Lancashire: Liverpool to Hightown 9/6/2004**

 

Liverpool Docks         King's Pipe, Stanley Dock   Bee orchid among clover   Seaforth Marine Lake   Hightown beach

North from the Royal Liver Building we immediately entered the Liverpool docks, walking the A5036 immediately to the east of them.  The old Victorian architecture was interesting, and some old names such as Harland Wolff, were redolent of the days of shipbuilding.  Gateways had ornamental pillars, behind which were now security barriers.  Clarence Gate had a plaque in Gaelic and English, erected by the Great Famine Commemoration Committee on October 22, 2000: "Through these gates passed most of the 1,300,000 Irish migrants who fled from the Great Famine and 'took the ship' to Liverpool in the years 1845-52".  The high sturdy walls had frequent inbuilt metal drinking fountains, long since dry.  At Stanley Dock we passed the King’s Pipe, a square chimney attached to a derelict tobacco warehouse.  Most pubs on the way were closed down and boarded up, including one (unnamed now, formerly the Dominion, on the corner of Bankfield Street) with an interesting roof-top statue of a settler with an axe and a dog.  The dirt, dust, litter and chemical smells got to us after a while.  Our discomfort was made worse when we joined the even greater procession of traffic, including many large lorries, on the A565 trunk road at Bootle.  We left this thankfully at Seaforth, where there was a large flyover, and passed down a side street via Potters Barn Park, rather unremarkable (with lots of small nettle) but a welcome oasis from the industrial area immediately south.  This led to Seaforth Marine Lake, a boating pool where wind chopped the surface of the water, and dune vegetation began, largely degraded.  We found one plant of hound’s-tongue and there was plenty of sea holly above the beach, which had a few more shells than we found the last two days on the Wirral.  The peace of the beach was rather spoilt by dune buggies being driven at top speeds.  We arrived in Crosby and walked partly on the beach, partly on the esplanade.  There were no holiday facilities here, but a modern swimming-pool in a round building with inward sloping glass walls provided a little café where we could get simple snacks and sit in comfortable chairs to rest feet bruised by road-walking.  To the north of the town there were rather better, if overgrown, dunes below a golf course, where plants like bee orchid, yellow-horned poppy and meadow-rue cropped up.  There was much creeping willow here for the first time, and appropriately a “Beatle”, the large weevil Cleonus pigra.  These dunes continued to the west of Hightown.  Piles of brick and concrete, the results of wartime destruction of buildings in Liverpool and post-war dumping of rubble as a defence against erosion, were now being gradually converted back to dune by nature.  They made the beach inaccessible, or at least uncomfortable.  Even the paths above the beach were full of bricks.  The lower beach was also rather muddy and estuarine. The River Alt reaches Formby to the north, then turns south and follows the head of the beach until it empties into the sea just north of Crosby.  The absence of people enabled flocks of oystercatchers, lapwings, shelduck and gulls, plus the odd heron, to lead a quietly sedentary life.  As yesterday, however, we met many people walking the dune paths, often with dogs, and several cyclists.  At Hightown the track became the “Sefton Coastal Path” and led to the north end of the village, where there was a station to take us back to Liverpool Moorfields.  We walked from here a couple of streets to Chapel Street and Ziba at the Racquet Club, where we stayed for 3 nights.  Our car was parked in an enclosed and guarded NCP park round the corner in New Quay.  From the restaurant table we overlooked the Pig and Whistle “world famous” pub (apparently a favourite among shipping line reps), from which emerged a number of squabbling drunks to keep us entertained.  A bicycle had been stolen in that same street, although chained to railings, and we saw the rider in helmet and shorts return to search for it.  Sharing the restaurant with us were parties of women golfers ready for the tournament tomorrow.  All Liverpool life passes by here.

Sign of former Dominion pub   Boarded up premises, Waterloo Road   Cleonus piger weevil   Pig & Whistle