A tale of two saunters

With a major walk planned in June, and a bit of cross country skiing in February, the training programme needed to be upped a notch.

We started off with a pioneering climb up to the top of Moel Famau in North Wales. It's 1800 feet and a fair slog for us. We had about 100 yards visibility when we set off, but only about 50 by the time we got to the top. We stopped at the Jubilee Tour and did not strike out for the trig point. we will save that for another day.

 You can see I am at the top as my finger is in shot!!

Today we tried for something a bit different, a bit nearer home and with local history interest. We yomped up to the top of Bidston Hill, on which stands a windmill, and an observatory. Neither are working any more but that was not always the case. The hill is  281 feet high but full of history.

The windmill has been there since 1685, although the current stone building was erected in 1800 when the wooden ne got blown away. It was very productive as it's high position allowed it to utilise every ounce of wind, but cart owner had a real problem getting up to the top of the hill. The mill is now an educational source and opens to the public one day a month.

The Observatory was built in 1866 when Liverpool Observatory had to relocate due to the expansion of Waterloo Docks. The building was made using the stone mined during the creation of the cellars, the deepest of which (36 feet or 10.97 metres) maintains a constant cool temperature. Over the last 140 years the Observatory has undertaken a diversity of tasks, many of ground-breaking importance.

At the turn of 1929, the Observatory and the Tidal Institute were amalgamated and became the leading authority on tidal predictions. Bidston Observatory was deemed of national importance during the Second World War and predicted the tides for the D-Day landings amongst other things. In 1969, the telescopes housed in the observatory, which were previously used to watch planetary bodies in order to calculate the exact time, were donated to Liverpool museum. The exact time was needed for nautical navigation and was transferred to ships in the dock by the firing of the one o’clock gun; the gun was fired for the last time on the 18th of July 1969.

The Observatory was sold last year and the plans are to turn it into artist studios and a craft centre.....we shall see.

There is also a lighthouse visible behind the domes of the observatory, this was used for navigation purposes until 1919, when the channel nearest to Birkenhead became too silted and shipping was moved North to the Crosby channel.

Bidston Hill was also once home to more than 100 flagpoles. Most were erected between the lighthouse and the windmill but there were a further 8 flagpoles on the other side of the lighthouse which were reserved for the British Admiralty and Excise Services.

In 1763 the signalling station was built near to the location of the modern day lighthouse and functioned using the flagpoles as a complicated early warning system. As merchant ships rounded the Point of Ayr or sailed past Formby Point the ship would be spotted and identified. Flag runners were employed to watch for ships and had 11 minutes to raise the correct company’s flag on the right pole, followed by the correct cargo flag. This enabled supervisors in the docks to ready their work force to unload the ship (and it meant the workers would be paid only for the time they spent working). Each flagpole was 30 ft (9.14 m) tall and made of Baltic Pine.

So that's the end of the history lesson regarding Bidston Hill. We returned home via Flaybrick cemetery but that's one for another day.