Bank Holiday In Fleetwood

Bank Holiday Monday, 30 May 2016. We had gone south of Blackpool to St Annes on the Sunday so today we head north and come to Fleetwood.

We head for a sunny Fleetwood to walk down from the boating lake to the ferry and back. For a change I decided to fit my telephoto lens to the camera and see what I could find to photograph with it. This is Fleetwood Mount, seen over the putting greens.

There's a model boating pond and a second boating lake where dingy sailing used to be taught. When I worked at the Nautical College in 1985-6 they used to use this lake and had an enclosed lifeboat on davits and a couple of large lifeboats on the water, which are still there. I've not seen them in use for a long time, so am not sure if they are still owned by the college or not.

As we got down onto the seafront near the "Lower" lighthouse, one of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's craft was speeding past Wyre Light out in the bay. The telephoto was at 300mm for this and there's quite a bit of heat haze messing up the image I'm afraid. Heat haze off the north west coast - who'd have thought...?

I've pulled back the zoom a bit on this one but even so, if you make out the tiny figures of fishermen on the first spit of land then you'll get an idea of just how far out Wyre Light is.

Dandelions are taking over the beach! They are intent on taking over my lawn too, come to think of it...

Another full zoom, looking across the broad expanse of the estuary and Pilling Sands to Heysham Power Station. The tide recedes two and a half miles here and comes in faster than you can run. The sandbanks are riddled with gullies that fill up even faster as the tide approaches and these can cut you off from land very quickly. Given that there can be over ten metres (32.5 feet) difference between low tide and high tide you can see why Morecambe Bay is one of the UK's most dangerous places to decide to amble out for a stroll...

Knott End ferry landing across the River Wyre. That sandbank is the reason that even when it is covered and looks to be just river, the ferries do a dog-leg manoeuvre to get to the landing!

Flowers. Don't ask, I don't know. They just looked nice! If I was pressed all I could offer would be: pink flowers...

Between the gardens and buildings of the Marine Park and the site where Fleetwood's pier used to be, a path leads down to follow the seafront which heads off at right angles as the River Wyre channel also bends to head out to sea. From the path we get another glimpse of Fleetwood Mount.

Fleetwood Beach Lighthouse. Designed by Decimus Burton and Captain H. M. Denham in 1839. It is partner to the much taller Pharos Lighthouse, a little farther inland. Known locally as the "upper and lower lights", ships coming into Fleetwood up the River Wyre estuary had to keep the lights directly one above the other to know they were safely in the deep water channel.

The squat building to the left, built on stilts over the beach is - or was, I'm not sure if it is still used - a radar training facility, part of what is now the Nautical Campus of Blackpool & The Fylde College.

Having taken the beach path we are now away from road traffic and in an area much favoured by walkers, holiday makers and cyclists. A row of beach huts adds a bit of colour to the scene.

I never got into the beach hut thing. My parents when I was a child would rather sit on the deck chairs on the beach, sometimes with a wind break if it was really rough and would happily force us to eat sandwiches (such an apt name) that were gritty with sand. Well, it did me no harm. Coffee or tea came from a stall on the Promenade and the only concession to the blowing sand was a saucer placed on top of any open jugs of water or milk. The cups just filled up and we tipped them upside down before pouring into them.

A general view of the beach between the Marine Hall and Rossall Point - the weirdly-shaped building in the far distance is Rossall Point Observation Tower. Open to the public it provides a viewpoint over Morecambe Bay. It is a facility of the National Coastwatch Institution.

Pleasure flights and pilot training flights from Blackpool Airport often pass over the town. The telephoto lens picks this one out nicely. I did this myself on my 40th birthday. Of course the plane then was more like Biggles would have been used to in World War One...

Finally we complete our round trip and arrive back at the boating lake and our car.

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Village Life

More photos from 1983, this time we've moved into the month of May of that year and have taken a trip up the coast to the village of Heysham, near Morecambe.

At that time during the warmer months there was always a little market down the main street and a few old fashioned reminders of a past way of life.

The huge brass beam scale allowed you to be weighed though, as people always tended to watch, it wasn't the most discreet way of finding out if you needed to diet! Worst case scenario was the operator muttering "I'll just have to nip inside for some more weights..."

Perhaps a little more discreet than the automatic talking weighing machine that shrieked "No elephants!" or "One at once!"

A little further down the street was a stall selling nettle beer. I tried some once - the most horrible concoction I've ever drunk... Though I have a friend who swears by it. She was brought up there and probably doesn't know any better... (I'm sure there'll be a comment sooner or later! Ha ha!) Anyway, I just swore at it...

Finally an "awww!" moment from further down the village.

To celebrate the first day of 2012, this is the first entry I've composed using Blogger's new interface. It handles photos and a few html bits slightly differently and there are a couple of extra things I can do that I couldn't before.

Large versions of the photos: scales 1, scales 2, nettle stall, stable door

John Burke's Heysham

The title of the entry was the title of a web page that I had at one time. My web pages were originally with Freeserve and survived through the takeover by Wanadoo. They finally disappeared when I moved from Orange, who took over Wanadoo to my present ISP. The page was immensely popular and so the text is reproduced here almost word for word. The photographs are, however, new and were taken especially for this reproduction of the web page.

Heysham is a tiny village on the edge of Morecambe Bay, North West England. A nuclear power station and ferry port are two modern points of interest but the village has so many old and interesting things to look at that, for a village of this size, it really is almost unfair! This is the parish church of St Peter, first consecrated in the year 976 and therefore over 1000 years old. Most of what can be seen here is younger than that, the belfry added in the 1600s, the South doorway which replaces the original Saxon doorway - still visible in the West wall. It is also obvious that the church has been expanded a few times with the nave extended and side chapels added.

There are several interesting items in the churchyard of which this sundial of 1696 is one of the youngest. However, whilst the sundial may be relatively young the material of its base is older as this was originally a Saxon cross shaft of over 1000 years ago. It must have contained carved images and the marks of the 17th Century hammers wielded by the Puritans can be clearly seen, low down on the shaft. They took to extreme the theme of not allowing worship of graven images.

Given the above it is perhaps surprising then that this Saxon cross shaft - which may be a different part of the same - was allowed to remain. The deep scrollwork and carving was done probably when the church was new. On the reverse side is a depiction of the raising of Lazarus and the three figures in the windows of the building above a swathed body in the doorway visible here are thought to depict the three Mary's visiting the tomb of Jesus.

Many visitors pass by this stone container, thinking it merely a horse trough or similar. It is however a stone coffin, thought to be that of the Norman cleric responsible for restoring a church that was old even by the time of the Conquest.

In the Southern side chapel inside the church is yet another treasure. This is a Viking "hogback" tomb cover from the 10th Century. With bears clasping each end of the stone, the carvings represent scenes from Norse sagas. It is easy to pick out this deer hunt. This is no ordinary tomb cover. This was for a chieftain or king. It is the finest example ever found in Britain.

St Peter's church was built to replace the chapel seen here which stands just above it on the hillside. By the time the Vikings raided Heysham in the 900s this chapel was already around 300 years old. They left it without a roof and the villagers, presumably too numerous anyway for this tiny chapel, decided to build the new church. The chapel was dedicated to St Patrick, who was rumoured to have been shipwrecked here in the 5th Century, on his way to Scotland after fleeing from his Roman captors in Ireland.

Close by the chapel is a row of six graves, dug with primitive tools out of the solid rock of the headland on the very edge of the cliff. Thought to date from the first half of the 11th Century, they would have been reserved for local notables. Sockets for cross shafts can be seen at the head of some of the graves.

Two more graves are uncovered at the other end of the chapel. One is obviously that of a child. The graves originally had covers over them and two are seen above in the foreground of the photo of St Patrick's chapel.

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Heysham Curiosities

One of the many web pages from my website(*) is dedicated to Heysham, a village on the edge of Morecambe Bay.

I came across the packet of negatives of the photos I used on it so I've now rescanned all except one which was a bit damaged (looked like either I'd stood on it or the cats had been at it to be honest...).

The photo used here shows a row of six graves that have been cut out of the bedrock of the headland. They date from Dark Age Britain - before the Norman Conquest of 1066.

The page has photos of many other treasures - a Norse hogsback tomb cover, the ruined chapel of St Patrick who landed here on his way to convert the Scots to Christianity, the church of St Peter, built in 976 (no I didn't miss off a figure 1 from the date!). It was built after the Vikings destroyed the smaller chapel.

Why not have a look at the web page? I get many emails from people who assume I live in Heysham, but I was just there as a day tripper.

The page has been very successful - a search in Google for "John Burke's Heysham" turns up over 100 web sites that have linked to it!

(*) The website mentioned is no longer active