Photo: Colin Park (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk through Newcastle upon Tyne, from Grainger Town down to the river. It starts at the Laing Art Gallery and Grey's Monument, then follows the curve of Grey Street, built in the late 1830s, to the Theatre Royal and Richard Grainger's market of 1835. Chinatown, the Dominican friary of Blackfriars and the surviving West Walls lead to the Lit & Phil, where Joseph Swan demonstrated electric light in 1879, St Nicholas Cathedral and its lantern tower, the Black Gate and the Castle Keep, built for Henry II on the site of the 1080 new castle that named the town. Then down to the Quayside: Bessie Surtees House and the 1772 elopement, the Guildhall on Sandhill, the Swing Bridge and Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge, the Tyne Bridge of 1928, the chares rebuilt after the fire of 1854, and the tilting Gateshead Millennium Bridge.
17 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 231 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 57 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Laing Art Gallery, Grey's Monument, Grey Street and the Theatre Royal, Grainger Market and Grainger Town, Chinatown and Stowell Street, Blackfriars, The Town Wall: the West Walls.
Lit & Phil, St Nicholas Cathedral, The Black Gate, The Castle Keep.
Bessie Surtees House, The Guildhall and Sandhill, Swing Bridge and the High Level Bridge, Tyne Bridge, The Quayside and the chares, Gateshead Millennium Bridge.
The 1830s curve of Grey Street, with the Green brothers' theatre front and Frank Matcham's 1901 interior behind it.
Grainger's market of 1835, still split into its meat aisles and vegetable hall, with the Original Penny Bazaar trading since 1895.
The society library of 1825, where Joseph Swan demonstrated his electric light in 1879 and George Stephenson showed his safety lamp in 1815.
Henry II's stone keep of 1172 to 1177, on the site of Robert Curthose's new castle of 1080 that gave the town its name.
The jettied merchants' house on Sandhill from whose window Bessie Surtees eloped with John Scott, later Lord Chancellor, in 1772.
Opened by King George V in 1928, its arch built out from both banks without supports in the river, with kittiwakes nesting on its ledges.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 17 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 17 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Newcastle upon Tyne — the New Castle, the Quayside and Grainger Town, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
17 narration points, including Laing Art Gallery, Grey's Monument, Grey Street and the Theatre Royal, Grainger Market and Grainger Town and Chinatown and Stowell Street. That is about 31 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 17 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.