Chester to Chorley – 56 miles
Breakfast at The Grosvenor Guest House was served by a thin young woman with dark eyes and a face mask. Phil later learned that she was Colombian and transgender. She wore a stylish long striped dress that came down to her ankles. Her grasp of English was slight and our questions were often met with a shy ‘Sorry. Don’t understand.’ She told us she would be working much of the day at the guest house, serving breakfast, cleaning the rooms. I liked the cut of her jib, as Phil would say.
We cycled back through the old town and onto the canal tow-path, past herons who only bothered to lope lazily away when we were almost upon them. Soon we were on the Wirral, a place that’s often fascinated me, because of the faintly comical ring to its name, because it’s the background to the famous medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, because it’s Jools’ home and because I’ve never been there. It turned out to be very flat, with a many dog walkers and gentle cycle paths, and with an inescapable suburban tinge. I suppose you can’t exist so close to a city so big and famous as Liverpool without taking on a bit of a suburban tinge.
Birkenhead was a contrast, with that hard edge of the northern town whose purpose is no longer as clear as it once was. We stopped at Sainsbury’s to buy tobacco and wine gums and then cycled through a park, over a hill and down into the Orton area where Jools’ brother Fran lives. There we were greeted by Jools and his mother. ‘You’ve got the same eyes at Jools,’ Phil told her. Inside we met Fran, his wife Anne and their daughter Olivia. On the way in, Phil noticed that one of the gutters on the side of the house was leaking. Phil is often noticing little faults in the buildings we visit.
The kitchen table was decked out with a glorious spread of croissants, pain au chocolat, iced buns, chocolate brownies and coffee. It was strange to see Jools, who I’ve known for so long, surrounded by his family. His brother shared his gentle calm, and his mother reminded me of my mother, with her slight foreign (mix of German and Argentinian) accent and outsider viewpoint on things. Anne is a kind and cheerful redhead and Olivia, as well as red hair, had very pale skin. She spoke with a thick Wirral accent and, so Jools told me later, holds a high level job in the Home Office.
The chat turned to the travails of supporting local heroes Tranmere Rovers. Memories of Tranmere’s glory days in the 1990s were held up as sweet and rare balm for the pain of supporting a lower league side, especially the night that Tranmere beat Southampton 4-3 in the Carling Cup after trailing 3-0 at half time. Jools remembers seeing the match at The Plough in Bristol, with his mate Bob who’s a Southampton supporter. ‘It was pure ecstasy,’ Jools remembers. ‘You can bear four years of misery for that one moment of glory.’
Jools was getting nervous about missing the Mersey ferry, which was due to leave at 12.20. Before leaving, Phil gave Fran a quick consultation about his leaky drain pipe and I gathered the family together for a photo. Then we pedalled at high speed down the hill, through the tired streets of central Birkenhead, dissecting the early Victorian magnificence of Hamilton Square, a bold statement that marked the transformation of Birkenhead from an insignificant fishing village across the Mersey into a town that would number over 100,000 inhabitants in its heyday. That blossoming was made possible thanks mainly to the regular operation of the ferry that we were pedalling so frantically to catch.
We made it to the pier with five minutes to spare, and joined the queue of tourists and day-trippers. I walked a small distance along the quay to get my first proper look at the Liverpool skyline. I’ve been lucky enough to feast my eyes on quite a few of the world’s A-list cityscapes–the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn, Paris from the Sacré Cœur in Montmartre, Istanbul from Galata hill, the City of London from Waterloo Bridge–and the view of the Liver Building and the other two ‘graces’ (the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building) interspersed with those newer incongruous structures that recently lost Liverpool its UNESCO World Heritage status, all under a grey and lowering sky, easily makes the grade.
Perhaps that view across the Mersey from the Birkenhead shore, the river so wide, the sky so vast, is even more powerful than those other scapes because of what Liverpool signifies to so many people, including me (in my own small way). Whenever I go I can’t help thinking of all the people who boarded boats here, bound for the New World and new lives. Or of my great-grandfather Llewellyn Morgan who lived here for most of his life, working as a prison doctor. Or of my grandfather Monty Morgan who met his wife Maud on Mount Pleasant, Liverpool. Or of the football, the political radicalism, Mersey Beat, the hard tack spirit of the place, the Liver Birds,’You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and all the rest. Apart from the family connection, I can’t pretend to call any of that my ‘heritage’ or my ‘roots’, but still I can’t help being enthralled by the place.
From the moment the ferry left Birkenhead pier, the tannoy started blaring a constant stream of reasons to love Liverpool, interspersed with snatches of ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’ by Gerry and the Pacemakers. ‘Did you know that Liverpool has more Georgian houses than Bath,’ was one of the tidbits that we were served as we gazed in wonder at the approaching city. The compilers of the ferry’s tannoy entertainment seemed desperate to convince us that Liverpool was one of the world’s great cities, with no reason to envy any other (especially not London) and with container loads of history, culture, sport, architectural and scientific glory to boast about. The whole spiel seemed underscored by a plea to ‘please love Liverpool…please.’ And there was I thinking ‘Don’t worry, I already do!’ Tim reinforced the feeling by pointing to the Liver Building and saying ‘that’s so beautiful.’ The sight of a huge multi-story P&O cruiser–a floating town of its own–moored a short way up from the Pier head enhanced the general sense of grandeur.
The ferry docked and we pushed our bikes up the long gang way, past scores of people waiting to go back to Birkenhead, out onto the grand esplanade in front of the Liver Building and just stood there, marinading in the magnificence of it all. Jools leapt in the air as and shouted ‘Yaay, Liverpool!’ We were all elated to find ourselves in this great city after so many days of ‘anonymous’ though beautiful countryside. We spent a while taking photos of each other and Tim balanced his camera phone on the rear rack of Jools bike so we could capture the four of us in a timed shot. It had been Jools’ suggestion to re-route via the Wirral, across the Mersey and through Liverpool. I was so happy we had decided to come this way.
For all its renown, the Pier Head area was strangely empty and only sparsely dotted with tourists and sightseers. But when we cycled into the city centre, we were engulfed by huge crowds of Liverpudlians, shopping, strolling, passing the time of day along Lord St, Paradise St and the streets near Liverpool Lime Street station. We navigated carefully through that multitude like ghosts, there but not there, the feeling of detachment, of being on the outside looking in enhanced by the sound of a busker playing a melancholy version of ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol as we slalomed gently past all that humanity. It was as if Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire had been set in Liverpool rather than Berlin and we were four disembodied angels, like the Bruno Gantz character.
We passed the Adelphi Hotel and St George’s Plateau where Liverpudlians gather whenever there’s a need for a grand collective celebration, or mourning: the death of John Lennon, Liverpool winning the Champion’s League. So many streets were skewed by road works that it was hard, even nerve-wracking at times, to pedal and avoid bollards, barriers, cars and trucks. We cycled up Mount Pleasant, with its old Georgian buildings and ancestral links. Two sets of great-grandparents, grandfather and grandmother, great uncles and aunts had all lived in this street. Some years ago, Kate had consulted Ancestry.com and found them all in the 1911 census. She also discovered that I had a great aunt who had died young. But I had forgotten which numbers they’d lived at. As a compromise, I asked Jools to take my picture under one of the street signs.
We cycled out past the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, affectionately known as ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ by locals, and John Hopkins University campus and an immensely stolid and grand old building of reddish stone that covered an entire city block, every one of its doors and windows boarded up. It sat there entirely mummified in its sepulchre of empty streets. Then onwards over the city line into Everton, climbing up to the heights of Everton park where we stopped to snack and smoke and admire the view of the entire city, the river, Birkenhead and the Wirral, all the way to the Welsh hills beyond.
Then on to Anfield, and another side of city, with its two-up two-down Victorian terraces and more modern white semis, its streets full of kids playing footie or doing wheelies on their bikes, of women chatting on their stoops. It struck me how rare this kind of street life is nowadays, in an era where fear and cars and so much else has curdled the sense of safety and cohesion that communities once possessed. The place was poor, ok, and hard, especially to soft southern eyes, but so full of life, and style and apparent defiance. I’m a romantic, a southern poof, a softie, call me what you like, but I couldn’t help feeling respect and gentle awe as I cycled through those streets.
Anfield. People in Tokyo, Montevideo, Kuala Lumpur have heard of Anfield, and here it is and there we were. We took a wrong turning and a man in his garden offered us directions without being asked. He had an accent you could bottle and freeze. ‘Are you Red?’ Jools asked. ‘Is there anything else,’ he answered.
The stadium itself rose high and grey and tubular like a great ship in the sea of surrounding terraces. When we had it in full view, Jools stopped and pointed it out to us with obvious pride: The fields of dreams. The home of the Reds. The pride of Liverpool.
Jools led us onto the apron of tarmac by the gates through which thousands of fans pass every Saturday during the season. Stadium tours were in full progress. I stopped to take Jools’ picture outside by the Paisley gate. Then we cycled on toward Croxteth and eventually out of Liverpool on the East Lancs Road, a four lane highway that roars its way northwards for miles. The incessant noise and wind were perversely seductive. It was like cycling next to an immense torrent of pure dirty energy. We battled the wind…trying to create a peloton effect behind Jools who, being on his eBike, was the natural choice to lead. The peloton effect works if you sit directly behind the leader, your front wheel almost touching theirs. It was hard to keep that formation. The monotony of the dual carriageway was a form of ugly exhilaration. We passed a group of young boys playing on on a disused shipping container. They looked at us with an expression that said ‘yeah?! So what.’ Tough
Eventually, we took a left and climbed a long hill to the town of Billinge and then from there dropped into Wigan. Like Liverpool, though to a far lesser extent, Wigan has exerted a pull on me for a long time: The Wigan Casino, northern soul, Wigan Pier and the road to it. But cycling into the town I couldn’t get any sense of the place…it was too big and diffuse, with seemingly endless roundabouts and dual carriageways. Even though we spent at least an hour cycling through Wigan, it feels as if I haven’t actually been there.
We stopped for a rest on a patch of green grass near a housing estate and almost everyone who walked by had something to say. One woman told that us that the party that cut across the green was an ancient byway that dated back to the 15th century, Another man said, ‘So who owns the electric bike? Who’s cheating?’ Phil started a conversation with a couple who were out walking their large square-set bulldog. Phil always engages dog owners in conversation. ‘That’s the north,’ Jools said after we’d left the green, ‘people are always stopping for a chat.’
After stopping briefly near Adlington to take a picture of Jools near the farm where his father was born, we took a bike track through woods and ended up cycling along a canal towpath as the sun was setting, the air soft and gilded, the colours deep and rich and water to our left still, reflecting the clouds above. It led us straight to the Premier Inn on the northern outskirts of Chorley. Next to it was a pub called the Malthouse Inn. Everything we needed in one place.
Andy Morgan.
