We thought, “Wow, this is the place to be.”
My name’s Rachael Meyer and I live down on the Fish Quay. I don’t actually have any connection to North Shields at all; I came to be here entirely on its own merit. I grew up in Harrogate in North Yorkshire. Our daughter moved to Newcastle just after the pandemic, my husband and I used to come up and visit her for weekends. We brought the dog up and we used to bring the dog to Tynemouth to go to the Longsands or Whitley Bay. Then one of our friends suggested that we park at Fish Quay car park and so we did and we were absolutely blown away by the Fish Quay. We had no idea it was there. When we saw all the bars and the restaurants and all the scaffolding and all the stuff going on and the energy there, we started coming here a lot more. We thought, “Wow, this is the place to be,” and of course it has the beautiful beaches and the city of Newcastle so close, so we decided to move here.
When we first bought the house, we were so excited about the Fish Quay and halfway through we kind of walked up through the town centre and saw all the shops shut. All the shutters were down, and we’d never seen shutters down on shops before. We just thought, “Oh my God, what have we done?” We were a little bit worried but anyway we went ahead and moved in. In the 3 months when we decided to move and actually securing the house and buying the house, I connected with I Love North Shields. I watched what was going on on Instagram and Facebook etc. etc. and that was really encouraging. There’s so much going on, the artists are there and musicians are coming, there’s office co-working spaces etc. etc. and we just loved it.
Quayside mural – © Ron Hillaby
I Love North Shields was instrumental in us definitely deciding to live here. We’ve made friends with people, we’ve connected with businesses, we’ve created a whole load of videos in conjunction with I Love North Shields about all the murals and so we’ve connected with Elevation and the Malting Building and the people in the music scene and the artists here. We’ve found it to be a really welcoming community, really vibrant. Everyone’s so friendly we absolutely love it and of course the walks are just amazing. All our friends who are coming to visit us from Yorkshire all the time, they just keep coming, they had no idea that it was here. It’s not just a seaside town we have massive tankers going past our window and fishing boats. The sunrises that I’ve never seen in my life before. The sunrises here are just spectacular.
It’s the energy here that really excited us. The community here is amazing. People are helping each other do stuff all over the place, whether it’s businesses collaborating or people in the music scene collaborating and the festivities that are going on around here all the time. Of course, living by the water, which we never expected to love it as much as we do and it’s just amazing. It’s just different every day.
Sunrise from the Fish Quay beach
Watching the sunrise on the Fish Quay beach is phenomenal. You go down there in the morning and there are photographers lined up, there are people sat there with coffees in the summertime with shorts, or in the wintertime with blankets, with a coffee and sometimes warming their hands with a fire. Or just walking along the beach with dogs and again there’s its own little community down there. It’s just beautiful, definitely my favourite place.
I would love to see more shops in the town centre, it’s sad to see so many empty shops now. I know that there are plans to regenerate the Beacon Centre and what I would like to see is all the landlords of all the buildings just make them nice again, because when things look nice people want to be here. It would be nice to see North Shields thriving again and I’m sure it will.
Another thing that I would like to see happen in North Shields is the introduction of some tourist boats to either go up and down into Newcastle and back or out to sea. There is so much wildlife here. I saw dolphins at the mouth of the River Tyne this summer, which was incredible. If we could get boats going out from North Shields, it would be a massive tourist pool.
I’d like the time out to explore Northumberland a little bit more because it’s been so amazing exploring North Shields and Whitley Bay and Tynemouth and you know we’ve barely made it up further than Druridge Bay at the moment and there’s so much to discover. So, those are personal goals, just to have a little bit of time off from work to be able to enjoy it a little bit more.
Rachael was interviewed in 2025 as part of the North Shields Voices Project.