Tag: England

English Seaside

Southport Edition.

Heatwave was back, so it was time to go to the beach again.

Shot taken from the pier.

Light above the pier.

Sun reflecting on the water.

My foot in the water.

Something to eat.

Followed by an ice cream, of course.

Place to have some fun times. (I think. I haven’t been there.)

Shops on the street are also sort of typical of the seaside town.

Sun starts setting on the seaside, rides are closing.

Bye-Bye!

All tired out from the day, you make your way to the station, only to be faced with the reality of the train to Manchester being cancelled. The next one would not depart until an hour after the cancelled one.

Distrust in the railway company, coupled with your ever present anxiety, forces you to seek another solution.

You board the next train to Liverpool and return to Manchester via Liverpool South Parkway. You get home at about the same time you would if you had taken the train after the cancelled one.

What a journey!

For the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – Journey.

In case you want to know, I didn’t have to buy another ticket, the one I had was valid for the alternative journey.

Crosby Beach

I thought it was about time I went to the seaside again.

Crosby is a town in Merseyside, near Liverpool, on the same coast as Southport and Formby, both of which have featured here before. (In fact, it was to Southport I went, and from there I took a train to Crosby.)

This beach also has statues!

It is a work by Antony Gormley called Another Place. The statues are spread out along the beach, as you can see some of them quite far out into the sea.

It would be interesting to watch them get submerged in the water as the tide comes.

Sand dunes.

Seagulls.

Ship!

And sky, of course.

Halifax, West Yorkshire

Following on from the Shibden Hall post, the actual town of Halifax deserves its own entry too. So here it is.

The Minster:

The Minster inside:

Flowers growing outside the Minster:

Hill outside the town:

Shopping street:

Sign on the shopping street:

Some house I thought looked nice:

Fun fact: Halifax is also a bank, so if you’re in UK and Google it, you’re more likely to see results for the bank first, before you get to results for the town. It’s understandable; the bank is one of the largest ones here, with branches all over the country, and the town is not that big, nestled between the giants of Manchester and Leeds.

There is also, of course, the one in Nova Scotia in Canada. I knew about the Nova Scotia one before I ever knew there was one in England. That is because I started reading Lucy Maud Montgomery books long before I moved to England. I learned a bit about Canadian geography from reading L.M. Montgomery. She studied at the Dalhousie University in the Canadian Halifax.

Shibden Hall, Halifax

Shibden Hall is an estate in Halifax, West Yorkshire, that used to be residence of the Lister family, and is now a museum.

I visited the place and, naturally, this is the pics:

The diarist Anne Lister lived at Shibden Hall.

I took many, many photos here and it was a struggle to pick ones for the blog. Here’s some of the rooms:

fireplace in the kitchen
the study
portrait of Anne Lister, attributed to Joshua Horner
spill the tea!
Anne’s bed

At the back of the house there’s The Folk Museum; workshops with displays of traditional crafts such as blacksmith, wheelwright, cooper, etc.

Park surrounding the house:

Anne Lister is the subject of TV series Gentleman Jack, which was also filmed here (they’re about to film some Season 2 scenes here, or they might be doing it at the time of this post’s publication, unsure about exact dates). Suranne Jones plays Anne Lister and Sophie Rundle is Ann Walker, her last lover. I can’t comment in any way on it, as I haven’t seen this show.

I bought the customary fridge magnet at the gift shop. Also a pen. That is a new thing for me. Not buying pens, but buying pens from museum gift shops.

Lyme Park

My third and final Lyme Park post, featuring photographs on no particular topic.

While I was climbing the hill up to The Cage, I kept thinking of Jane Austen, and that it looked like a location from her novels. I don’t know why, because I was sure she was never this far north (she wasn’t). But I still had the feeling that it had a Jane Austen aesthetic. The house on the above picture has a souvenir shop inside it (there are tours but they were closing down as I got there, they close earlier now because of the pandemic), so I went in there–and it turns out that the 1995 Pride and Prejudice mini series was filmed here! It’s the one with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Of course, I bought a Mr Darcy fridge magnet.

I took a lot of pictures of the view from the hill on which The Cage is, but I couldn’t decide which ones to post, so I link you my video.

The Cage at Lyme Park

It’s not a literal cage, it’s just named that way.

Lyme Park is a huge estate to the south-east of Manchester, near the village of Disley, Cheshire. It was recommended to me ages ago but it wasn’t until I got some time off work this June that I finally made a visit there.

I ended up with around 140 photographs, which for my outings is pretty average; but now I’m struggling with what to post on the blog. So I’m going to split them into groups, same as I did with my trip to Haworth. This post is dedicated to The Cage, a structure on a top of a hill. Climbing up there took effort, not gonna lie, but the result was worth it.

More pictures from Lyme Park will follow.

ETA: When I made this post, I was either too tired or too lazy to add more info about The Cage, so I’m adding it now.

The Cage was built by the warrior priest, Sir Piers V, in 1524, and was used either as a hunting lodge or a watchtower. In 17th century it was a holding prison for poachers awaiting trial, and this is where its name comes from. In the 1730s, Giacomo Leoni rebuilt it to make it more hospitable, so that it could be used as a banqueting room. Later it was a home for estate workers.

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, York

As it’s the end of the year, let me sneak in one more post from York. It turned out to be quite a productive trip for my photography, despite the wrong settings on my camera.

I give you Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, the shortest street in York.

I was originally going to make these pictures part of the Diagon-Alley-like post, but somehow they didn’t fit. Now I know why. Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate deserves its own entry.

York Minster

It is the undoubtedly magnificent cathedral of York–and here I give you the pics.

Dean’s Park. It was wort it coming here in autumn, for sure.

Inside shots:

In addition to the normal entry fee (£11.50, valid for 12 months), you can also purchase a trip to the tower for an extra fiver. This means climbing up 275 steps. When I was offered this, my immediate thought was, I probably won’t regret it, so I said yes.

I didn’t regret it.

Although when the woman selling the tickets told me about 275 steps, it never occurred to me it would be this:

I’ve never climbed that high up a spiral staircase, so yay for another new experience!

Trips up the tower are done in groups at regular intervals, so I just joined the next available one.

Reward in the form of panoramatic view of York.