Newcastle gets a bad rap as a stag-do city, and the Ouseburn is the bit that proves everyone wrong. It’s a steep little valley ten minutes east of the Quayside, full of old warehouses turned into galleries, a working city farm, breweries, and pubs with views you’d pay for in London. This is a full-day date with a slow start and a late finish: brunch off plates made on site, free art, goats, a guided walk through a Victorian tunnel and dinner at the best neighbourhood restaurant in the city. Second-date energy, or a first date you’re fairly confident about.
Everything here is within a 12-minute walk of everything else, so you can lose the plan halfway through and still be fine. Do it on a Saturday: the tunnel runs a late-afternoon tour, the farm’s open, and dinner stays open late. Sundays work too, but dinner closes at 3pm and you’ll need to shuffle the order. Mondays and Tuesdays, don’t bother.
Vibe: slow brunch, cute animals, underground history, pub with a view
Area: Ouseburn, Newcastle Best for: second date energy, or a first date you’re fairly sure about
Budget: ££
Length: 8-10 hours (brunch to last orders)
The morning thing
Kiln, 4 Hume Street
Start at 10.30am in a converted garage at the bottom of the valley where the plates, bowls and cups are thrown in the pottery next to your table. Kiln is half cafe, half ceramics studio, and the food is Middle Eastern leaning: shakshuka, Turkish eggs, flatbreads out of the oven. It’s warm, a bit noisy and nobody is in a hurry, which is exactly what you want for a brunch where you’re still working out if she laughs at your jokes.
Sit in the back room if you can, nearer the wheels. If she’s the type to pick up every cup and turn it over to look at the base, that’s a green flag. You can buy the plate you ate off, and yes, it’s a slightly unhinged first-date gift, but it’s for the story.
From Byker Metro it’s about ten minutes on foot, all downhill. Brunch runs 10am to mid-afternoon every day and walk-ins are fine, though a booking on a Saturday saves you hovering by the door.
Closest station: Byker (Metro), or Manors if you’re coming from town
Price: ££, brunch dishes around £12-16
Best thing to have: the shakshuka, and whatever cake came out of the oven that morning
The day thing
The Biscuit Factory, 16 Stoddart Street
An old Victorian biscuit factory that’s now the UK’s biggest independent commercial art gallery, which sounds grand but in practice means two floors of paintings, prints, ceramics and jewellery you can actually afford to look at, plus a bookshop and a cafe with a roof terrace. It’s free, it’s open every day from 10am to 5pm, and it’s the easiest hour of a date you’ll ever do: wander, point, mildly judge each other’s taste.
Article continues below.
You may also like
The gallery changes its shows every couple of months, so there’s always something new on the walls. Pick a piece each that you’d hang in an imaginary shared flat. Don’t read too much into it. Do read a bit into it.
From Kiln it’s a 12-minute walk, up Stepney Bank and across the top of the valley. It’s uphill, so pace yourselves. Not dog friendly, and the main gallery is on the ground floor with lift access to the first.
Closest station: Manors (Metro), seven minutes’ walk
Price: free
Best thing to do: find the one print you’d both buy and then not buy it
Your next read: The Date Edit: Leeds – free art, market lunch and a bar behind a barbershop
The afternoon thing
Ouseburn Farm, Ouseburn Road, off Lime Street
Back down the hill to a free city farm sitting directly underneath three enormous bridges, which is a strange and lovely place to spend an hour. Goats, pigs, sheep, chickens with the run of the yard, a small-animals room, a garden and an orchard. It’s a community farm run as a charity, so it’s not slick, and that’s the point. Buy a bag of feed from the shop, pick a favourite goat each, and defend your choice.
It’s a good place to find out what she’s like when nobody’s performing. The cafe does a decent flat white and cakes baked on site if brunch has worn off, and the whole place is step-free.
From the Biscuit Factory it’s about ten minutes back down Stepney Bank, past the graffiti and the stables. Entry is free but it runs on donations, so put something in the box. Opening hours shift with the seasons and weekends can close earlier than weekdays, so aim to be there by 1.30pm and check the farm’s Instagram that morning.
Closest station: Manors (Metro), about ten minutes’ walk
Price: free (donations welcome)
Best thing to do: name a goat after your ex and move on
The early evening thing
Victoria Tunnel, meet at Ouseburn Trust, 51 Lime Street
This is the bit she’ll tell her mates about. The Victoria Tunnel is a Victorian coal wagonway that runs two and a half miles under the city, later turned into a Second World War air-raid shelter, and the Ouseburn Trust runs guided tours of it from a little red door by the Hotel du Vin. It’s dark, it’s a constant 12 degrees, there are sirens and recorded voices from people who sheltered down there, and the guides are volunteers who know everything. It is consistently the number one thing to do in Newcastle on Tripadvisor and, for once, the internet is right.
It’s also an excellent date move. An hour and a quarter in the dark with hard hats on, a bit of history, a reason to stand close. Book the 1¼ hour tour, not the two hour one, unless you both really love Victorians.
Tours meet at 51 Lime Street, two minutes from the farm, for a safety briefing before walking to the entrance together. Saturday tours have been running late afternoon (a 4pm slot is typical) and Sundays late morning, but times move around, so check the booking calendar. You must book ahead: capacity is strict and it sells out. Wear flat shoes you don’t mind getting mucky and a jacket you can wash. The tunnel is level at the start but there are blast walls 50 yards in that wheelchairs can’t get past, so it’s not an accessible stop.
Closest station: Manors (Metro), about ten minutes’ walk
Price: £16 per adult for the 1¼ hour tour, and your ticket doubles as an annual pass for a free return visit Best thing to do: hold hands when the siren goes. Blame the siren.
The dinner thing
Cook House, Foundry Lane
The tunnel spits you out on Ouse Street around 5.15pm, five minutes from Cook House. Anna Hedworth started this place in a shipping container, moved it into a former architecture studio on Foundry Lane, picked up a Michelin Plate on the way, and it’s still the most relaxed good restaurant in Newcastle. Open kitchen, hibachi grill, a menu that’s printed daily because it changes with whatever came in that morning. Think small plates to share, pickles and ferments made in house, a beef shin croquette that regulars talk about, and puddings worth the extra half hour.
It’s not candlelit and that’s why it works. Nobody’s whispering. You can order too much, argue over the last croquette and still hear each other.
Book a few days ahead for a Saturday, and book for 6pm or 6.30pm to give the tunnel time to finish. Saturday it’s open from 10am to 11pm; Sunday it’s lunch only, closing at 3pm, so if you’re doing this on a Sunday swap dinner for a late lunch and do the farm afterwards.
Closest station: Byker (Metro), about ten minutes’ walk
Price: ££ to £££, starters around £11, mains around £23, wine from about £35 a bottle
Best thing to have: whatever’s on the hibachi that day, and the pudding
If it goes well
The Free Trade Inn, St Lawrence Road
Five minutes’ walk from dinner, up a short hill, is one of the best pubs in the country. The Free Trade Inn is an old, unfussy, fully independent boozer perched above the river with two beer gardens and a view straight down the Tyne to the lit-up bridges. It takes its beer seriously, with a rotating tap list from independent breweries only, a fridge of Belgian and German bottles and two permanent gluten-free lines, and takes nothing else seriously at all. There’s a jukebox and a blue plaque to a cat. Nobody will look at you twice.
Grab a seat by the window or, if it’s dry, stand outside with your coats on and look at the bridges. It’s open until 11pm every night.
Or, The Cumberland Arms, James Place Street, off Byker Bank
If you’d rather sit down somewhere warmer, the Cumberland is a three-storey Victorian pub at the top of the valley, about eight minutes’ walk from Cook House, with an open fire, board games, seven real-ale hand pulls and a folk session in the back bar most nights. It’s the sort of place where a stranger might ask you to join in. Open till late on Saturdays.
Closest station: Byker (Metro), about ten minutes’ walk from either
Price: £ Best thing to have: a half of something local, and the view
Wrap-up
So that’s brunch off a plate she might steal, art you didn’t buy, a goat with your ex’s name, an hour in the dark under the city and dinner you’ll both be thinking about on the Metro home. Whether you end the night looking at the bridges or singing along to a fiddle in a back bar is entirely up to how the croquettes went.
See you next time,
Nonchalant x
You may also like
Babs heads up Logistics and Product here at Nonchalant Magazine.
