Weather: Fine and hot.
Distance:
29 km (18 miles) Total Distance: 3538 miles
It was
a good weekend’s forecast so I set off early from Coventry and started the day with my new
hobby of trigpointing – one of them in Stanley Park, Liverpool between Anfield
and Goodison. You are never far from a trigpoint and there are lots of different kinds to visit. The hobby will keep you busy for years! Visit TrigpointingUK
The
week previously I had made contact via the internet with David Cousins who last year
had walked around the coast and made a log of it on the Internet. I had read his log of this coming section
where he describes Garston as not very attractive, or words to that effect, and how right he was.
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| Garston map |
I parked not too far from the train station
and made my way though Garston and then the nearby industrial estate. Soon however I was able to cut down onto the
mini cliff top. As I approached
Liverpool airport I was expecting to have to go down onto the foreshore and in
the end I did. Fortunately the tide was
out. The bad thing about this stretch
was that the 4x4 vehicles had discovered the area and there was mile
upon mile of ripped up ecosystem – the first evidence I had seen of this
destructive hobby my entire walk.
The
coast got more pleasant at Hale Point especially in the Spring sunshine. The path from here goes into Hale where I
stopped for lunch. As I was nearing the
end of my coastal walk I decided to have a pint and a proper lunch in the pub,
the Marquess of Hale. It was a good pint of Liverpool
brewed beer.
After a short stretch of
road walking it was back to the coast, through a country park, past some
chemical industry, over an elaborate footbridge and then into the outskirts of
Widnes. To get onto the footbridge over
the Mersey I took the underpass under the bridge and then onto the very
distinctive iron bridge. Getting off on
the southern end was more difficult and the road swung around and back though
Runcorn and onto the coast again.
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| Runcorn map |
It all
got rather scrappy from here. I wandered
through a new housing development but was then forced inland and ended up lost
in Runcorn docks in among lots of scrap car dealers. After a while I ended up crossing a railway
line and going over an overgrown embankment onto a dual carriageway.
I was a little nervous here as I had just had
the operation on my wrist the Monday before to have the pins taken out of my broken arm and I didn’t want to fall and break it again! I used my GPS at one stage to find out where
I was – that’s how lost I was.
The road
went down into Weston Point – famed I believe for chemical contamination from
the nearby ICI chemical works. I had a
pint of larger shandy in the pub, a rough place but the drink was only
£1.64. There was a cockatoo sitting on
top of a cage in the pub!
After
a spell on the dual carriageway again I cut down towards the power station and
thought I would have to backtrack again as I could not see the path that was
marked on the map but I asked the gateman and he said it was over the hedge –
seldom used but passable.
Down to the
river, up the canal, over the bridge then another little error – a little
detour up to near the motorway and back again.
I called it a day near the Bridge Inn at Frodsham and began a very
tortuous journey back to the car that took three and a half hours. A bus to Runcorn, a very slow bus to Liverpool stopping everywhere and
then train to Garston - all with bad connections in between.
I stopped the night in Chester Youth Hostel
arriving at 10.00 with just time to eat some
pre-packed sandwiches I had bought and drink two cups of tea before I was
thrown out of the Members Kitchen and had to retire to the lounge with a modern
working TV. Oh how youth hostels have changed!
A drunken exuberant group of teenagers then appeared so I retired to bed
hoping that none of them were housed in my room.
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