Day 2: Liverpool to Chester

Tuesday, 5th May 2015

In terms of straight-line distance this would probably be one of the shortest days of the whole exercise, but going around the edge often means following indirect routes - in this case The Wirral.

Through the Kingsway Tunnel on Service 2
But first, another decision to make. Whether to cross the Mersey estuary by tunnel or ferry (or indeed to go all the way round via Warrington). The long diversion via Warrington being discounted and the Mersey Ferries being more of a tourist attraction than a transport service these days I made my way from Central Station to Sir Thomas Street to catch, at random, one of the very frequent cross-river bus services to Birkenhead. The first bus to arrive was another Stagecoach bus - on service 2, which left at 11.30 for the quick trip through the Queensway tunnel (the older of the two road tunnels) to Birkenhead.


The Seaside Cafe, New Brighton
This meant that I got to Birkenhead in time for the 11.42 Arriva service 411 to New Brighton, rather than the 12.12 that had been in the plan. I wasn't sure whether an extra thirty minutes in New Brighton was a good thing or not as I remembered it as a very run-down sort of a place. But I was surprised at New Brighton: the whole seafront area has been redeveloped with a large supermarket (handy for a toilet stop), cinema, hotel (well, a "Travelodge" anyway) and a whole slew of the usual chain restaurants. Someone obviously thinks there is still money to be made in the town. Fortunately, I was able to find the gloriously un-reconstructed "Seaside Cafe" for my lunch


The Wirral peninsula is a good example of the need to set some rules as to what going "around the edge" actually means as it has a very dense network of overlapping bus routes and keeping as close to the edge as possible would mean a lot of changing buses, with very short journeys and long waiting times. In order to make reasonable progress some compromises are called for and my chosen route reflected the spirit of "the edge" without following it too slavishly.  A word here for Merseytravel's excellent on-line and easily-obtainable paper maps, which made planning and following the route easy.

Views of Wales from West Kirby

A series of local buses took me via Wallasey Village (Avon Buses 106), Moreton Cross (Arriva 403) and West Kirby (Avon 83A). Somewhere en-route I realised that I'd inadvertently added an extra hour to the timetable on this section, which meant I was running an hour early!  I spent the extra 60 minutes at West Kirby, somewhere I'd never been before. The sea-front has a marine lake (i.e. a low wall traps the retreating tide), which was being used by sail-boarders, and views of the North Wales coast as well as the nearby Hilbre Island, which I didn't have to visit as it has no buses!

Chester: My Destination on Day 2

Avon's 82 service took me on to the small town of Heswall that has grown up around a crossroads and is consequently overrun by traffic. The 106 from New Brighton had been 10 minutes late in leaving and so was the next bus - Stagecoach's X22 through to Chester. Running buses to time in urban areas is obviously more difficult than in the country.  Despite its "X" designation, this bus followed an interesting coastal route to  Neston and then a convoluted route through the housing estates of the town before joining the main road, where despite a fast run we were still ten minutes late into Chester.


Day 1  Lancaster to Liverpool                                            Days 3/3A  Chester to Hereford

6 comments:

  1. Keep up the good work, for I am looking forward in reading about your excursions around England's coastline.

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  2. I'm enjoying reading about your travels. Looking forward to the description of your journey round the Norfolk coastline, but I guess I'm going to have to wait a while!

    By the way, I get an error message when I try to click the "notify me" box.

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    1. Hope you enojoy it, John but you are right, it will take a while to get to Norfolk! Can't help you with the "notify me" box. I can't even find it!

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    2. Found that button now, but I get an error message too! Haven't a clue!

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  3. Looking forward to reading this as time goes on, and your journeys go on! Methinks I should perhaps blog my own public transport trips to get to and from the boat wherever I've left it. Reminds me of leaving something important on the boat at Crick, and making a bus/train/train/bus journey from Ellesmere to get it, followed by bus/train/train/bus in reverse - good connections both ways, about 8 hours in total!!

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    1. Dave,
      If your journeys are anything like mine were to and from Starcross they will make good reading.

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