All you need is love

Out go SWMBO and I for our occasional walk together, not because we don't want to go out walking together but because SWMBO is usually on the treadmill and in the pool for an hour or so first thing, and the last thing I need after a morning in the garden is a walk!!
Nonetheless, I really should be on the static bike doing some cardio as gardening is only a bit of weight training and more anaerobic than aerobic.

Anyway, today we were off into Noctorum and round the perimeter of Wirral Golf Club. Occasionally we will walk across the course as there are a couple of public footpaths which transgress it, but today we did the longer route. Wirral golf course used to be called Wirral Ladies but they dropped the Ladies from the title about a year or so ago. They thought it was putting new gentlemen members off as the CLub had been open for many years. Personally I would have stuck with the tradition but it was up to the members and they saw fit tot change it.

The course is a bit nervous at the moment as Birkenhead School have submitted planning permission to build 35 houses on their number 2 sports field which borders the course. If it is approved then it is likely that the golf club will be forced into erecting high fences at certain points to ensure no stray golf balls do damage to the new houses. That said, in all the time I ran along the border of the course near the sports field, I never found one golf ball!

But back to our walk. Noctorum is full of very large elegant houses ( and a pretty large council estate) and one of these houses is very much in the style of a French châteaux. It has a floodlit tennis court and a swimming pool block, and a folly. The folly, however, is only wheeled out now and again for the passing foot traffic to enjoy.

Quite what the story behind the Fab Four in Oxton is, I have no idea, but there they are full size and about to go for a stroll themselves!

Ironically, Westminster Council have taken advantage of the reduced footfall caused by the Coronavirus lockdown to repaint the zebra crossing in Abbey Road, made famous as the cover to The Beatles album of 1969. Maybe the folly should be rotated 90 degrees to emulate them crossing the road, as best it can. A zebra crossing might look a bit strange outside this house though.

I have changed the image as the original was blocked, presumably for copyright reasons. It was workmen painting some white lines for goodness sake!!

 In a Sliding Doors moment, I would have been in Atlanta today playing  golf at the Atlanta Athletics Club. Monday and Tuesday just past me and my chum Steve would have done the practise days at The Masters in Augusta, and would have been flying home tomorrow as I had our eldest son's wedding on Sunday in Liverpool. That's all by the bye at the moment, so it's on with lockdown through the Easter weekend, more gardening, gym work and cake. Take care everybody, and stay safe.

Magical Mystery Tour

I agreed to see a friend for a few beers yesterday. We decided to meet at The Farmer's Arms in Wallasey Village in the hope that they had Fullers London Pride on draught. My friend, Steve, is a fellow exile from dan South and we play golf at the same club. The Farmer's Arms has a good range of real ale, but on this occasion the Pride was replaced by Timothy Taylor's Landlord, so we drank that....no hardship there.

Now that I have a free travel pass I decided to go there by bus. Big challenge! The Wirral bus network is very difficult to understand and is designed and run by people who , in their infancy, must have been limited to playing with train sets and buses in the confines of a very small bedroom. They must have also been tucked up very early at night.

Wirral buses seem to run in very small circles and start and end at the most obscure and inconvenient times. Take my journey last night. I needed to take two buses, the first of which conveniently stops out side the house. I needed to be at Wallasey for about 7pm, so decided to get the 6:15pm bus to Liscard where I would change.

Unbeknown to me, the 6:15 bus was actually the last bus on this route that night, but it got me to my change stop by about 6:35. I then had ten minutes to wait before my second bus arrived. This turned out to be the first bus of the day which arrived at 6:48pm and dropped me right outside the pub.

All sounds easy, until you work out that I could not get home by the same means, at a very reasonable 9:30pm. So I had to get the train back to Birkenhead and hop in a cab, so defeating the object of avoiding transport costs.

Further research indicated that the first bus was primarily a peak time bus for commuters and school children so it actually does not run after 10:00am or before 3pm. The second bus starts when the Wallasey loop bus finishes. While the loop bus runs all day, it stops at 6pm.

The ,majority of Wirral buses run in and out of the Birkenhead bus depot, either at Laird Street or Conway Park, and also call into Arrowe Park hospital. So if you are going shopping or are ill it's great. If you need to get from A to B particularly at night, its a nightmare.

We have a new bus which runs from our door to Liverpool, but guess what? The last bus back is 6:30pm, so no good if you plan a night out. The other popular bus to West Kirby (Cougarland as it's locally known) only runs every hour, so you have to be spot on to get there and back.

So it is no wonder I am having to drive much more than I used to, and when I study the bus map and find I can get to my destination, I then have to check that I can actually get back as well. Couple that with the fact the drivers are not exactly local, and I begin to realise where The Beatles got their inspiration from.