Travel Clinic for Killingworth, nearer than driving into Newcastle

A travel clinic twelve minutes from the township centre

Killingworth was drawn up to a plan, and it still reads like one. The lake sits in the middle of it, the township centre keeps the shops and the services gathered in one spot, and the housing went up around them in phases. Around twenty thousand people live here now, a mix of families who came for the space and the schools and retirees who have watched the town grow up around them. It has always been a fairly self-contained place, which is probably why so many people in Killingworth got into the habit of driving all the way into Newcastle whenever they needed a private travel appointment.

There is a nearer option. Newcastle Clinic is the travel service at Great Park Pharmacy and Clinic, a GPhC registered pharmacy, premises number 9010952. Appointments are pharmacist-led, there is free parking directly outside the door, and you do not need a referral from your GP to book one.

What a travel appointment involves

We begin with where you are going rather than with what we happen to stock. A pharmacist takes your itinerary country by country: your dates, how long you are away, whether you are in cities or out in rural areas, whether you are in hotels or staying with family, and what you will actually be doing while you are there. That gets checked against current NaTHNaC and WHO country advice. Two weeks in a resort and a month moving around inland are not the same trip and do not get the same answer.

Your own health history counts for just as much. We go through any medical conditions, the medicines you take, allergies, whether you are pregnant or breastfeeding, and what you have already been given in the past. Bring a red book, an old travel record, or even a photograph of a vaccination card if you can find one. Anything you can evidence may save you a dose you did not need.

We hold Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Tetanus, Rabies, Meningitis ACWY, Japanese Encephalitis, Cholera and Polio. If your destination raises the question of antimalarial tablets, we will say so plainly. Antimalarial tablets are prescription-only medicines and are subject to assessment. Vaccines reduce risk rather than remove it, so the advice about food, water, insect bites and animal contact matters alongside anything given on the day.

How far ahead to book

Six to eight weeks before you fly is comfortable, because several courses run to more than one dose and the doses need spacing. Leaving it later is not a wasted appointment. There is nearly always something sensible that can still be given, and knowing exactly what you are and are not covered for beats guessing at the airport. See our booking page for current rates.

Killingworth travels in two very different ways

The town has two travelling populations sharing the same postcode. There are the families, tied hard to the school holidays, booking the same fortnight in July that everyone else is booking, often with children who need their own schedule working out. Then there are the retirees, a large group here, travelling in term time because they can: long tours, cruises out of the region, several weeks at a time visiting family who have settled abroad. That second group tends to arrive with the most complicated requirement, because a multi-country trip can pull in several vaccines and a couple of them need a second visit.

We plan whole households together rather than one person at a time, so a family travelling in August is not making three separate trips across the estate on three separate afternoons. And because the retired travellers here often book well ahead, there is usually room to spread a course out properly rather than compress it.

Getting to Unit 5, Middleton North from Killingworth

It is 2.8 miles and about twelve minutes by car. You can pick up the A19 and come round, or cut across on Sandy Lane, which is the more direct run for most of the town and avoids the worst of the dual carriageway traffic at either end of the day. Great Park sits west of the A1, north of Gosforth.

The address is Unit 5, Middleton North, Wagonway Drive, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE13 9BH. There is free patient parking directly outside the unit, which is the practical difference against a city-centre appointment: you park, you come in, you leave. Palmersville Metro serves Killingworth, but this is a journey the car does better. Most people are done and back inside the hour.