You do not need to cross the fence line.
The Kingston Park Circular will take you on a whistle stop tour of Kingston Park, including A Pub, Fawdon Lane and Kingston Park Green. Taking in the whole route will take around an hour and a half depending how long you spend searching for each cache - and of course how quickly you walk!
In theory you could start and finish this route anywhere, though both the first and final mystery cache are near to the suggested parking, and so the parking here is most useful to those visiting the area. Kingston Park is served well by public transport, with a host of bus stops - including one within sight of the first cache - and a metro station within a short walk.
Kingston Park is a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne and was built in the 1970s and early 1980s. Elements such as Fawdon Lane predate the housing developments and can be seen on maps as early as the 1860s linking the then hamlets of: Fawdon, Bank Foot and Brunton. The residential areas were originally named Kingston Park, Kenton Bank Foot, Tudor Grange and Ouseburn Park, although over time all of these have come to be known collectively as Kingston Park. "Kenton Grange" also appears on the deeds of some of the homes in the area and so this title was also used to describe the suburb before the name was finalised. Why the name Kingston Park was chosen is not clear.
Kingston Park is home to a retail park as well as one of Britain's largest supermarket's flagship stores, at 11,055 square metres it was once the largest supermarket in Britain. In addition to a plethora of retail establishments Kingston Park is also home to the airport industrial estate, which houses a number of businesses. The nearby field's official name is "Kingston Park Green", though its common name reflects the superstore that over looks it. The area, which is used as a training “ground” for a local Sunday morning children’s football team, will be visited when retrieving one of the caches.
The supermarket has heavy advertising on the nearby metro station which serves the area. The metro ran through Kingston Park for four years before a station was built, as the area did not have the required population density to warrant a station when the network was first established in 1980. Predating the station a Metro collided with a bus on the 22nd of March 1983 at the level crossing in Kingston Park. The collision caused severe damage to the bus and derailed the front carriage of the train.
Kingston Park is located within "Castle Ward" an electoral ward which was initially part of Northumberland before Tyne and Wear was established as a metropolitan county in 1974, considered a "rural district" the area's car ownership stands at 76.2%, which is considerably higher than Newcastle's average of 54.7%.
Kingston Park is home of the Newcastle Falcons Rugby Ground. The team predates the housing development and the ground as it has its roots in "Durham School", a private school located in Durham. The team was established in 18877 and was originally named Gosforth Football Club, then Newcastle Gosforth the team moved to the current ground in 1990 and adopted the "Falcons" title in for the 1996/7 season after Sir John Hall attempted to link the sporting teams of Newcastle into an umbrella team, all of which would play in Black and White and take their mascots from flying creatures. The Magpies - Football, The Falcons - Rugby, The Eagles - Basketball and The Wasps - Ice Hockey. The Ice Hockey team has been renamed several times since and is now the Newcastle Vipers.
The River Tyne’s tributary the Ouseburn has its source at Callerton, near the city’s airport and flows to the north Kingston Park and joins the Tyne in the Ouseburn Valley close to the city centre. Kingston Park has a tributary to the Ouseburn with a stream running parallel to Fawdon Lane, disappearing under a culvert to cross Kingston Park Road, and re-surfacing in the Great Park. The stream is visible from one of the cache sites.