Life in Northern Towns

Chester is a cracking little city to visit.   We’ve been to Chester quite a few times over the years and it’s a rather beautiful place to find yourself in. A few years back we spent a night at the Crowne Plaza between Christmas and New Year.   It was a nice hotel, but I can find it really hard to sleep in hotels.   The breakfast was nice, but we were overrun by a coach party of OAP’s who were hogging the breakfast buffet.   The best thing was seeing Chester dusted in a light coating of snow, which made it look even prettier.   Getting to Chester is a relatively simple process from Manchester: M60, M56 and M53.   You do have a choice of junctions to turn off at and I never know which one is the best.    The one which leads you to Hoole Road is the worst as it’s always full of traffic.   Then again it’s always worth taking a detour to Hoole as it’s a sweet little happening suburb. Parking in Chester is a major poo – this is w...

Hoylake is famed for its golf - not that it’s any concern of ours. My uncle did try to teach me and my brother to play golf, but failed through our lack of ability and apathy. Although, if I recollect correctly, we did have a moment in the 80s watching late night golf on BBC2 – kids these days don’t know the meaning of boredom like we had in the 70s and 80s. Anyway Hoylake is a couple of miles down the road from West Kirby , which was rather handy for our purposes. We arrived about 3.30pm and parked on the main road where there is free parking. The town was very quiet, almost ghost town like apart from the Monte Carlo restaurant.   The restaurant has a pavement terrace which is very reminiscent of Parisian cafes and people sat there were looking rather glam.   If we'd come a few hours earlier I reckon the village would have been busier. The village itself is very well-to-do and was covered in homemade bunting. The shops are located on the main road an...

Only five miles down the road from Heswall is WestKirby .   So we popped on the A540.   The drive itself is nice, occasionally catching views of the Dee Estuary.   You can tell this is a well-to-do part of the world with the large, well maintained houses and serious looking gates. Parking in West Kirby was straightforward as we found a parking bay outside an antiques shop with two hours free parking.   Although we had to be careful not to overstay our welcome as there were plenty of parking enforcement officers in force. West Kirby, whilst a well-to-do town like Heswall, is a bit more your new money sort of town.   The shops are more on trend.   There are plenty of beauty shops offering tans, nail art and a variety of lotions and potions that in another century would have been considered witchcraft. The buildings in the town are predominantly of Victorian origin – large, ornate and often with mock Tudor black and white panelled features.   Th...

Unbelievably Neil had a Saturday off and it was a sunny day – this is like a constellations aligning event.   So we decided to head somewhere different by the sea and the posh part of the Wirral was calling our names. We headed out on the M60, M56, M53, A5137 and A540.   Although the latter bit about the A540 isn’t exactly true – I got lost.   I took the wrong turning.   I think we did a detour through Heswall Village, which was very pretty.   It was worth getting lost as we kept catching stunning glimpses of the River Dee.   Eventually, more by luck than design, we found the town centre.   We had heard of Heswall as the blessed John Peel was born here.   It’s a lovely very well-to-do neighbourhood on the shores of the Dee estuary with views of Wales on the opposite side.   So what’s not to like? The town itself is quite unassuming.   We parked in the pay-and-display near the Aldi.   First thing first we needed to grab a...