Southern Shores

The northern part of the Overhead Railway is now a path through derelict docks, grimy industrial plants and a sealed off Freeport.  The southern part couldn't be more different.  It's gentrification writ large.

When it was demolished, Canning station was between war-damaged docks and an area of waste ground that used to be the Customs House.  Today, it would stand beside the Liverpool One bus station, the police HQ and the Hilton Hotel.  That's quite a change in fortunes.  It'd have been a great place for an interchange (even better if Merseytram had passed through as well, grumble grumble) and a magnet for tourists.  Not sure if the Hilton's residents would have been so keen to stare out at a railway station, but that would be their problem.

There were cobbles under my feet as I crossed the entrance to the Albert Dock and followed the Salthouse Dock.  I wondered if these were originals, or if they were "heritage" additions to the street scene, something for the tourists.

A Japanese family looked confused at the corner of Liver Street.  They were looking at the iron statue of a horse, The Great Escape, in the process of finally being relocated after being moved away from Church Street a few years ago.  I wasn't sure what was befuddling them; the size of the statue, the representation, or its location.  They gathered around its base and stared up, like pilgrims; I half expected them to drop to their knees.

The Baltic Fleet was pumping out an incredibly noxious smell; no doubt a by-product of its brewing process.  I covered my nose and pressed on to Wapping.  The old goods yard is now a car park and industrial units; I made a mental note to investigate further on another day.  In the meantime I was distracted by the only remaining piece of the Overhead Railway still in place.

The cast iron pillars set into Wapping's dock wall are the remnants of the viaduct supports.  Their sheer bulk is impressive.  I can only imagine that they were afraid it they removed them here the wall would come away as well.  The posts rose a lot higher than that, obviously.  It's nice to know there's still a trace of the LOR in the city, like the memory of a kiss.

The bases are inscribed with the name of the foundry - Francis Morton & Co, Liverpool.  I idly wondered where you could get a huge lump of iron smelted on Merseyside these days.

Further south, the main road swings away, towards Toxteth, and the dock road becomes a smaller, less important highway.  There are old buildings still, on the left, being repurposed into industrial units and cafes and even recording studios, but on the right, it's dockside homes.  Brick blocks of waterside apartments, tall enough for you to not be able to see any water from the road, surrounded by neat grass verges.

At one point I passed a building which pretended to be a shopfitting centre, but which I actually think is a rehearsal space for serial killers:

The little cul-de-sacs to my right all had names like "The Anchorage" and "Navigation Wharf", which seemed utterly twee to me.  They were such generic names for somewhere with a bit of water close by - not Liverpool specific at all.  I ducked down one of them, ready to sneer at the low aspirational living, but I was genuinely pleased by what I found.  The homes round the marina will never win an architectural award; you could stick these same buildings out in suburban Heswall or Ormskirk without any changes being made.  But their position on the water made them more interesting, especially with a low sea fog rolling across the city in the distance.  The cars around me were Fords, Vauxhalls, Toyotas - good honest cars driven by middle class succeeders.  The homes here weren't special, but if you were a couple in your thirties, no kids, you had  city centre living with a bit of a view for a much lower price than in the West Tower.

There's a danger that people view Liverpool's regeneration successes only though its big projects.  Liverpool One's great, but the apartments at One Park West are only for the top earners.  Same for the Beetham Tower, or the pinnacles round the Princes Dock.  These apartment blocks - less fashionable, less showy, but still turning empty land into successful homes - were providing the backbone to the regeneration.  These were the ones allowing moneyed couples to find a safe, pleasant home within walking distance of shops and bars and theatres.

It threw the aborted plans for Brunswick Dock, further along Sefton Street, into focus.  As an outsider, I'd thought that the council's rejection of the 51 storey tower a few years ago was parochialism at its worst.  "If someone wants to build it", I thought, "let them!"  Walking this way made me realise how wrong it would have been.  It'd have been like putting an Apollo rocket in the middle of a car park; a massively over-engineered and designed project in a space that didn't need it.  As time goes on, yes, I can see the southern docks slowly increasing in mass and population - but the tower would have thrown it completely off balance.

Instead, the Brunswick Dock is the same as it ever was - old dock buildings repurposed into small industrial and office units.  It was coming up to lunchtime, so I popped into the large Delifonseca to get a bottle of water and maybe a little snack.  This was a stupid move for someone who's dieting.  I was used to the little store on Stanley Street; I hadn't realised what a cornucopia of delights were waiting for me in the Dockside branch.  I eventually left without buying anything, in case I cracked and gorged on a lemon meringue  chocolate bar.

I passed Brunswick Merseyrail station, built on a former goods yard of the same name, and trekked past the many car showrooms that take up this part of the city.  A large ugly gas holder rose up behind a Citroen showroom, incongruous next to the newest, shiny saloons.  Lunchtime meant that the office workers started wandering out of the dockside estates in search of coffee and food; the Subway seemed to be doing very well out of it.

Herculaneum Dock was the end of the line, at least for a while.  When the Overhead Railway was first built, this was where it terminated; a later extension veered away from the old station, so it was turned into a carriage storage area.

The extension is actually the most fascinating part of the old railway.  The land along the docks is flat and regular, as you'd expect, but right behind it is the high sandstone ridge of the Dingle.  If the line was going to go anywhere other than along the coast, it had to somehow get past this ridge.  The solution?  A tunnel.  An overhead railway that went underground - it's a delightful contradiction.

I turned left at Jack Jones House (why I am not a firebrand socialist, part XVIII: I thought it was strange the Unite union had named its HQ after a lounge singer) and into the car park of Greens Health club.  Up above me was the portal to the tunnel, now bricked up but still proudly showing the Overhead Railway's name and date.

I'd have got closer, but a sign in the car park had an unnerving effect on me:

And I'm not just talking about that awful font.

Eyeing the cliff face suspiciously, I headed back to the road.  I just had the former Dingle station to visit now.  I thought I'd have had to go almost all the way down to the Garden Festival Park before doubling back on myself, but I happened to spot a tiny "public footpath" sign, so I ducked down the side of a luxury development to follow it.  I was carefully segregated from the apartment blocks and their fountains by a heavy metal fence - walkers were strictly barred from stepping foot onto their hallowed ground.  It was a bit of a pleasing irony to then find myself confronted by a mural dedicated to the struggle of the working man:

It was painted by the artist Alan Murray, as part of the City of Culture celebrations and commemorates the Trade Union movement.  (Note the Overhead Railway at the top!)  I love the idea that the young professionals in the nearby flats are waking up between John Lewis sheets, opening their hand made curtains, and staring at a portrait of Yosser Hughes:

The path lead to the Herculaneum Steps, the old dock workers' route down from Dingle.  They were deeply grooved with the footsteps of the men, as though they were made of putty, not stone.  The only person I encountered on them wasn't a gnarly faced man of toil, but a young black guy dressed in lycra, jogging down the steps with his iPod on full blast.

I made a slight detour at the top of the steps.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that Bread was a load of shite.  It's a terrible, terrible programme, with thieving dole scum Scousers shouting at one another and conning "de bizzies", in between Carla Lane's trademark soliloquies about the loneliness of existence and vegan farming.  It still turns up on UK Gold, and I'll try and watch it just for the sights of 80s Liverpool, but the truly awful writing usually drives me away in a few minutes.  (Though I always had a soft spot for Billy Boswell).

Still, it was a regular feature of a Sunday night when I was growing up, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit Elswick Street, where it was filmed.  It's changed since then - the street's been designated a "Home Zone", so there are tubs of plants and traffic calming measures.  And it seemed a lot shorter than it did onscreen.

I was trying to work out which of the houses was Ma Boswell's when a door flung open, and a woman in a dressing gown and pink pyjamas walked out (it was the middle of the day, remember).  She strolled across the street and let herself in at another house.  Perhaps it was a more realistic show than I thought.

I crossed the battle-scarred streets to head for Park Road.  It felt like a lull in the middle of a bombardment; there was hardly anyone about, but there was a strange tension in the air.  The abandoned buildings and spaces of empty land added to the feeling of a momentary pause in the war.  There were Sixties blocks interspersed with older terraces; a combination of bomb damage and slum clearance, I guessed.

I can't quite take Dingle seriously.  I mean, Toxteth as a place of urban blight and sadness, fine, but Dingle? That's not a real place name - it's a home for the faerie folk.  It's even worse when people call it The Dingle, like it's a woodland grotto.

So while I wasn't going to check out the local estate agencies for available lets in the area, I thought it was a pretty decent inner city district.  It had its problems, fine, but it wasn't frightening or intimidating.  It got better as I reached Park Road, with some nicely done new apartment blocks, and the 17th Century "Ancient Chapel of Toxteth".

Opposite the chapel, for many years, stood the terminus of the Overground Railway - Dingle station.  An island platform had been carved into the rock, with a crossover at the far end and a couple of sidings.  Passengers came down a ramp from the ticket office and were soon whisked off into the city.

Today, it's a car repair workshop.  The tunnel still exists underground, and is used by the owners, but on the surface all you get is this rather ugly red construction.

I know it's hard to make a garage look attractive, but really, couldn't they have tried just a little bit harder?

Walking back into town, I thought about the Overhead Railway, and its sad demise.  I never like to see any railway close.  But I couldn't see a place for it in today's Liverpool.  At the southern section, only Dingle has the kind of population to justify it, as seen by the hundreds of buses that run down Park Road (every three minutes!).  Along Sefton Street you might get a few more passengers but I couldn't see it being an effective alternative to the Merseyrail line alongside or, indeed, a car.

And the other side of the city centre?  There's nothing there.  Perhaps when (if) Liverpool Waters is built, there'd be a possible need for it, but a tram route would probably do just as well.  You just wouldn't build an elevated railway these days.  I thought that if it had survived beyond the fifties, the LOR probably would have been demolished anyway in the Seventies, when the city was on its knees.

The Liverpool Overhead Railway was a wonderful thing in its day, but this is the 21st Century.  It's gone, but not forgotten.

A Break In Service

A few weeks ago I walked the northern section of the Liverpool Overhead Railway.  It was time for me to walk the southern section.

Before that, though, I had a small diversion to make.  I passed the site of the LOR's James Street station and wandered down to the old Manchester Dock, now put to much better use as the home of the Museum of Liverpool.  I'd been here before - on opening day, as a matter of fact - but since then they've opened some more galleries, including one devoted entirely to the Overhead Railway.

(Full confession: I was actually invited to a preview of the LOR gallery last year, the day before QEII came and opened it.  Unfortunately I managed to suffer a panic attack right outside, and I never made it through the door.)

The Museum's been a massive success since it opened.  It's bright, it's clever, it's popular.  I was there only about half an hour after it opened and it was busy even then.  I still can't quite shake off the feeling that its collection is a bit random and unfocused - the LOR gallery is next to one detailing the history of the local regiment and above the geological history of the city - but you can't say it isn't trying.

What you can't dislike about the museum is the extra display space it's given for the city's historic collection.  With the Lion, one of the earliest trains to run on the world's first passenger line, underneath the mounted LOR train, you get to appreciate them properly, and their detail.  I remember seeing the overhead train when it was exhibited in the basement of the museum on William Brown Street, years ago, and it was just another musty display object.  (Of course, back then, I was just an amateur in the ways of Merseyside transportation, instead of my current semi-pro status).

I wandered round the ground floor for a bit, involuntarily grinning when I found a portrait of William Huskisson (HUSKISSON!).  I thought I should at least pay them some attention before I headed upstairs.  After a suitably polite period of time, I dashed up the curly staircase to the Liverpool Overhead Railway gallery.

The gallery's aimed at people who had no idea the Overhead even existed, and goes into a great deal of detail about its history and route.  In addition to the long map seen above, there's an interactive model of the Liverpool coast.  Major buildings have been reconstructed at a tiny scale, and lights travelling along the elevated route simulate the trains.  I wanted to play with the miniscule buildings, but I suspect I would have been rugby tackled by one of the museum volunteers if I even groped towards it.

The theory is that you can listen to information about each of the stations by pushing a large shiny button and pressing a stick-receiver to your ear.  In reality, only one of the three banks of controls was working.  I listened for a little bit to info about the James Street station, then slipped the receiver back in its slot.  It clattered to the floor loudly.  Turns out the little hooks that held it in place had been snapped off; the only way you could get it to stay in one place was to balance it carefully, like a missing round from The Krypton Factor.  The receiver next to it was in even worse condition - it was held together by gaffer tape.  Considering the museum's not even a year old, that's a pretty poor show.

All this technological gimmickry was just gravy, of course; the main feature was the genuine, preserved train, mounted on a fake viaduct and open to explore.  The trains were wooden inside and out, with a very basic cabin for the driver to stand in and operate the train, and hard seats for the passengers.  There were quite a few people on the train already, recreating the old days; one elderly lady by the window seemed to have taken up residence.  I think in her head she was halfway to Seaforth.

It was a lovely interior, with those elegant lamps and the warm wood around you, but I bet those seats became very uncomfortable very quickly.  Here in the museum it seemed pretty and charming.  In reality it would be cramped and uncomfortable, surrounded by filthy dockers swallowing industrial phlegm (it's hard not to notice the prominent "spitting prohibited" signs).

I stepped back out onto the fake platform.  The stations were all fairly basic wooden structures, though the one at Pier Head was completely enclosed.  The one at Seaforth Sands featured the world's first railway escalator, ten years before they appeared on the Tube.  The most famous and most unique station, however, was Dingle, which I'd be visiting later that day.

The final part of the exhibition details its demise, together with bits of memorabilia and reminiscences from the workers and users.  It's touching to see the regard the railway held, and the affection people still have for it.  I remembered the old trams and buses I'd seen in other museums - usually preserved for their historic significance, rather than for their memories.  Railways are different though.  Railways grab a piece of your soul.  No-one wants to see them die, and when they do pass, it's with sadness and regret.

The Dockland's Light Railway

Turn left out of Seaforth & Litherland station and you could be in any inner city in Britain.  It's Urban High Street (2012 edition): cold and unforgiving.  Most of the shops are closed; the ones that are open are burger bars and chippies.  There are letting agents (£75 a week all bills included - available now!!!) and the occasional corner shop.  The pubs are closed and boarded up.   A deserted 1960s precinct.

I wasn't taken.  I pulled my coat close and marched purposefully down the street.  There were moments of charm - the sign in a shop window: "Please knock HARD as I am working in the back", a postcard sized bit of park - but all I felt was sad.  It'd never been great, Seaforth Road, but now it was worse.  The odd bit of Victorian exuberance aside (a cinema that had been converted into a gym, plaster roses on the outside wall coloured red and green) it was a low road, scraping along the bottom.

And up ahead - cranes.  Blue ironwork leaning in on one another, simultaneously reminding the street of its history and damning it.  They were in the docks that once provided work for all the people who lived here, except they were now doing the dockers' jobs for them.

I was tracing the route of the most famous lost railway in Liverpool: the Overhead.  Curving from Seaforth & Litherland all the way to Dingle in the south, the Overhead Railway was the first electrified elevated route in the world.  It opened in 1894 and lasted for sixty years, rising above the docks on steel girders and carrying the workers to their daily jobs by the ships.

Actually, I was going to sort of follow the route.  The initial stages of the Overhead's path are now buried inside the Freeport, and inaccessible to the public.  Instead I followed Rimrose (steady) Road south, paralleling the line's route until I could get a little closer.

The air tasted of hot meat.  Something in the industrial units around me was filling the atmosphere with a strange, processed scent of flesh - breed unidentifiable, but definitely something dead.  I tried not to think of the sausage and eggs I'd had for breakfast, and where they might have come from, and trudged alongside the busy road.

You'd expect one of the main routes north out of the city to be busy, but Rimrose Road is practically a motorway - six lanes in places, with drivers pushing the speed limit to breaking point.  It's not a pedestrian space.  There's a pavement, yes, but I was the only one using it, and I was thankful for catalytic converters or my lungs would have been blackened as truck after van after car barrelled along beside me.

The landscape was a mix of industrial and commercial - corrugated steel sheds that were disinterested in me as I walked past, turning away from the road, interspersed with brick built offices with bright coloured windows and doors to make their blandness a bit cheerier.  There was an incongruous Lexus dealership, gleaming and out of place next to a stubby dead end and with Bootle's high-rises as a backdrop.  I guessed that they had sold up a pitch in the city centre as property values rose, and now they were a sole moment of luxury on the road, until I saw Liverpool Powerboats on the opposite side of the carriageway.  It was practically millionaire's row!

Hardly anything dated prior to 1945.  This area wasn't just bombed during the war, it was decimated; a Blitz that rivalled London's but was kept quiet by the censors.  The King didn't turn up here to view the devastation and shake hands with the plucky locals - people just had to get on with it.  Thousands of people across Merseyside were killed or made homeless by the bombs.

It was underlined for me when I happened across a little park.  My attention was caught by a little sign on the entrance:

Nice.  But my interest was piqued even further by the landscape.  Instead of it just being a bare patch of grass with maybe a few swings, there were monoliths and columns, seemingly at random.  I wandered in and looked at the largest stone, in the centre.

The plaque read:

Here stood the parish church of St Mary from 1827 until it was destroyed in 1941 by enemy action.  Within these hallowed grounds are buried the earthly remains of 760 people.The churchyard and grounds were restored in the year 1960 by the Mayor Aldermen and Burgesses of the County Borough of Bootle in co-operation with the Vicar and Churchwardens of the parish of St Mary-with-St John.

The graves remained, weathered and ignored.  It should have been a place of silent reflection but the roar of the traffic put paid to that.  Still, it was nice to find a square of green among the grey of the town.

I left the park through its side entrance, onto Church Gardens, where there was a small housing estate.  The house on the corner had optimistically set out their front garden with a table and chairs, and a swing.  I'd hate to go to a barbecue round their house; it must be like lunching on the hard shoulder of the M62.

Back onto the main road, dodging the dog turds (seriously people of Bootle: clean up after your animals) and soon I was passing over the Alexandra Dock branch railway.  It's another of those little stubby tunnels that have somehow managed to cling on in a post-privatisation world, hiding under the city streets and hoping no-one notices it.  It's one of the reasons Merseyside is such a wonder for people like me who love train tunnels and abandoned lines - they're everywhere.

Finally, at Miller's Bridge, I was able to turn right and onto Regent Road, the actual route of the Overhead Railway.  This was where Brocklebank Dock station once stood and, appropriately enough, there was a ship right there.  It brought a smile to my face.  I'm still excited by living so close to working docks, with huge ships regularly moving in and out.

The road along the docks has been hammered to death by thousands of HGVs over the years, and it's pitted and pockmarked, like an adolescent's chin.  I was the only pedestrian as I strode along, this time accompanied by a peanutty smell, like the remnants of a Christmas tin of KP.  To my right were the fenced off, inaccessible world of the ships - mysterious structures rising up in multicolours with pipes and gantries all over them.  It was like the Pompidou Centre without the glass.

On my left, the warehouses and sheds were mainly empty.  The exceptions were the cafes; earthy, bacon and eggs and a cup of tea places.  I thought about how these would probably have been docker's pubs once upon a time, doling out thick foamy pints to thirsty men.  Society has changed ; the only people who have pints at lunch now are the factory girls in Coronation Street.  The idea of knocking back a few units then returning to work is anathema to us.  The White Star Cafe declared that it was home to "the Titanic Breakfast - the largest breakfast in the world!".  I was really curious about what that entailed.  A dozen sausages?  Twenty rashers of bacon?  Or did you just take a knife to a pig carcass, there at your table?  (I'm assuming that the White Star has empirical evidence that it is the largest in the world, peer assessed and with figures to prove it.  Possibly a certificate from Norris McWhirter.)

I carried on, past the old Canada Dock station.  There is nothing to see, by the way, in terms of Overhead remains.  The whole structure was found to be unsafe in the fifties, a combination of being regularly harassed by the Luftwaffe during the war and decades of neglect.  The railway company - having been left out of nationalisation - couldn't afford to do the repairs, and the council and British Rail were unwilling to stump up to help.  The whole thing was pulled down and sold for scrap, every bolt, girder and rail.  This journey was more of a ghost walk than an archaeological trip.

It felt like a trip through an abandoned landscape, too.  The only other person I saw on the walk was a waitress in the Retro Cafe; she looked up as I approached, out of curiosity, then returned to wiping the table when she saw me pass.  Brick warehouses with broken windows loomed above me.  I pictured how this road must have been when the warehouses were all around, a man made canyon with the Overhead clinging to one side.  Then my mind turned to how it must have been when the bombs rained down and it was all fire and heat and screams, soot and shrapnel, water from the hoses mixing with ash.  One bombing run put paid to a munitions ship, causing it to scatter bits of its hull over a mile away.  Imagine the noise and the fear in the air.

A conveyor belt ran over my head, carrying scrap metal across to a massive heap on the other side of the road.  Once Liverpool exported goods all over the Empire; now it exports rubbish.

The SS Malakand had exploded in Huskisson Dock (HUSKISSON!), which I was now passing.  Today it's home to Calor Gas, a couple of oil companies, and Tate & Lyle.  Am I wrong for hoping there would be another large explosion, just to see what would happen to all that sugar?  One decent blast and you could have the world's largest block of toffee.  You'd need a jackhammer to get at it.

Sandon Dock rang a bell for some reason.  I'd seen its name on the list of Overhead Railway stations, but I couldn't think why it was familiar.  Had something important happened here?  Was there a different wartime tragedy?  Then my nose detected the scent of sewage.  Ah yes.

The dock was the processing centre for the Liverpool Interceptor Sewer, which was built along the Mersey shoreline in the Eighties and Nineties.  Previously sewage was simply dumped in the river; the new sewer picked up the waste and carried it off to Sandon Dock to be cleaned and scrubbed.  (Fun fact: the sewer was partially responsible for the destruction of the ferry pier a few years ago - the sewers used to wash the sediment away from underneath the floating stage, but when they stopped, it was allowed to build up, making the storm waves much more severe).  This is the last exit point for a million people's dinners; I wondered if it was a coincidence that it was half-a-mile from the home of the Titanic breakfast.

The Sandon Dock also marks the point where the useful docks end and the derelict ones begin.  Above this point they've been adapted to accommodate today's larger ships and facilities.  Below they're just too small, too antiquated, too precious to fiddle with.  Even the wall here is a listed structure (to be fair, it is very nice).

I was entering the Stanley Dock World Heritage area - the expanse of docks whose importance had been recognised by UNESCO.  My timing was fortuitous.  The day before English Heritage had formally submitted its objection to the Liverpool Waters scheme, an idea to turn the abandoned land into homes, offices and leisure facilities.  Amusingly, there was a planning notice tied to one of the lamp posts, as though it was an application for a new conservatory, not a million-pound regeneration scheme:

EH argued that the plan for skyscrapers and cruise liner terminals would destroy the historic character of the area.  UNESCO has similar views, carrying out an inspection to see the plans and decide whether to revoke the World Heritage Status.  It's true that there is some beautiful Victorian architecture here.  The entrance gates to the docks are a particular delight: castellated turrets, terrifyingly sturdy and imposing.  They impressed me every time they showed up.

I was less impressed by another sight that appeared almost as frequently.

"To Let - Flexible Terms Available".  Because isn't that the crux of the matter?  These docks are unused and unloved.  Peel, with the Liverpool Waters scheme, has at least come up with a plan for them beyond "do nothing".  I'm not totally convinced by the plans - I don't know where all these new jobs are going to come from, or where all these new residents are coming from - but surely it's better than what's there right now?

Liverpool Waters isn't about demolition and destruction.  Their website features the clock in the photo above prominently, a preserved feature in the CGI'd images among the cafe bars and laughing families.  The water will remain, and won't be filled in to make room for houses.  The dock wall will stay, and there will be a Listed Building officer breathing down Peel's neck every time they raise a pickaxe.  What's the problem here?  When did English Heritage become about preserving an ambience?

The Stanley Dock, further along the road, shows some of the dangers of just preserving a building.  I love this whole area: the way the massive, massive structures (the Tobacco Dock reportedly the largest brick building in the world) gather round the central stretch of water.  They seem to huddle in to talk over the still blue rectangle.

These are buildings that absolutely, totally should be preserved and re-used.  I can't agree with EH more on that front.  But in the meantime, they're falling apart.  Empty.  Uncared for.  A good scheme would reuse these buildings and respectfully restore them, using them for a much better use (and there are good ideas for it out there).  Is it better that they're allowed to become graceful ruins, and stay in their proper Victorian form, or should we adapt them to modern life and make them work again?  I'd say the latter, every time.

I paused on the wonderful Bascule Bridge, an example of Peel's regenerative commitment: they restored this historic structure when it looked like it was about to fall into the sea.  They not only made it work again, they also repainted it in its original colours, and restored the operator's cabin.  Buttering up the Council with heritage points, perhaps, but I'm happy to accept it.

I had a moment of blissful remembrance there, recalling that they filmed Captain America here, the film that features this, and then moved on.

Clarence Dock station had served the Stanley Dock as well, and was the last station before we entered what you'd consider to be the city centre proper.  There were still a few remnants of the old docklands in the side streets, which were atmospherically dark and sinister; I could easily picture hoodlums firing tommy-guns into barrels of moonshine underneath their arches.  It was seductive decay.  Not seductive enough for me to want them to stay that way, though - the Waterloo Dock apartments further along were what I wanted to see round here.

Strangely, English Heritage haven't seemed to notice that the dock estate is also home to a building so futuristic, it looks like it's about to take off: the Kingsway Cooling Vent, a massive concrete tower thrusting into the sky with enormous fans either side.  It's a giant 1970s phallus, though admittedly with an oddly shaped pair of bollocks, and it's brilliant.  It's taller than pretty much everything around it, it doesn't pay homage to Jesse Hartley in any way, and it works.  New developments don't have to be destructive, and they don't have to be eyesores, and they don't have to be mock-Victorian throwbacks.

Now I was passing Costco, and Toys R Us, and the Princes Dock, whose station would have been between two skyscrapers if it were still here today.

I clambered up the hill of Bath Street, and got that view that takes my breath away every time, along the Strand.  It was the most effective riposte to English Heritage I could think of: a view that got better and better the more that was built.  A hundred-odd years ago, all you'd have seen here would have been the Parish Church; then the Tower Building came, and the Liver Building, and the Atlantic Tower, and now the black glass monolith of the new Merseytravel building - all different, unique, arguably intruding on one another, but together forming a wonderful streetscape that worked.  The church isn't overwhelmed by the Atlantic Tower (or Unity behind it); the Liver Building isn't made to look pathetic next to the Mann Island development.  It's modern and historic in harmony.

Incidentally, if Merseytravel don't stick a giant yellow neon M on the side of their building, I will be very disappointed.

I finished my walk at the Pier Head.  The railway continued south, and I will walk the rest of it, but that could wait for another day; my stomach was rumbling too feverishly for me to want to carry on.  Mounted on the side of the Queensway Ventilation Shaft was a little brown plaque, ignored by the passers by:

It seemed like an appropriate place to end.  I tipped my metaphorical hat (I did actually have a hat, in my pocket, but it was woollen and brimless and therefore impossible to tip) and then headed off for my train home.