Impermanent Way

There used to be two routes from Liverpool to Southport.  One is still there: the ramrod straight Northern Line from Liverpool Exchange (now Moorfields) into the town centre.  The other took its own sweet time getting there.  The Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway made its way from Aintree to Southport via the most indirect possible route.  It ran across empty fields and called at tiny hamlets with barely a couple of houses.  It lost money hand over fist, and was finally put out of its misery in 1952.

Head down Shore Road from the present-day Ainsdale station and you arrive at what was Ainsdale Beach halt.  It would've been handy for the Pontins resort, except that didn't open until 1970.  Yes, they were still building new holiday camps when Bowie and Bolan were in the charts.  Even more incredibly, it's still there, looking like Strangeways in satellite pictures.

Great for the beach and everything - the good thing about Southport is there is a hell of a lot of beach (not so much of the sea, but loads of sand) -  but it's weird to think that in 2018 people are still having the Hi-de-Hi! experience.  Especially when it keeps making the news for all the wrong reason (just today: bed bugs biting a toddler).  The shuttered hulk of the Sands seemed to act as a warning to travellers.  This resort couldn't even support a pub.

I'd decided to walk from Ainsdale Beach to what would have been the next station on the line, Birkdale Palace.  The entire railway was torn up after closure, and the section between Woodvale and the town centre was turned into the Coast Road, a handy bypass for the small, exclusive villages that trail away from Southport.  It's a simple two lane road, with a combination bike and footpath alongside, and I thought it'd be a pleasant walk on a warm day.

I made a mistake almost immediately.  After a while of walking on tarmac, I spotted a pedestrian sign pointing into the grass at the side of the road.  I can't resist a detour, so I swung off the main road and into the hillocks at the side.  That was how I found myself on a long, undulating path, rising up and down on the dunes, wedged between the busy road and the fenced off fields.

I'd picked probably the most boring and yet also most tiring way to walk to Birkdale.  The path was rough and threadbare, but the high sandy dune to my left meant there was no way to get back down to the pavement.  To my right was an vista of overwhelming flatness, just a load of scrub and the odd tree until another dune blocked the horizon.  And it rolled, tight on my calves going up, slippery sand going down.

On my left I could see the tops of the cars and the occasional brightly coloured cyclist, but there was no sense that I was by the sea.  It was clear why the S&CLER's route had failed to win over passengers.  You don't mind an elongated journey if it is at least pretty.  The quickest way from Lancaster to Carlisle is not via Barrow, but thousands of people make that journey specifically to see the beautiful sea views from the train.  Here, the train would have pootled along on its endlessly snaking path, and all you'd have seen was a series of green hillocks.  On the other side of that dune in the above picture is the wide expanse of Ainsdale Beach and the Irish Sea, shimmering in the June sunshine.  You can't see any of it of course, so you'll just have to imagine it.

It was also quite clear that I was the first idiot to come this way in a long time.  I hacked and slashed through stinging nettles and brambles, my lightly tanned arms suddenly crisscrossed with red lines.  My bloody mindedness stopped me from giving it up as a bad lot and turning back - I'd come so far! - but I certainly cursed that tiny little pedestrian man and my stupid curiosity.

The backs of houses appeared, and I was able to escape onto the foot-slash-cycle path.  This presented problems of a different kind.  Suddenly there was traffic.  The thing about these theoretical shared spaces for cyclists and pedestrians is that cyclists go a lot faster and tend to be a lot stroppier.  I was perfectly within my rights to walk on the path, and I stuck to one side of it to allow the people on bikes room to go round, but I still got angry bells for having the temerity to be in their way.  The long stretch of the cycle route gave them a chance to really hammer those pedals, and they didn't need some fat blogger lolloping in their way.  After a while I just stepped off the pavement when I saw a cyclist coming; it wasn't worth trying to stand my ground any more.

Birkdale Palace station served the hotel alongside, which was just as glamorous as you're imagining.  Opening in 1866, the hotel aimed at the more luxurious spa end of the market, hoping to attract rich Victorians wanting to take the air.  Its guests included Clark Gable and Frank Sinatra, but despite its glittering reputation and handy transport links its parade of owners all ended up going bust.  It finally closed a century after opening, and was demolished.

There's nothing left of the station, and the site of the hotel is now uninspiring houses.  There's still a Palace Road, though, and the Fishermans' Rest pub occupies the former hotel gatehouse. 

I wandered into the chichi Birkdale village, with its award-winning delicatessens and butchers and endless gift shops.  I nipped into one, because it's the BF's birthday soon and I needed a card, and witnessed a posh woman bark "Weddings!" at the staff.  Just that.  "Weddings!"  Not a question, not an enquiry.  The woman behind the counter showed her the cards, and the posh woman snapped "Matching paper!"  She was exactly the kind of woman who would complain to the manager if she received poor service in a shop, without realising that it's a two-way street; maybe if you were less vile, people would be more helpful.  I hope the waiters spat in her champagne at the reception.

Birkdale was certainly far too posh for me, dripping with sweat and with jeans covered in sand and brambles.  I could've done with a drink, but there were only glamorous bars with people in perfectly starched shirts sat outside sipping at chilled white wine; I didn't want to depress the house prices.  Instead I slinked to Birkdale station for the train home.  The quick, direct, no need to go via Sefton, train home.

End of the Line

It has recently been brought to my attention that this blog may have lost its way.

A certain red-headed Scouser pointed out that this blog started out as me and a map and not much more.  Now, four years later, it's transformed itself into a one-man trans-continental odyssey.  With gratuitous Russell Tovey and James Bond references.  And knob gags.  Lots and lots of knob gags.

I'd been feeling a bit guilty about it myself, so I took the opportunity of a meet up with my friend Jennie and her lovely daughter Joy to do some Merseyrail stations.  And proper, traditional, back to basics Merseyrail.  I was going to finish off the Northern Line*.

Birkdale's the penultimate station, and despite the name, it isn't convenient for the Royal Birkdale Golf Club, which I love.  More places that confuse American visitors, please.

It turned out to be a very sweet little slice of Victoriana; a nicely preserved 19th Century relic that's clearly had some care and attention devoted to it.  The glass and brickwork were clean and the ironwork was freshly painted.

There's also a newly inaugurated waiting room on the platform.  I'm really pleased that Merseyrail has brought back the waiting room over the past few years.  There was a time when they were sealed off and bricked up, presumably to stop smack heads and alkies from using them for nefarious purposes, but most of them have now been opened up and restored.  The Birkdale one also has pictures of the station in Victorian days, which is a nice touch.

At the village end of the station is a level crossing.  This end of the Northern Line is full of them, which must be a nightmare.  Trains every fifteen minutes in both directions pass through these level crossings, closing off roads on a regular basis.  How annoying.

As a way of getting round this regular closure, an underpass has been constructed for pedestrians.

It's a strangely evocative little passageway, with the high windows keeping it well lit and the multiple exits (two for the platforms, two for the street) giving it a unique feel.  

The Colour Tsars haven't held back.

I took my usual up the nose shot, much to the consternation of a nearby florist.  I apologise in advance for my rough appearance.  I've been ill the past week or so, and haven't shaved; I woke up too late that morning to be able to do it.  Hence the Bushman of Borneo look.

It's a very sweet little village, Birkdale, busy and thriving.  And rich.  Incredibly rich.  As I walked towards the coast I passed villas and detached houses with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges.  Between them were blocks of discreet flats, set back from the road.  It was quietly, impressively moneyed.  Even if some of the houses looked like British versions of Norman Bates' house.

As I got closer to the beaches it became clear that the council had pushed its luck with the dunes a few decades ago, and squeezed a couple more roads of houses in beyond the Victorian homes.  Boring brick homes had been pushed in, completely out of kilter with their forebears.

There are quicker ways to get from Birkdale to Southport town centre, but I wanted to follow the Coastal Road.  Firstly, because it's far prettier.  Secondly, it's a former railway.  There used to be a line from Liverpool to Southport via Aintree, snaking its way through the countryside in elongated curves and ending with a route through the dunes.  It sounds impossibly scenic, and it probably was, especially back in the 19th Century.  If you wanted to get from Liverpool to Southport though, the route from Exchange to Southport Chapel Street was a dead straight line.  The coastal route lasted until the 1950s, but it was never overburdened with passengers, and few mourned its loss.

The route of the railway became the Coastal Road, a bypass into the centre of town which avoids the suburbs, but still never gets too busy.  Southport's recently made a push as a cycling town, with specially laid out routes around the town and plenty of separated cycle lanes.

I was on the Shrimp Route, apparently.  Not quite sure how I feel about that.

It was October the 3rd, and Britain was having a bizarre heatwave.  There's something very unseemly about hot weather in Autumn.  A pleasing warmth, fine, but actual, sweat inducing heat?  I want the leaves to fall into wet piles, and a cold wind to whisk inward from the sea.  Instead I was walking along in a short sleeved shirt, staring out at the beautiful expanse of Southport's coast.

I formed a theory about the residents of Merseyside en route.  I think they're perpetuating a giant con.  I think, a few years ago, they started spreading rumours about them being thieves and scallies.  They went round telling people that you shouldn't visit Liverpool if you want to keep your hubcaps, and that the streets were crawling with gangs and thugs.

They did all this to stop people visiting, because they wanted to keep the city to themselves.  They didn't want people to know about how wonderful Liverpool was, about its theatres and museums and pubs and shops, about the friendly locals and effective transport.  They definitely didn't want people to know about the miles and miles of open sea front, long quiet sandy beaches and peaceful dunes.  They want to keep all this a secret, and I don't blame them.  It's wonderful, and once again I thought how lucky I was to live here.

Southport hides from the coast, so it comes as a bit of a surprise to find it appearing in front of you.  There was an interesting bit of sculpture, blowing in the wind, which on closer examination turns out to be a marker for the end of the Trans-Pennine Cycle Route.  It was a bit of a thrill, being at the end of the route.  On the other side of the country, near Hull, there's another of these markers; I imagined the excitement of seeing both of them at opposite ends of a journey.

Take the road inland, past the Moroccan fantasy of the Casablanca club and the closed up Pleasureland, and you come to a Morrison's supermarket.  When the CLC railway line closed in the Fifties, they turned the old station building into a bus terminus, pulling up the platforms but leaving the rest of the building intact.  It was all in a bit of a state though, and Morrison's turned up and bought the land for one of their faux-Victorian supermarkets.

On the plus side, they saved the frontage of the old Southport Lord Street station, and for a while it was an office development.  Now it's empty, and only gets use as a cut-through to the supermarket.

There's still an impressive clock tower on the street, though of course the clock doesn't work.  A board promises a luxury hotel development "to be completed in 2008"; in the real world, the developers went bust and a plan to turn it into a two-star Holiday Inn Express was approved last year.  A bit of a sad end for a pleasing railway building.

I like Southport.  It's a very easy town to walk round, with its wide boulevard through the centre and its ornate arcades.  It's classy enough to maintain a good level of shops and restaurants, but also has that pleasingly tacky underside that all good seaside resorts should have.  It's not at Blackpool levels - heaven forbid - but there are still gaudily lit arcades and cheap bars in amongst the tea rooms and boutiques.

It has a gentility and a slight prissiness which stops it from being the Brighton of the North (and it's not nearly as gay), but it's hard not to be charmed as you take in its attractions.  The park is well laid out and has a sweet little miniature railway, there's a carousel on the front, and the war memorial is one of the finest in the country.

I met up with Jennie, and we took a stroll along the pier.  When we first met, fifteen years ago, Southport meant one thing for us: Manhattan's, the incredibly dodgy club Edge Hill students used to travel to on a Monday night for random hook-ups and cheap beer.  The first time I went I was given a free bottle of Diamond White just for walking through the door.  Jennie was always a more committed Manhattanite, but I still went now and then, pogo-ing in the "Indie Room" to Britpop classics.  I once copped off with a lad in there, which, given the rampant heterosexuality of the place, I count as a personal triumph, and one of my favourite memories of my student life is the whole Indie Room swaying and singing along to Don't Look Back In Anger, our arms linked, our voices hoarse, convinced this was the greatest time of our lives.  Maybe it was.

Of course, now Jennie and I are in our mid-thirties, and she was pushing her second child in its pram, and I was carrying about five extra stone.  Manhattan's is empty now, with a sign on the outside appealing for developers.  We always have a moment of silent tribute when we pass though.

The winds didn't seem to have got the Indian Summer memo, and were curling across the wide beach in increasing force.  We struggled down the pier, with Jennie clutching Joy's pram tightly in case she took off.  I stopped to take a picture of the pier tram, which amused her enormously.  We might even have travelled on it if it was a bit more frequent than once every half hour.

Lottery money has meant that there's now a glass pavilion at the end of the pier, with Victorian penny arcade machines in one half and a cafe in the other.  I got a cup of tea while Jennie fed Joy her bottle.  The sun was amplified inside, turning it into a bit of a greenhouse; God only knows what it's like in August.

As you can tell, she loves having her picture taken.  But isn't Joy sweet?

We spent the rest of the afternoon haunting the town's coffee shops and bookstores (incidentally, Esquires has an extremely hot barista) before it was time to head back to the station to get our trains home.  This meant, of course, that I had to collect the station sign, and Southport's got perhaps the biggest sign on the network.

It'd have to be a beast, because the station is squirrelled away behind a shopping arcade.  Look at the size of it though.  Just the Merseyrail M is bigger than me:

The station was revamped in 2007 and has been greatly improved.  What was once a dank underlit building, like walking into a concrete bunker, has been transformed and prettified.  There's one of the earliest MtoGo's here, and one of the biggest: Southport gets city centre levels of traffic.

It's also got automatic ticket gates fitted, and I was pleased to see pensioners happily swiping their travel passes on the yellow pads to get through.  It bodes well for the Walrus.  The only person who had a problem with it was a girl in her twenties who couldn't work out you have to put your ticket in the slot to get through.  Sometimes I worry for the future of our nation.

Beyond, the glass roof has been cleaned and opened up, the signage improved, and the nasty ultraviolet lights have been pulled out of the toilet.  There were 13 platforms at Southport until Beeching, back when it was called Southport Chapel Street, but now there are only six: the old platform space has been turned into a car park.  As part of that Southport Cycling Town project, they've put in a cycle hire and maintenance unit, with plenty of parking and space for your cycle helmets.  It looked like it was pretty well used too.

It feels like a proper terminus, Southport, even though there are only two lines going into it.  It feels like a hub.  The only negative is there's no ALF.  There used to be, before the revamp: it was blue and had a roller coaster on it.  Instead there are now signs welcoming you to England's Classic Resort.  All very nice for the tourist board I'm sure but it's not an ALF, so I have no time for it.  I refused point blank to take a picture for this blog.  You have to make a stand sometimes.

*Halfway through writing this up I realised I still haven't done Liverpool Central.  So the Northern Line remains unfinished.  Which I'm actually sneakily pleased about.

Righting A Wrong

Readers with long memories will recall I visited Parbold station back in - blimey - August 2009. At the time I managed to make a hash of the Merseytart/sign photo, because I had my eyes closed and I generally looked like an arse.

Well, that's been corrected now. I was in Parbold yesterday visiting my best friend, Jennie. She's currently pregnant, and so between anecdotes about her womb antics, we trotted out to the sign for a snap.

The lovely little lad I'm with is Jennie's son, and my Godson, Adam. Part of the reason I was visiting was to bring him his birthday gifts - he's just turned 8 - a Lego Space Shuttle and a complete set of Charlie Higson's Young Bond novels. I don't care if he's a bit too young for them - 007 indoctrination has begun!

Incidentally, I passed through Southport station en route (though not through the ticket barriers, so it doesn't count as a Tart). It's a lot nicer since the last time I visited - lots of glass, bright new signs, an M to Go, a cycle store. But they have got rid of the ALF! Sacrilege! There are big signs saying "Welcome to Southport", but I don't care. I must register my absolute disgust at this development, and I may have to nip back with a felt tip to draw some sand castles on the new signs.