For more than 35 years, the Metrocentre has had shoppers flocking to Gateshead.
The shopping mall first opened in October 1986, on the site of a former power station in Dunston.
Family days out, nervy first dates, and frantic Christmas shopping trips have been MetroCentre fixtures ever since.
While a lot has changed ( RIP Metroland, Mediterranean Village, talking statues, fish ponds and giant chess), many rituals have remained the same. Whether it's 1986 or 2022, some parts of the Metrocentre experience will never - or barely - change.
Read more: The things we miss about 90s era MetroCentre
1. You do your 10,000 steps
Saturday FitBit target smashed every time when you visit this place. It occupies a huge 2 million square feet - so if you were to walk past every shop, it'd take you over an hour and you'd have covered 3.5 miles, and that's without stepping inside any of the stores.
What's more, you always forget which shops are in which quadrant, and on which floor, so there’s a certain amount of repetition even if you’ve lived here all your life. You can easily end a busy day in the Metrocentre having covered five or six miles.
2. You ‘bump into’ people
“Guess who I bumped into at the Metrocentre,” said everyone who ever visited it on a Saturday. The North East is a big village, really. So you can guarantee you’ll see two colleagues, your aunty, an ex and someone you went to school with. Every time.
3. You get all nostalgic
Those of us who grew up in the North East in the 80s and 90s misspent a LOT of time in the Metrocentre. Dates, school holidays as a teenager, shopping trips with your mum and nana… it all breeds nostalgic thinking, as does the inevitable bumping-into of blasts from the past.
The biggest nostalgia draw of all things Metrocentre has to be Metroland. That rubbish roller coaster! The swings where some clown always lost a shoe! The big random fish sculptures!
Check out lots more pics from Metroland down the years in our gallery:
4. You eat your own body weight
There are more than 50 restaurants in the Metrocentre these days, including the extremely swish Qube which has everything from the in-crowd’s burger of choice at Five Guys to Thai street food. Recent additions include ' brewery kitchen' Doppio Malto, which offers Italian food and a choice of 15 craft beers, and home made pasta bar, Zucchini.
It is very, very easy to eat a slap-up lunch at the Metrocentre and then think “let’s just have dinner here, too”. And as for those Millie’s Cookies concessions...
5. Your kids make you act like a tourist...
If you have kids under eight shopping with you, it is inevitable that you’ll be badgered into parting with £2 per person (per PERSON!) for a five-minute ride on the little train. If you have kids under eight that you’ve left at home with their dad, you’ll feel a pang of guilt when you see the little train tootle past and will end up sheepishly waving at other people’s children riding on it. If you don’t have kids, there’s a TRAIN that trundles through the crowds with surprisingly little loss of life, limb or dignity. Watch out for it - it can sneak up on you!
6. ...and they bug you to go on the bungee ride
Not something my little boy will ever do thanks to my maternal paranoia (they go so high!) but something he’ll certainly continue to ask to do, every time.
Before the bungee ride, see the Metroland Waltzers and Monty Zoomers' slides. Both absolutely wonderful ideas after gorging on blue Slush Puppies and fast food...
7. You forgot what you actually came for
There was a specific reason you hauled the kids in the car and set off to Dunston. But by the time you arrived, parked up, and corralled your brood through the malls, you completely forget why you came in the first place.
8. You lose your car
With just under 10,000 free car parking spaces, the Metrocentre isn’t short of places to leave your vehicle. However, the downside of all these spaces is that you always forget where you’ve put it.
You remember as you’re parking up that you lost the car last time. So you decide to be cunning this time and remember the number of the row you’re in (as the Metrocentre helpfully places signage in its outdoor car parks).
And then you come out, bags bulging, legs aching from all the steps, and it’s a bit dark and the car park looks a different shape and the number row you parked in goes completely out of your head.
Cue the embarrassing Peter Kay “Jean - bloody car’s gone” mini-jog as you look for it.
9. The ill-fated ‘pop’ into IKEA
“I’ll just pop in to IKEA on the way home,” you think. You emerge, stressed and blinking, 90 minutes later, having done another 10,000 steps and spent £147 on tealights, throws and raffia baskets - but not the colander you went in for.
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