This is not concerning Deerhounds, but info for me. I will be going to Newcastle in September attending a course, so what is there to see while I am there? I will only have two evenings to look around so it will need to be a whisltle stop tour.

Hi
This is going to be totally unhelpful! I did my PhD at newcastle Uni and I think I went out in the town twice in three years. I also lived in Morpeth just outside of Newcastle for another year and went to Newcastle once. Pretty bad huh!
However, do take a visit to China town, which is fun to see and some great authentic chinese restaurants, and there are some nice older buildings in the town centre. Depending on which days you are there, night time there is always lots going on in the Bigg Market - if you like to see girls with next to no clothes on in all weather, getting really really drunk. The Waterside has some nice restaurants and bars by the River Tyne.
Apart from that it is a shopping mecca for cheap chain store shops in the malls. Word of warning, people do get very dressesd up there for no occasion.

And if flat pack furniture's your thing, there's a socking great Ikea at the Metro centre at Gateshead.

I'd forgotten about that. I must have spent a subordinate amount of time in there just browsing, strange as I am in no way a shopper except where cheap swedish furniture with strange names like KLIMT are concerned. Oh, and the icecream is gorgeously fake. And it was the only place you could buy cloudberries. yum. Oh i do miss the Northern hemisphere.