Today we had a trip north on the train to Southport so Gill could visit her roots. Her grandparents moved to Southport after the war and as a child Gills family would drive up from London for a holiday by the sea to visit grannie.
We found the house and were taking a photo of Gill standing outside when the owner noticed us and started to make discouraging signs. We walked over to her, explained why we were photographing her house and she kindly invited us in. The house was built in 1935/36 and retains many of it’s original features, it was not very different from John Lennon’s childhood home which we visited yesterday. Of course Gill remembered it as being much bigger.
Gill was disappointed to find the donkeys no longer offer rides on the beach, we did manage a bracing walk along the 1200m long pier but the end was nowhere near the sea, that was another mile away. In fact the RNLI don’t have a lifeboat, just a 4 wheel drive truck!
The local museum was a bit of a surprise, it had quite a large section on ancient Egypt including a mummy, not what you expect in an English seaside town, apparently they were donated by a local collector.
Unfortunately Southport is now rather run down, there is a beautiful Victorian shopping arcade but almost all the shops were empty.
The other target of the day was the Gormley “Another Place” statues on Crosby beach. There are 100 of them but somehow we got the impression from photographs they were closer together, or bigger. Still it was nice to have seen them and at least it didn't rain.