Light In The Darkness

When you turn out of Leasowe station, north of the level crossing, you pass between two large industrial concerns.  To your right is BristolMyersSquibb, the multinational pharmaceutical company, where employees are working on medicines to cure and alleviate any number of ailments.

To your left, is Premier Foods, which, as large lettering on the front of the building clearly informs you, is the Home of the Mini Roll.  

I will leave it to the reader to decide which business is providing the more valuable service to society.  All I will say is that I have never needed an anti-diabetes medicine, but I have eaten a Cadbury's Mini Roll with a raspberry jam filling, so as far as I'm concerned the Moreton Bakery wins.  They don't make Typhoo tea here any more, by the way, despite what that building says: various corporate takeovers and buyouts over the years led to Typhoo closing the factory in 2023.  They went bust shortly after, so there's karma for you.  

Reeds Lane continues for a while as a mix of open space and odd buildings.  The Birket, a small river that empties into the Wallasey Docks, runs through here, and combined with the proximity to the top of the peninsula it means that the land round here is often marshy or prone to flooding.  It'll seem like you're in a perfectly ordinary housing estate and then there's a patch of scrubland, unloved and unattended, though in the 21st century they're getting fewer and fewer as Wirral tries to build as many homes as possible.  I'm very much of the opinion that if people have lived in this part of the world for a thousand years but haven't seen to build their home on that bit of land there's probably a very good reason for it but then I'm not willing to put up with a small amount of annual flooding in exchange for a three bed semi with its own parking space.

I passed a shopping corner, the Tesco Express (est. 2022) unable to compete with the glittering sign of the Leasowe Local Store over the road, a store that promised "tobacco-drinks-vapes-groceries", and I think it's very telling that "groceries" is fourth in that list.  Beside it was a pharmacy without a branded sign, merely promising that it would "provide NHS services"; it used to be a Well, but given how pharmacy services in this country are constantly chopping and changing, it could be a Boots by the time you read this.  I'm not even sure what company provides my drugs any more, I just go in and see what tabard the girl behind the counter is being made to wear this week.

Leasowe is a good, stout, old-fashioned council estate, and I absolutely mean that as a compliment.  It was laid out by Wallasey Council starting in the 20s and 30s and it still carries the air of aspiration and hope.  The roads are wide and straight, the houses large, with gardens at the front and back and enough room on the side return for a garage or a porch.  There are grass verges, and greens.  I crossed one diagonally, a wide square of grass with children's play equipment at its centre.  It must be great to open your front door and let your kid go on the swings while you watch from a distance.

Of course, since this is 2026, most of the houses have been bought and sold many times.  (Bloody Thatcher).  Each home had its own distinct fencing, its own front wall, its own front door, as the new people sought to make their mark and make it a bit less... council.  Now and then there were homes that looked like they must've done when they were built - unencumbered by a double glazed front entry, the garden a stretch of grass that hasn't been paved over, a lack of any boundary barrier at all.  Everyone else was trying hard to be different, mainly by covering up the grass with tarmac and parking a couple of cars on it, though one house had a plastic lawn with a Mickey Mouse ears motif made out of white stones laid into it, so the imagination can take you anywhere.

St Chad's was opened in 1954, as a combination church hall and place for prayer, but it was quickly decided that this was undignified and money was raised for a proper church alongside it.  It opened in 1967, reeking of Swinging Britain, all concrete and stained glass.  It's lovely.

It's not ostentatious or over the top but it's just that bit special enough to be interesting.  I particularly like the bell tower.

St Chad's sits alongside a long avenue that forms the spine of the estate, at the point where Castleway North becomes Castleway South.  Again, it's a piece of elegant town planning, a central route lined with trees.  It's a community area, which is something we've lost from new housing estates these days.  Homes are rammed up against one another without room to breathe.

I continued along Twickenham Drive, past tight blocks of flats, three stories high with a central stairwell.  The entrance was enclosed with a glass front door for security these days but I liked their symmetry and their politeness.  They added bulk and density without being ugly.  There was a leisure centre here, too, as the residents of Leasowe were gifted with all the community facilities they could need.  (This sort of thing used to be a bone of contention for my mum when I was growing up less well-off on a private estate, while the council estate next door got multiple bus routes, a swimming pool, a market and a shopping precinct.  They also used to regularly have riots and sex workers on the streets and dead drug addicts being found in bin stores but she was still annoyed that their library was so much bigger than ours just because they were local authority).  

A noticeboard promised Unity in Our Community with flyers for energy saving advice and the name of the local housing association.  A faded poster pushed the Leasowe Fun Day, back on the 21st August (Bouncy castles and assault courses, face painting with the Hive, entrance through the Addy) and behind it was the Millennium Centre, a building whose name was modern for exactly one year and now seems hopelessly dated.  The Millennium Centre houses the library and council services and a Family Centre, one of those places for parents to get an hour's supervised contact with their children once a week to prove they're definitely not going to belt them any more.  Behind it were some newer houses, built on top of a different, long-demolished Council building; that had once been home to the Wirral Incontinence Laundry Service, so I imagine it must've smelt lovely round here when they had the machines on the go.

I followed the road round, past a house with a flagpole in its garden flying both the Union Jack and the England flag.  One good thing about living on Merseyside is we've been largely exempt from the flag-shagging madness which has gripped the nation over the past year.  Liverpool is, after all, "Scouse, not English", a city whose football supporters boo the national anthem at Wembley.  Nationalism gets a very short shrift round here, and its roundabouts and lampposts have been largely unadorned - the closest to home I've seen them is in Ellesmere Port, over the border in Cheshire.  If you want to go for that sort of nonsense you have to put up your own flagpole in your own garden and even then I've seen way more flags flying to commemorate Liverpool's 20th league victory than a tribute to His Majesty.

There was a small parade of shops here, including a Sayers, the Merseyside bakery that was thoroughly tramped underfoot by the mighty Greggs.  (For the record, I much prefer a Sayers sausage roll, though I admit there's a certain amount of nostalgia involved in that).  Opposite, Heron Foods occupied what used to be the estate pub, the Oyster Catcher.  

While the pub closed in 2016, it still lives on in a mural on the side wall, showing that nostalgia comes round quicker and quicker these days.  Also there, somewhat incongruously, is a hovercraft.  Scousers have long enjoyed trips to North Wales, spending holidays in Rhyl, Prestatyn and Talacre, but the Dee Estuary means that while it's an extremely short distance as the crow flies, you have to basically travel via Chester to get there.

The invention of the hovercraft suddenly opened up a new option.  In 1962, a summer service from Leasowe to Rhyl opened, skipping across the water in a straight line and cutting travel time hugely.  It's a brilliant idea, and hovercrafts will never not be exciting; I myself used the one from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight a few years ago and it was like being in an episode of Thunderbirds.  The wide beaches at Leasowe and Rhyl made them ideal spots to launch the service from.

Unfortunately, it was perhaps a little too soon to launch a hovercraft route.  The technology was still new and so there were technical problems - the sand would get in the engines, putting the craft out of service, and if the weather was bad it couldn't run at all.  The Irish Sea is famously short of millpond-like conditions, meaning it was an unreliable route to the seaside, so the passenger numbers weren't there on the days it did run - which turned out to be only 19 out of the scheduled 59.  It would've been lovely if it had succeeded.  To this day, it takes an hour to get from Leasowe to Rhyl by road, and even longer by train.  Perhaps Rhyl wouldn't be quite as sad as it is today if the hovercraft was turning up on a regular basis.

I disappeared back into the streets of the estate, past more open green spaces and builders laying down paving slabs over grassy lawns.  An electricity substation was accompanied by an abandoned fridge freezer and a shopping trolley; you don't really see shopping trollies outside of the supermarket car park these days, so it was somehow a delightful throwback.

I paused outside a block of flats and took a picture of the number of the block.  The address is housed in a light box, with the numbers on the outside, and I find them very charming.  I walked on, taking in the folding chairs around the front door, and the swing set in the garden.  How nice, I thought.  What a lovely little community.

Then I heard a strong, violent hammering.  It caught my attention and I saw a man behind the window of one of the flats.  He was pointing right at me and shouting.  There's a certain kind of noise Scousers make when they're really annoyed, when all you can understand is vowels and s's, and he was in full flow.  "uuuus AAAAY eeeee aaaarrrss DICKHEAD".  I understood that last bit.

I put my head down and hurried on.

A few seconds later I heard the noise again, the mass of vowels and the scream, and I realised that this time it was outdoors.  That he'd come outside and was in the street and hurling abuse at me.  I assume this man didn't like having his block of flats photographed for some reason.  He was taking it very personally.

I could've turned round and walked back to him.  Said, "hey, I'm just an architecture fan, and I liked your home.  If you're not happy having it photographed I'm fine with deleting it, that's no problem.  Have a great day!"  I did not do this.  I kept my head down and carried on walking and didn't look back.  In my pocket, my hand curled protectively round my phone.  The third volley of indecipherable fury sounded like it was closer to me, and I was ready to hear running footsteps, and prepped myself to use my iPhone as a club if I had to.  It would've been pathetic and I would've got my teeth kicked in and the phone would've been robbed but hey, you've got to have a plan.

He didn't chase after me any further.  I made it to the Leasowe Road, a long dual carriageway that shadows the coast, and I dashed across to try and put some traffic between me and him.  Only then did I pause and look back and make sure nobody was behind me.  

I've gone to some very dodgy places over the years for this blog.  Nationally infamous spots, both at home and abroad.  But I think this was the first time I genuinely thought I was about to get lamped.  I took a moment to swallow my heart and try and get it back into my chest then started walking again.

The Leasowe Road is a very long, very straight, very boring four-lane road that runs from Wallasey Village towards Moreton.  The most exciting thing about it is that you can get up a fair old head of steam on it if you're a man with a small penis.  There was one on the road that day, in a black car with tinted windows, who put his foot down and roared down the road as though it were Le Mans, the engine making a noise it almost certainly wasn't supposed to the whole time.  I was, needless to say, incredibly impressed.

Further along I encountered a man digging around in the bushes.  He was holding a gardening cane with a coat hook strapped to the end and pushing it at random into the greenery.  I couldn't work out what was going on.  Had he lost a gerbil down there and was hoping to trap it?  

Past the golf course - this part of the Wirral is 20% bunker - I encountered the entrance to the Leasowe Castle Hotel.  I have fond memories of this place, because one of my best friends was married here about twenty years ago, and I got astonishingly drunk and danced until my shirt was wet with sweat; there was also a buffet, and a buffet is the best food, and makes everything better.

Unfortunately the hotel closed suddenly last year, without warning, leaving staff unpaid and the building to rot.  This seems to be the 2020s way to close businesses; every other week there's a report of a bar or a restaurant where the waitresses have turned up on Monday morning and found the windows  boarded up.  Like everything in the UK today the hospitality industry is on a knife edge and it's entirely down to fate which side you'll fall on.

I took a wander up the drive for a look and it was sad and derelict.  Little memories of the hot day of the wedding came rushing back, the photos in the garden, the laughs in the bar, the picture I took of my friend Jennie smoking a fag where she looks ridiculously cool.  It's not really a castle, just a manor house with ideas above its station, that has been occupied and abandoned over and over for five hundred years, extended then demolished, useful then a drain.  It's currently on a downward slope but will no doubt swing back up again one day.

There was a sanatorium and hospital on the front here for decades, until medical science developed to the extent where a cure for tuberculosis was something better than "some sea air?"  Flats fill the spot now, looking over the marshes and grasses of the North Wirral Country Park, a spot of open land between the road and the sea defences here which mean you can walk from New Brighton to West Kirby without ever leaving the coast.  There are still concrete anti-landing craft defences on the shore.

I was heading for Leasowe Lighthouse, which is technically in Moreton, but I felt I had to visit to finish the area off.  You can see it looming up at you as you walk along the road, the end point you're aiming for, a white column of brick rising up over the flat marshlands.

There was, for centuries, only one way to reach the port of Liverpool from the Irish Sea, and that was to follow the coast of the Wirral between often hidden sandbanks.  As the port expanded, the chance of shipwreck expanded too, and so a system of lighthouses was built along the shore to warn off vessels.  The one at Hoylake is now a private home; the one a little further downstream was washed away in a storm and replaced by one on Bidston Hill.  The one at Leasowe was constructed in 1763 and originally had a brazier on the roof.  

Leasowe lighthouse was the first in the world to receive a parabolic reflector behind the light, put there by the Liverpool dockmaster, William Hutchinson.  He'd been experimenting with using mirrors to increase the visibility and he installed them here in 1772; suddenly the light was visible from 20 miles away, instead of five.  

It is, undeniably, an incredibly important building, locally, nationally, and internationally; it helped change maritime navigation and helped turn Liverpool into the world's most important port.  It's 2026, though, and nobody has any money for anything, so as a result it is cared for by dedicated volunteers, and only open a few times a year - the next one is on the 18th February, if you're in the area and have strong calf muscles that can carry you up to the top.  Alternatively they host abseiling days, if you really want to hurl yourself off a monument; you do you.

I took a seat at the base and had a drink of water.  When I'd last visited Leasowe I'd whizzed through, basing my entire visit around a very poor gag about Danger Lane.  This revisit really showed me what I'd missed back in those days when the station sign was the important part and the rest was irrelevant.  I'd experienced history, culture, and a little threat of physical violence.  Not bad for a Friday morning.

2. Leasowe

 

Opened: 5th May 1894 (there was a halt here for a couple of years in the 1870s called Leasowe Crossing but that was closed)

Line electrified: 13th March 1938

Number of platforms: Two

Points of interest: Leasowe was rebuilt ahead of electrification and given elegant Art Deco stylings in concrete.  This means two waiting rooms with flat roofs jutting out over the platform, plus a footbridge connecting them which has a muscly charm.

The footbridge doesn't get much use because there's a level crossing at the end of the platforms, so it's quicker to cross on the flat - assuming the gates are open.  If the gates are closed, please do not try to drive through them, as a man attempted in a stolen car a couple of months ago; this only works for James Bond.

Attractive Local Feature (ALF) sign: Two Eurasian Oystercatchers, stood in water, to plug the Wirral Coastal Park.  It's technically called the North Wirral Coastal Park but there's only so much you can fit on a sign.

Original blog post: 11th August 2007

What's changed since then?  Not much.  The usual electronic updates - next train indicators, Tap & Go pads.  I have a vague feeling that the waiting rooms weren't open back in 2007, but I can't say that with any certainty.  They're certainly accessible now. 

Proof of visit: 

The sad thing is, I was listening to the GoldenEye soundtrack in that bottom picture, and there is a very high chance that I was listening to the GoldenEye soundtrack in 2007 as well.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliates

There's only one place to go from Hooton station.

That's not true; there's a Network Rail depot, and a furniture shop, and an engineering works.  And there's the village of Hooton itself, a mile or so away, straddling the New Chester Road.  For the purposes of this blog, however, there's only one place to go, and that's the former railway line turned country park.

I descended the ramps down to the foot of the road bridge where the park begins.  For decades this was a track bed, heading along the coast of the Wirral, but the villages it passed through en route were either too small or too far from the station to justify keeping it open.  

Now it's a linear park stretching along the side of the Wirral, a long strip of path surrounded by trees, great for walkers and cyclists and horses.  I've been along it many times over the years, in different moods, in different weathers.  Today it was cold and wet.  January at its finest.  The skies never turned any colour other than gunmetal and the atmosphere clung to me, damp, perhaps rain, perhaps mist, perhaps something in between.

The section alongside the station pushes the railway theming, with fake-historic signage and a bench made out of a gantry.  You can see the tracks through the fence, bright yellow Merseyrail trains trundling past every few minutes, a shaft of brightness out of nowhere.  Then the path turns and I'm moving away from the railway tracks and into quieter, more distant territory.

It wasn't yet eleven am and so I was mainly accompanied by songbirds.  Robins and sparrows dropped onto the path ahead of me, holding their nerve for a while as I approached before flapping onto a high branch.  It felt good to be out and about, breaking out of the claustrophobia of Christmas and New Year.  I'm a total homebody during the festive period; I close the door on December 23rd and try not to leave the house until at least January 2nd.  I'm hibernating with too much food and drink and tv and it's the one time of the year I'm not judged for it.

Still, it was good to feel that fresh air, to hear nothing but nature, to be adrift.  The chill of the icy rain woke me up.  A man approached with his dog, a friendly black lab that leapt towards me excitedly until being called back, and then I was alone again.

At this time of year the Wirral Way is not exactly scenic.  Nowhere is.  One problem with living in the UK is that while we get the cold and the rain and the dying off of nature during winter, we don't get that lovely white snow to cover it up and make it look pretty.  Instead all we have is varying shades of brown; brown trees, brown leaves, brown mud.  Nothing is ever healthy looking,  Everywhere is grimy.  No wonder we lose our minds when we spot a snowdrop.

Coming towards me was a young woman, gripping her wrist, power walking and monitoring her vital signs and steps the whole time.  She was wearing tight black lycra and her long hair was pulled back in the tightest of pony tails; any more of a yank and she'd have passed for a Scouse girl looking for a fight.  Her general physique and absolute devotion to the stats on her wrist showed that she wasn't one of these New Year's Resolution nobodies, trying to burn off the Christmas ham with a bit of half-hearted jogging; no, she knew what she was doing.  She pushed on the path, right down the centre, and I stepped aside to let her pass, sucking in my beer so I didn't disgust her too much.

This was where it got very lonely indeed; I didn't see another person for a long time.  I was fine with it though.  It was time with me and without obligation.  I was walking around noticing things, paying attention to my surroundings.  I wasn't trying to get somewhere.  The Wirral Way never feels entirely isolated anyway.  Perhaps its the single route, the lack of side quests, the straight down the middle purity of it.  It is, and feels, man-made, like it could be taken back into use at any time.

It never will be, of course.  Firstly because we don't build railways in this country, not unless you've had fifty years of begging and pleading and don't inconvenience anyone and also can get London involved somewhere.  Secondly, even though the places along the route are larger and more populous than they were when the line closed, it's still not enough to make it worthwhile as a rail line.  Heswall is the largest town on the Wirral without a Merseyrail connection, but the Hooton-West Kirby line runs by the river, far from the busy centre.  The residents of Heswall would also never countenance something as common as a train in their town, especially one that went to Liverpool; the Borderlands Line station out on the edge is bad enough, and nobody uses it because they all have 4x4s that need ramming down country lanes.  The problem with public transport is the public tend to use it.

The will-they-won't-they rain gauge shifted to "will" with a heavy shower that actually made me zip up my coat.  For some reason, I never do my coat up, ever, unless I can't argue otherwise.  It's a psychological block with me.  This time I did it and immediately felt claustrophobic; I even tried the hood but that was too awful to tolerate.  How do people manage hoods?  Flapping around your ears, falling over your eyes, being irritating on every level.  I'd rather get wet to be honest.

Hadlow Road is a preserved station on the Wirral Way; a fancy plaque on the wall says they've tried to keep it as if it was 1952 (Only travellers and staff are missing, it says, like it's an M R James).  It's been beautifully done and there were plaques all over the walls congratulating the volunteers on their service.

The coffee shop was takeaway only on a Tuesday, but I was surprised to see that the preserved booking hall was open.  You assume this sort of thing will be locked away unless there's a stern looking volunteer breathing down your neck but I was able to wander in and have a poke around.

The station master's office included a stuffed cat on a chair and a Christmas stocking persisting with festivities into mid-January.  It was interesting to peer through the glass at the display, preserved as if the ticket man had nipped out for a moment.

Had to be done.

What was Bovril's advertising budget like in the old days?  You can't go to a single preserved railway or living history museum without seeing a big tin sign for beef extract on the wall.  It's even more weird when you consider that you don't see ads for it at all these days, not even when there was that craze for "bone broth" (i.e. Bovril) a few years back.  Mind you, you don't get adverts for anything real any more, only betting sites and insurance and maybe the odd car.  There was a time when you'd get commercials for biscuits and shirts and Hamlets, stuff you could actually buy, not a website with a quirky name to get to the top of the SEO rankings.  And those ads would have a jingle you could hum, and the stuff would be about fifty pee, and you'd have enough money left to get a tram home.  Oh no, this blog is turning into a Facebook group.

It was easy to be nostalgic because I was in Willaston now, which is a nostalgic place.  (The station was called Hadlow Road, by the way, because there was another Willaston station in Cheshire already, halfway between Crewe and Nantwich).  It is a stout little English village that has everything Americans love to coo over.

A village green with a giant tree stood at its centre, surrounded by Tudor-esque homes.  There were shops - a hairdresser, a cafe, a Spar - and other little businesses too: a garage, a dog grooming parlour, a physiotherapist.  There was a school and a surgery.  It was a lively, attractive place, with a noticeboard covered in community notices - litter picks, exercise classes, even an e-mail to contact if you were new to the village and wanted a welcome pack.

I wandered down the street for a while, past the shops and avoiding being splashed by the cars.  There was a lot of traffic, but at the same time, I doubt any of them would have traded them for a train from Hadlow Road; this didn't seem like that kind of place.  At the end of the road I could see an arresting sight, and I had to get closer to see what it actually was, instead of what I thought it was.

That is a tooth outside the village dental surgery.  But to me, it looked like a halter top filled with some saggy boobs.  I can't unsee it.  They really should've turned the sign the other way up, so the roots of the tooth pointed down.

I'm surprised someone didn't make them do just that, because as I wandered around, I began to notice the signs everywhere.  The small, politely hectoring signs from this committee or that, from one volunteer group or another.  It began to paint a picture of a clique at the centre of Willaston, the higher ups, who pushed Britain in Bloom and Cheshire's Best Kept Village.  I imagined them knocking on my door in September - "we've noticed you don't have a scarecrow on your front wall as part of the village's autumn festival; justify yourself."  I ducked past the allotments, and the playground, and the sports field, all of which were extremely well-kept and neat, with a vague feeling that I was being watched to make sure I didn't scuff up the pavement with my dirty shoes.

Past the tennis courts was a small pond, surrounded by a fence and with a noticeboard informing me who the maintenance committee were and telling me that the bridge was called "Founder's Bridge" as a tribute to the original caretakers of the pond.  By the time I saw a laminated sign saying there had been an increased incidence of dog fouling in the area and here was a phone number to call and grass people up I started suspecting that Willaston was trapped under the yoke of an elderly Stasi and that a revolution was needed.

I waled past the surprisingly ugly village church, a big red block without much to recommend it, and onto the high street again.  The rain had let up to permit pedestrians to linger again, and a group of women chatted across the way while their dogs sniffed at one another.  There was a red phone box, of course, though the phone was long gone and it didn't serve any purpose at all now, other than a canvas for the art of local teens; apparently "J*** S**** woz ere PS me brothers eyes touch" and I'm going to skip past the lack of an apostrophe and bring you the drawing which did actually make me let out a snort:

The bus shelter had been done up to commemorate its ninetieth birthday (1935-2025) with a clock and the words OMNIBUS SHELTER picked out along the top.  Was that historically accurate, I wondered?  Were people still writing "omnibus" on signs in 1935?  Or was it another bit of twee nostalgia for nostalgia's sake?

I was back at the village green.  The village's sole remaining pub, The Nags Head, wasn't yet open, but the smell of chip fat in the air said they were readying themselves for lunchtime.  Homes for pensioners were grouped here and, while it would be lovely to live in a village like this, I wondered if it was not a little isolated when you're old?  Once you'd visited all the shops what was there to do?  I suppose you could get an omnibus to the station, but the service wasn't exactly frequent.

I was walking out of Willaston now, back towards the station, on a road lined with old houses set back from the road and smaller infill semis built on their land in the Sixties and Seventies.  Cul-de-sacs had been squeezed in here and there.

I passed a motorhome specialist, and was shocked to see VW camper vans starting at £49,995.  Fifty grand to live like Scooby-Doo!  You wouldn't dare drive that to a remote beauty spot in case it got nicked.  Admittedly, they do seem to have all mod-cons - fridges and cookers and, I don't know, stained-glass roofs and hot tubs - but still.  Go and stay in a hotel where it's comfy and save yourself the money.

It was a largely uninspiring walk back to Hooton station, along a narrow pavement between bare hedgerows.  The real excitement was how much had changed by the station itself.  For years it was surrounded by a conglomeration of industrial units and workshops; the residential parts were a mile away in either direction.

That was changing, though, and a new development of houses had sprung up alongside the tracks, meaning that some people would actually be walking to the station for their commute for what must have been the first time in decades.  This site had actually been an armaments factory during the war, giving the main road into the development a strange name:

Roften comes from Royal Ordnance Factory Ten, the name of the wartime works: other streets are named Sentry Grove and Vickers Crescent.  Round the corner, the former Hooton Hotel - where I had occasionally waited for the BF to pick me up after work when the trains between Chester and Birkenhead were particularly nightmarish - has also been demolished in favour of some neat town houses.

I couldn't see a road sign for that development though, so I'm hoping the streets are named after the Hooton Hotel's legacy, with Sticky Carpets Lane and Disappointing Meal Grove.  I carried on round the corner, past the surprisingly full car park (£1.50 a day!) and back to the station.  It'd been a long time since I'd been to Hooton but I was pleased to explore it again.  It was familiar but different.  I hope the future stations have enough to keep me interested.

This entire trip was paid for out of donations to my Ko-fi.  Thank you for your generosity!