I have been visiting Morecambe on my ‘off road’ cycle rides for some time now, there is a good network of cycle paths in the Lancaster area. And that is where I am, the only choice – clockwise or anticlockwise? A tossed coin determines my day, simple enough.
Lethargy sets in from the word go – I’ve not been on my bike since that unfortunate episode back at the end of August. It took two months to get my car repaired. My bike has sat in the garage for three months, I gave the front wheel some more air but think the back is OK. I capitulate early on and walk up the ramp to the canal aqueduct. Even on the flat I am struggling to keep up a decent pace and I am very wary of the narrower sections of the towpath under bridges. The water looks very cold. I realise my back wheel is taking the bumps badly, yes it is underinflated. I press on even though I know I should maybe give it some assistance with the hand pump. I’m too lazy to bother. Anyhow the sun is shining and there are few people about, let’s just get on with it. Where have all the ducks gone?
Soon I am on the famous promenade stretching ahead of me for four or five miles. The tide is in and the water lapping up to the sea defences. With the sun shining the cluster of boats, usually seen floundering in the mud, give the impression of a Mediterranean bay.

As I near the Midland I can here a bell chiming, I instantly know where it is coming from – the Time and Tide Bell on the Stone Jetty. One of several around the coast of Britain. I have documented this bell before and photographed it at different states of the tide, but this is the first time I have heard its ghostly sounds. Makes me think of shipwrecks and sea sirens from the deep. I get up close and feel the vibrations, I try a video just for the sound but of course the wind noise always intrudes. That is why on the telly the reporters have those big fuzzy mikes dangled in front of them.

A couple of ladies walk by. “It must be 12 o’clock the bell is chiming”  “No I think you will find it keeps on chiming” says the other.
I must make the effort one day and dine in the Art Nouveau Rotunda of the Midland. Today I just cycle by and eat a banana on a promenade bench. The sea is perfectly calm.

I’m always a little wary of a short section of the cycle path past the station and down a dingy alley. I have had a near miss assault there in the past by dodgy characters. Today it is blocked by council workers clearing the ditches and they tell me there is no way through. They agree about the potential danger and explain there are no cameras on that section, a situation easily solved with little cash funding. Anyhow I follow their suggested diversion, which with the aid of my phone’s maps, brings me back onto the cycleway past their work and more importantly past the dodgy section. Thanks for that, I will keep using it in future.
My progress becomes laboured as I pedal the old railway back into Lancaster, over the rattly Millennium Bridge and on alongside the Lune to Halton.

 My arrival at the car park coincides with the Lancaster University’s rowing club’s Christmas festivities. I hope they all survived their river escapades, I am sure health and safety will keep an eye on the students more than in my day.

I should have pumped my tyre up way back when. Stubbornness or laziness? More likely stupidity. I was knackered at the end – I thought the bell was tolling for me.

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.