A brief visit to North West England

Last weekend I again traveled south to Lancashire. ( Another car nearly hit mine. )

To break up the journey I stopped for dinner at McDonald's in Carlisle. ( They are cheap and their food wrappers now mention calories. )

In Lancashire I unexpectedly found myself visiting Southport Pier. While now shorter than it once was, it remains over a kilometer long and on a reasonable day one can see Blackpool Tower in the distance. I didn't initially remember the point of building a pier but of course decades ago it received ships from the Irish Sea. I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of things. First, the pier was popular: it had many people strolling about, up and down it. Second, at the end was a pavilion housing interesting arcade machines, many of them vintage.

The pier extends from Southport Promenade where I walked through King's Gardens which are well-tended. ( I wondered how one steers paddle boats. )