Getting Home From Newcastle City Centre After a Day Out

Sort it before you go in. Ten minutes of planning on the way into town, while the group is together and still in one piece, saves an hour on a pavement at the end negotiating with four people who all want something different. Pick your method, agree a rough time, tell each other.

A daytime finish makes this genuinely easy. You are coming out of Dreamworx at Digital in the evening rather than leaving town at three in the morning, so the Metro is still running, the taxi apps are cheaper, and you are not competing with the whole of Newcastle for the same car.

Agree the Plan on the Way In

Three questions, answered before you get through the door.

• How is each person getting home, and with whom?
• Roughly what time is everyone leaving?
• Where do you meet if the group gets split up?

Pin the answers in the chat so nobody has to remember them. Pick a meeting point slightly away from the door, because "by the entrance" is where everybody else will be too.

What It Costs

Getting home is the part people budget for last and complain about most. Put the money aside at the start and it stops being a decision you make when you are tired.

• Metro. Comfortably the cheapest way out of the city centre, and across a group of four the difference is real money.
• Taxi. More, but split three or four ways to the same part of town it is often closer than you think. Check the app before you assume.
• Bus. Cheap, and better than its reputation on some routes.
• A cash reserve. Twenty pounds you do not touch all day, for the moment your phone dies or a card reader will not play.

Set that aside first, spend what is left, and the end of the day is never a problem.

The Metro

If you live anywhere on the network, this is almost always the right answer. Central Station and Monument are both an easy walk from Digital, and an evening finish means you are travelling at a normal hour rather than after everything has stopped.

Two things worth doing. Check the last services for your line on the day rather than trusting what you remember, because timetables change and weekend engineering work is a fact of life. And sort your ticket or your card before you get to the barrier rather than in the queue.

If you are in a group heading the same way, the Metro is also the sociable option. The taxi rank is not where the good half hour of the day happens.

Taxis

Book on an app before you leave the room rather than after you are outside in the cold. Ten minutes of foresight is the whole difference.

Pick a pickup point away from the busiest street. Drivers cannot stop where forty people are standing, and a two minute walk to a quieter side street will get you a car far quicker than waiting where everybody else is waiting.

Have a backup. Save two apps, know where the nearest rank is, and keep the cash reserve. If prices are high straight after a finish, one drink somewhere quiet while it settles is a perfectly good tactic.

If You Are Coming From Out of Town

Coming in from the coast, Durham, Sunderland or the Tyne Valley changes the calculation, because your last train or Metro matters more than everybody else's does.

Check your own last service before you book anything, and set an alarm on your phone for the time you need to leave. Not the time the service goes. The time you need to start walking.

The other option is to make a night of it and stay over, splitting a room with whoever is in the same boat. It turns a difficult journey into a slow breakfast, and shared between two or three it is rarely as expensive as it sounds.

Getting Everyone Away

Nobody leaves on their own without saying so. That is the only rule that really matters, and it is the one that gets forgotten at the end of a good day.

Do a quick headcount when the music stops, watch each other into cars, and send a message to the chat when you get in. It takes four seconds and it means everybody else can stop wondering.

One last thing worth doing before you go in: turn location sharing on with two or three of the people you are with. It answers the "where are you" question without anybody having to hear a phone in a loud room, and you can switch it off again the next morning.

Get that right and the journey home stops being the bit of the day you dread. It becomes the twenty minutes where everybody goes back over the best of it.