Tag: seaside

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.

Arnside, Cumbria

The following photographs have already appeared on this blog, as part of the dead and buried WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge. The reason why I’m reposting them is the same as with the Albert Dock of Liverpool pictures. Arnside deserves its own post.

Arnside is a village in Cumbria, North West England, on the river Kent estuary in Morecambe Bay. It’s belongs to the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty–you can see why.

I have added the following two pics for this post:

From my trip in September 2016.

Formby

In my last blog entry I shared the photos from my trip to Southport, but that wasn’t the whole trip. That same day, I also visited Formby, a town on the coast near Liverpool. Formby is known for its sand dunes, pinewoods and wildlife–apparently it’s a habitat of the endangered red squirrel, though I haven’t seen any (truth be told, I didn’t have much time, I literally ran from the train station to the beach, took pics and ran back, as it was quite late and I wanted to return to Manchester at reasonable hour).

Anyway, Formby is absolutely gorgeous, see for yourselves:

formby beach2

formby beach1

formby path

formby dunes

formby dunes2

formby pinewoods

The pinewoods are conserved by National Trust, for the above mentioned wildlife.

Southport Beach

Today, let me share with you some photos from my trip to Southport. Southport is a seaside town in Merseyside, North West England, over an hour by train from Manchester.

southport beach1

southport beach2

southport seagull

southport beach3

southport beach4

southport beach5

The bottom two are smartphone shots.

This trip meant a lot to me because this was the first time in ten years that I felt seawater. The tide was low as you can see, so I just took off my shoes and socks and went right in. I walked way, way past the pier. Of course, not being used to such hot weather (yeah, what’s up with that?) since moving to UK and not having been on the beach for a decade, I forgot I should have applied the sun cream regularly. Shrug, a bit of a sunburn won’t kill me.

Anyone here knows Souhtport?

New Horizon

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I love the title of this challenge. It’s full of positivity. New Horizons is also a name of the NASA probe to Pluto. I’ve not managed to get a shot of any space probe yet, but I did manage to get a shot of a hot air balloon (sort of)–it’s that tiny red dot on the above photo. Speaking of hot air balloons, once I watched some movie with a hot air balloon when I was a kid and I liked it so much that when it crashed at the end, I started crying and my mum, who wasn’t watching it, ran to the living room, worried, asking what happened, why was I crying and when I told her, she said, don’t worry, they will fix the balloon and it will fly again! I remember she then went to the kitchen, where, I imagine, burst into massive laughter, though this couldn’t be confirmed; she has no recollection of this incident. (I don’t remember how the movie ended.)

I don’t know what’s on the horizon. On one hand, I can’t wait for 2017, on the other, I’m scared that after 13 (well, 14 by then) years of living in UK, some politicians will decide that I have to go. These guys have expressed it much better than me. But it also proves that you must not under any circumstances take anything for granted. My favourite saying is shit happens and now that shit happened, let’s see how we can deal with it. (Like, google “moving to Germany” for starters.)

The picture was taken in Arnside, Cumbria.

New Horizon

Seagull

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I don’t live by the seaside so I don’t see anything of these guys, of course. Though I hear they are thieves that can snatch food out of your hands. This one came up to me while I was eating my burger and shrieked and kept looking at me and something it the way it was acting reminded me of my cat when she wants food. Don’t ask me how a bird can remind one of a feline. I make all sorts of weird associations.

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Pictures taken in Blackpool, North West England.