling at 50p or £1. The mass of colourful stalls and the chance of coming across something quite unusual attracts a hopeful horde of shoppers, who create a very cheerful ambiance.
Two weeks ago, however, what caught both our attention was the chance to buy our weekly food at the same time as our Saturday jaunt out. Moorhouse Farm sausages, free-range chicken breasts, a French boule and some wonderful, good quality veggies and fruit all found their way home with us and I can honestly say that food shopping has never been so enjoyable.
The place sells much more than that, of course: furniture and fur coats, cutlery and cute homemade children's clothes, lace and LPs...
In the past I've been lucky enough to pick up 1920 brass fingerplates for the house-doors, a copper jelly-mould, bone-handled cutlery, embroidered pillow cases. Sssssh! Actually, like the girl in the SECRET ESCAPES ad, I don't want to share the secrets of my own shopping passions or to let anyone else in on where to get things cheap... BUT, in the interests of honesty and this blog, Tynemouth market is a gem!
