You may wonder why I keep coming back to the Bay. My cycling is for leisure and pleasure these days, and there is no pleasure on the busy roads around Longridge. The old railways, cycleways and canal up here are ideal and one has the added benefit of the ocean breeze and those views across the bay. Oh, and it’s all relatively flat.

I suspect that sometimes I am bewitched by that view and neglect little details on the promenade. Well today I paid more attention to what was under my feet, I mean wheels, and I ended up walking stretches of the front so as not to miss things.  I had arrived onto the front near Heysham via a new route, for me, which diverged off the old railway/cycleway and wound its way through the White Lund Industrial Estate, lovely.

From the start at Sandylands I notice several, about three dozen, round interpretative discs set into the promenade telling the story of Heysham, Morecambe and the Bay. A quirky addition to the front. For a more detailed history and lots of old photographs and archive material it is worth visiting the Maritime Museum on the quayside in Lancaster. Morecambe has certainly had a chequered history – but the future with The Eden Project hopefully under way should be more positive. It is frightening to realise that I am part of that recent history, bringing my family up to the amusement parks and aquarium still in existence 50 years ago and now no longer. I try to remember if the central pier, mentioned more than once in the discs, was still standing on our visits. It is suspicious that there were so many fires on the derelict piers.

Morecambe in the 1940s. The two piers highlighted.

So there you have it. On the way I passed this house painting, an old pier/breaker, a couple of turrets and these elegant Edwardian terraces. Fading glories.

As I approached the west end of Morecambe I was intrigued by a large building set back from the front. The building now known as The Battery once marked the boundary between Morecambe and Heysham. (in 1928 the two districts merged). In the nineteenth century the site was occupied by an old mill and the area was later used as a firing range, with an artillery battery stationed there because of fear of an invasion by the French. The mill, then known as The Roundhouse, was used for storing ammunition. The Battery Inn was built in 1863 and in 1900 it expanded to become The Battery Hotel, later acquired by Thwaites Brewery and functioned into the 1980s. It has recently been bought by a property developer for conversion into luxury flats. I’m not sure whether much progress has been made.

I don’t think the adjacent Beach Cafe is the best of architectural designs.

My informative circles had finished, but something on the road caught my eye –  half a car to cut your motoring costs, an effective advertising gimmick.

And what’s more on the other side of the road a series of artistic panels brightening up an otherwise drab development hoarding at the former Frontier Land. I now remember Eunice from the Mouse House mentioning them here and here in far more detail than my pictures below. Local artists are highlighted. Several showing Eric the town’s celebrated son.

I hope the Midland Hotel is given anew coat of paint before Eden arrives.

By now my hands were frozen in the cold northerly wind whipping down the promenade. Time to get cycling again. On past the Midland, Happy Mount Park, Hest Bank and onto the Lancaster Canal back to Lancaster. I had just about warmed through by the time I reached my car at Halton. It’s only half an hour back down the motorway, but I have a sense of lingering guilt that I shouldn’t be driving farther than I’m cycling.

***

I can’t believe it but on a cold winter’s morning I get mixed up again with a half-marathon run along the cycleway from Halton into Lancaster. Back in the summer I was in the mixt of a larger run, and it proved frustrating on the narrow paths.

So today I took an early opportunity to seek escape up the ramp onto the Lancaster Canal Aqueduct, over the Lune and into quiet countryside. Only the odd dog walkers were met before I disembarked onto the promenade leading around the Bay to Morecambe.

The Lakeland hills were in greyness, but there was an attractive brightness over towards Arnside Knott and Grange on the far side of the Kent estuary. The tide was well out with a lot more sand exposed than I’ve seen before. Wading birds followed the water’s edge but too far away to identify with the naked eye. I couldn’t work out if the scenes with the exposed sands appeared better or gloomier than usual, certainly they were in Winter mode.

The few promenaders with their dogs were well wrapped up in the cold weather. I was soon into town and past Eric’s statue. I was on a mission to have a closer look at the Winter Gardens building, temptingly described in one of Eunice’s recent posts.

Alas, it was all closed up as she had warned us, but I was hoping the café would be operating, but no. I was tempted by Brucciani’s next door, but I had no bike lock. I certainly wasn’t tempted by the noisy amusement arcade on the other side. Adversely this seemed to be the busiest place of the few open on the prom.

I was now wheeling by cycle along the pavements. The old station with its impressive frontage was next. Peeping inside there was a rather lacklustre Xmas fayre in progress. The room was presumably the old spacious waiting hall, in its heyday this station would have been extremely busy bringing tourists to the heart of Morecambe. ‘Bradford-by-the-Sea’. The new station is a bleak platform in an industrial waste – so much for thoughtful planning.

I wandered around the corner to the Festival Market, busier than the station, selling all things cheap and cheerfully. I knew a café inside where I could safely sit with my bike and watch the world go by. Most of the world in here seems to be obese, a sad reflection on deprived Northern areas? Levelling up is never going to catchup (brought up in PMQ today). The Eden project, if the government gives their share of finances, (brought up in PMQ today) would certainly help Morecambe to throw off its undeserved downtrodden reputation. It could have a lot to offer.

I was aware of that reputation as I cycled a particularly dingy rubbish strewn route out of town. There have been knife attacks here recently, and I have often observed druggy characters in the shadows. Nobody is immune from the social deprivations in our modern society. One can’t blame the immigrants, legal or otherwise for everything. We have too much home-grown crime already. There was an interesting article on Byline Times this week on how it felt to be an Albanian in the UK at the moment. I have tried to be objective, I like Morecambe, but there is an underbelly of seediness in the winter air.

Needless to say I was soon into Lancaster, over the Millennium Bridge and racing back to Halton passing the finish line of the half-marathon on the way. It felt good to be out on the bike again.