DAY 23

Tuesday June 14^th  2016                                                         

Grange-Over-Sands to Conwy, Wales                               Miles 214

Having woken very early I decided to make an early start and move on into Wales.  Cumbria is famous for its Lake District and is certainly one of the lovliest areas of England.  I felt a little disappointed really that all I was seeing was the coastal area which, though pretty, certainly does not share the splendour of the inland of the county.  Indeed this can be so for many of the counties that I am passing through.  In some cases the coastal area represents the county very well; in some cases it may be better than the county as a whole; in other cases the reverse may be true.

I left the cute little town of Grange-Over-Sands and drove 15 miles to the opposite side of the estuary, from where I could look back upon it.  The other side of the estuary is joined to Grange-Over-Sands by a railway bridge and is only one mile apart.  However, by road it is 15 miles.

 

Only 1 mile by train!

I drove on following the coast as best I could until I reached Morecombe. This is quite a sad town in that it has no cohesiveness about its architecture or sea front.  There is an extremely large thin tower, the purpose of which I was not sure, but it was painted (presumably as an advert) as if it were a large packet of polo mints.  There was also a fake wooden range house, painted orange that looked ghastly and I daresay was supposed to have a cowboy theme.  Just over the sea wall, among the rocks there is pool that presumably fills with sea water when the tide comes in and makes a place to swim when the tide is out , which it was today.  I remember as a child a pool like this at Burnham On Sea in Somerset.  When not swimming in it we fished for eels which seemed to like to live in this type of rocky , muddy pool.  As I drove out of the town and on to Heysham, one resident was clearly a football fan and had a flag in his garden for each country currently playing in the Euro16 tournament that is on in France. The centerpiece was a very large football.  He may like this, but do the neighbours?

 

England Football Supporter's House

At Heysham there is a large power station and commercial docks.  The by now obligatory wind turbines were just off shore.

I had to then turn in land to go around the River Lun that flows through Lancaster. Lancaster had very heavy traffic, worsened by the large number of traffic lights that all seemed to go to red as we approached.  When they did turn to green there would be a pedestrian controlled traffic light about one hundred yards further at which there would always be someone who had just pressed it and so it would go to red and hold up all of the traffic that had just had a green light.  By the time it changed to green the other light was red.  You would think that whoever designed the spacing and timing of these lights that they would have considered some form of synchronization.  Perhaps they did and its all part of a cunning plan to restrict traffic flow. Maybe that’s who the pedestrian is and he spends his time going backwards and forwards across the road.

 

Glasson Basin

Just outside of Lancaster, Samantha sent me off down a country lane and I came across Glasson Basin, a part of the Lancaster canal. It seemed so peaceful and idyllic after the traffic chaos of Lancaster.

This road eventually led to a place called Knott End, which is just across the estuary of the River Wyre from Fleetwood.  You get a good view of Fleetwood and the docks and harbor.  There is a ferry here, but only for foot passengers and it did not appear to be operating anyway.  They have a statue on the dock of a character taken from an L.S. Lowry painting.

 

Fleetwood from Knott End

To get to Fleetwood was a journey of 10 miles inland.  Driving into Fleetwood I saw a large ice manufacturer.  No doubt this is supplied to the fishing industry for the trawlers to pack their catch in ice while out at sea.  Fleetwood had very modern trams running down the center of the street and these run too and from Blackpool about 15 miles south.  I passed a small store advertising 4 litres of mile for one pound fifty pence.  It’s no wonder that the dairy farmers are finding it hard to stay in business.  This milk almost certainly originated from outside of the UK.  People will always go for the cheap option even if better quality product is available and even if it means damaging a local supplier.  What will our countryside look like with no cows in the fields - probably be given over to black solar panels.  Yuk?

I drove down to Blackpool following the ocean through Cleveleys, which has a high wall along its esplanade; probably to prevent severe damage by the sea as happened on this coast 2 years ago.  This unfortunately blocks any view of the ocean for a car driver.  Just before Cleveleys I was surprised to see a Boarding School advertising that it took children from aged 2 to 18.  Can you imagine anyone putting a two year old into a Boarding School?  But clearly some do.  These poor children must feel so lonely without a parent to cuddle them. The buildings that I saw looked more like old barracks. Perhaps this is a modern day version of “Dotheboys Hall”.

 

Blackpool Pier and Tower

Blackpool, well what can I say about this town.  Apart from one or two new buildings, it has not changed much from when I last saw it about 10 years ago.  It is a mix of smart buildings, with scruffy B&Bs and too much tourist kitsch all joined together by a mass of overhead electrical cables for the famous illuminations. There is a large Hilton Hotel on the front, but clearly there is an overcapacity of rooms. No doubt, once upon a time, many a person’s retirement dream was to own a B&B in a seaside town.  The changes in labour laws giving people longer holidays and flexibility as to when they could take them, coincided with cheap air fares to Spain etc and the English seaside town suffered.  Many have fought back by offering high quality establishments and focusing on weekend all-year round breaks.  Blackpool has its lights for out of season attraction, but once you have driven down the promenade and seen them, you’re done.  Unless you are in to slot machines, fun palaces, drinking and eating fish and chips, there is not a lot that would bring you to Blackpool.  Although the beach is broad and sandy, the English weather has to cooperate to make this worth going, especially as at low tide the sea is a long way out.  It must be hard for many B&Bs to make money out of season. I saw one small hotel advertising en-suite family rooms for fifteen pounds a night.  Further up the road, towards the fun park there were even two fairly large hotels that had closed and all their windows were boarded up.

I saw another “Genting Club” like the one I had noticed in Southend. Despite it being grey and damp the funfare was operating with people on the rides and others milling around each of the three piers.

Though way over the top I could not help but compare Blackpool with Southend.  Southend is much more understated, but there is a similar “feel” about both towns.  Both built to amuse and earn money from tourists from the local big cities. 

Leaving the glitz of Blackpool, as I drove south, you come quickly into Lytham St Annes.  This is separated from the Blackpool sprawl by an area of sand dunes and is a much more up-market place.  Indeed it is the home of the also very up-market Royal Lytham golf course.  It has a very nice and expansive area of open green fronting onto the ocean, where you can park your car, exercise your dog, or, like me, make a cup of tea and eat your lunch. 

On the green is a lovely old windmill, which is now a museum with free entry.  It was built in the early 1800s to grind corn, but when the large houses were being built across the road in 1860, the owners of the houses saw the windmill as an industrial eyesore and wanted to have it removed.  In 1919 in a terrible gale the wind forced the sails to turn, despite being braked.  This caused sparks to fly and the windmill caught on fire, completely gutting the inside.  It remained derelict until the Council decided to repair it and open the mill to the public in 1989.  Inside, on five floors, is a history of milling and of Lytham; ideal to visit with children.

After Lytham the drive is then back inland towards Preston, which you skirt to get back onto the coast at Southport.  Many residential houses are built on the sea front rather than B&Bs and tourist attractions, though further along there is Pleasureland and Ocean Plaza.  Southport is the home of another very smart golf course, Royal Birkdale.  Again you can’t see the ocean as you drive along due to the high wall sea defenses.  One glimpse of the shoreline though did suggest it is marshy grass close in leading on to a muddy shore.  Between Southport and Formby is a Pontins Holiday Camp, painted purple, like the one in Kent, but with the addition of other bright and gaudy colours.

The road then continues all the way into Bootle and Liverpool.  I aimed for the Mersey tunnel and the town of Wallesey on the other side on the Wirrall.  At one stage of the drive you go past modern day docks, which had some big cargo vessels and lots of industrial buildings.  It looked to be thriving.  Going through the tunnel you come to a booth where you can get change if you don’t have the correct money of one pound seventy.  I did, but on throwing it in the basket, it rejected a five pence coin.  This meant that the women had to come out of her booth and collect it from the reject coin slot.  After three attempts to get it to accept it, she used a key to override it and open the barrier.  All the while she was chatting to the person from the adjacent booth who was doing the same thing for another motorist.  It would seem to make sense that they take your money rather than just give change and do away with the baskets, or make it free (no chance!).  If you have an automated system, but need people to be present to support it, then you need a new system.

On reaching the Wirral the sun came out.  I once lived near to Macclesfield in Cheshire, that gets a lot of rain, but the story was that no matter if it was raining in Cheshire, it would always be sunny at West Kirby on the Wirral.  One day we tried it and left Macclesfield in the rain and it rained the whole of the journey, but when we got to West Kirby, the sun was out!  So my now second experience has confirmed that the story must be correct!

The coast here is the estuary of the River Dee and like that of the Mersey and the other estuaries on this coast, it means that there is a lot of mud when the tide is out.  Again I had to return in land a long way to Queensferry before I could cross the river and return back to the coast.  I had intended to stay the night in the area around Flint, but this is when the torrential rain started.  I am not sure whether Flint would have looked any better in the sunshine but it is very industrial, with first the large steel works at Shotton.  I looked at my watch and the map and decided to head further into North Wales and see what I could find.  I had deliberately not booked ahead any accommodation, as I was not sure how far I would get.

Prestatyn was all I had expected it to be with a large holiday camp. It does have long sandy beaches that give you a vista of the largest wind turbine farm that I have seen so far on my trip.  I counted at least a hundred before I gave up,  A Norfolk lad would find this a great place to spend a vacation.

Between Prestatyn and Rhyl there was another holiday village, this time with the buildings painted, blue, grey, yellow and orange.  Rhyl seems much more down market than Prestatyn with lots of amusement arcades.  Rhyl has a small harbor with a Yacht Club.  But as the tide was out and the boats were resting on the mud I suspect that this is a club where there is a lot of talk about sailing in the bar rather sailing over the bar.

I stopped at Asda to buy something for supper and use their toilet. They have no toilets for customers, and suggested that I went across to MacDonalds. Needless to say I did not spend a penny in Asda.  Thank Gd for Tesco.

At Colwyn Bay the towns started to improve and everything became more up-market, with what I would term as Torbay style houses.  There is a nice sea front here with great digging sand and Rhoos-on-Sea at the west end being a very pleasant place.  I felt that I would now look for somewhere to stay.  I consulted the map and saw that I was not far from Conwy, which I knew to be a walled town with an ancient castle.  I googled B&Bs Conwy and up came a list with one that caught my eye.  I phoned and was pleasantly told that they had a room and at a price again less than I was paying with AirB&B, so I booked it.  I now felt more at ease as I now knew that I had a place to stay for the night.

 

Smart Llandudno

One of my objectives, looking at the map was to drive around the Great Orme, which is above Llandudno. I thought therefore that I would do this before going to my B&B.  I knew nothing about the Great Orme or Llandudno, but in my mind I had placed Llandudno on a par with Southend.  I drove up and over a hill from Rhoos and then was greeted with the most spectacular view of Llandudno.  It was not at all as I had imagined.  The first impression was of the crescent at Bath transferred to the seaside.  The building appeared to be all white, Georgian in style and built in a crescent around the bay.  When I arrived down on the esplanade I was not disappointed.  It was smart, clean, attractive and with a consistency of appearance that made it all very cohesive.  Certainly a place that I felt I would enjoy staying for a short holiday.  I took some photos, which did not do it justice and then drove along the front to take the Great Orme road.  This is quite narrow with a wall on the seaward side, but, as it is circular route, it operates a one-way system, so you could enjoy the views without having to constantly look for oncoming traffic.  There were a number of walkers and there are places to stop.  I noticed the old lighthouse, which is now open as a B&B.  I was relieved to see that it had a sign saying no vacancies.  If it had a vacancy I might have felt sorry that I had not seen it before I booked in Conwy. 

 

Conwy Castle

The road takes you right around the headland and then drops down towards Conwy itself.  The first view of Conwy is itself not a disappointment and presents a fine view across to the castle and the two bridges (one rail, one road) leading into it.  The setting is superb and I was glad that I had made the choice to stay here.  The castle was built in 1289 by Edward I as part of his conquest and control of the Welsh.  The English lived, barricaded behind the walls of the town and the welsh lived outside!  During the Englsih Civil War the castle was a holdout for troops loyal to Charles I.  In 1645 it surrendered to the government forces and to prevent its further use for resistance it was stripped out and eventually fell into ruin.  It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.

The town is very small and the roads restricted, but I quickly found my B&B just outside the walls.  To my surprise the couple running the B&B came from Woodley in Berkshire, a village only five miles from where I lived in Wargrave and where I had two of my nieces living for a period of time.

On the recommendation of my hostess I walked into the town, through a passage in the walls and ate at a superb Bistro.  I don’t think I would have found this place unless I had been told about it.  It was in a small courtyard right under the walls.  The meal was probably the best I have eaten so far on my trip.  I wanted after dinner to walk the walls, but I had tweaked my back earlier this morning, putting my suitcase into the car.  Not a heavy case, but I must have turned awkwardly and pulled a muscle.  I have felt it all day as I got into and out of the car and it was now beginning to hurt as I walked.

Tomorrow I leave this wonderful and historic town and head off further into Wales and the Isle of Anglesey, plus searching for more fine castles.