Albert Docks-Liverpool
 

I am thinking of adding Albert Docks to place to visit on my next rail journey. The problem is I do not want to stay in Liverpool. I would prefer a nice B&B out of the city, in a smaller town on a rail line. I would arrive late afternoon at the B&B and then spend whatever amount of time at the Dock's the next day. It is possible that after a stint in Scotland I will be passing down via Carlisle and Preston.

I stayed in Southport once and day tripped to Liverpuddle.

Southport is a rather fading once grand seaside resort that oozes cheap B&Bs and better ones to. Rail line ends there. Can see Blackpool Tower across the water.

I know you've got quirky tastes in English towns, but most of those on the Liverpool railway system really are quirky.

Assuming you're not interested in Widnes,and that no-one on earth wants to stay in Bootle, the choice really comes down to Chester or Southport, both of which are well geared up for visitors. I've been beaten up on these pages for dissing Southport, which is the easier to get to if you're coming from the north: it's at best a standard Edwardian seaside resort - although I don't think anyone's ever actually seen the sea from it since Edward's time.

A quirky alternative you might explore and appreciate is Port Sunlight - though I really don't know about its B&Bs. A few seconds' walk from Bebington station, it houses the best Pre-Raphaelite collection anywhere outside Lloyd Webber's drawing room, and is one of the great 'enlightened capitalist' model villages: in many ways finer than Bournville, Letchworth or Welwyn Garden City.

Chester would fit the bill.
It's about 40 minutes by train.
There's a list of cheap hotels and B and Bs
at http://www.bedandbreakfasts.co.uk/pr...wnCity=Chester

Flanner.co.uk - thanks for reminding me of Port Sunlight - i too am planning a sojourn soon by rail to the Liverpool area and Port Sunlight always intrigued me - perhaps one of the following sites can lead me to a cheap B&B there.

PORT SUNLIGHT VILLAGE ONLINE COMMUNITY
Port Sunlight Village in the Wirral in the north west of England was built over 100 years ago by William Hesketh Lever for the employees of his soap factory ...
www.portsunlight.org.uk/

Port Sunlight / Lady Lever Art Gallery
Lady Lever Art Gallery - Port Sunlight,Wirral,Merseyside.
www.portsunlight.org.uk/gallery/

Port Sunlight, England profile - ePodunk
Port Sunlight, community profile, with detailed info on hotels, real estate, travel and tourism.
uk.epodunk.com/profiles/england/port-sunlight/3001625.html

Incidentally, I wouldn't be hasty in dismissing Liverpool.

Though its B&Bs are mostly a mile or more from the centre by bus, it's got a large crop of Hilton-like modern hotels (and a few more idiosyncratic ones) built over the past five years: in the current climate, it's probably worth Pricelining them to see how aggressively they're discounting.

Unusually, they're all scattered around the fringe of the centre - which is now the most walkable (and physically attractive) of our major cities. The Albert Dock's no more than 10 mins on foot from any of them - and the walking routes are all architecturally stimulating and extraordinarily safe.

Liverpool suffered one of the most vandalistic "redevelopments" of the 1960s (in Britain, a claim a city's got to beat a lot of competition for). Its 2005-2008 re-redevelopment is something infinitely scarcer: attractive and sensitive 21st century buildings that actually enhance the city's outstanding 18th-mid 20th century architecture.

Thank you all for your replies. First, a word about my " quirky" likes of towns. I don't like spending nights in large cities or towns, more like small place with a pub or two.
Southport at 100,00 is far to large, Sunlight Village looks a bit odd, even to me. Its been years, but perhaps Chester, though bigger than what I would like, would be best. Oh, another word about places that I don't understand nor care to visit...Sea side towns with rides, casino's, candy floss, noise and puking drunks. I seek Small towns with a warm pub, quiet, nice people, decent beer and grub. Really, very basic needs. Like last February at North Berwick and St. Bees. These are perfect for me. Places like Bridlington, Scarsborough, Cleethotps are the type of placesthat I try to avoid.

roger- i recommend you stay in Blackpool to fulfill your <I seek small towns with a warm pub, quiet, nice people, decent beer and grub.>

can't help with accommodation but just want to say that the Mersyside maritine Museum at the docks is well worth a visit as is the museum of Liverpool life,the Mersey ferry is just a short walk away but if going on that take your ear plugs as the constant playing of "Ferry Cross the Mersey" will drive you mad.
Last time I was on it they had Morris dancers performing in the queues and on the ferry ,took all my willpower not to throw them overboard.
Have Fun

Southport hasn't got a 100,000 population. Wiki's talking through its rear end.

Merseyside's a conurbation, which means these numbers are close to meaningless. The 100,000 number refers to a clutch of Liverpool's NW suburbs spread out for about 15 miles along the river estuary and the Irish Sea, though separated from each other by huge, empty beaches and the Green Belt: the Green Belt round the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield linear town is actually bigger than the one round London.

Southport itself (the County Borough of Southport was abolished in one of those endless job-creation exercises Britain's local government specialises in) is a fairly compact small town, with a pop of about 20,000-30,000.

It does have a little-used funfair, but no more drunks than any other English small town. It's got extremely pleasant, arcaded, shopping streets. It's where the shipowners moved to live in the 1870s, and it's now where the local relatively affluent move to bring up their kids, and where local elderly move to die. It briefly became a local seaside resort, catering for Liverpool and Manchester daytrippers, but that's all gone except during summer weekends and around July 12 (which it used to be, and may well still be, the day the region's Orange Lodges congregated there to celebrate what was actually the Glorious Revolution (the triumph of democracy over monarchic absolutism), but got twisted into an annual festival of intolerance by Protestant extremists. Members of the region's majority religion traditionally put up with this tomfoolery aimed against them in silence, so the most a visitor gets exposed to are some thumpingly good drum and woodwind bands, a few bloodcurling traditional banners and the public singing of distasteful lyrics)

The rest of the year it's a pleasant, reasonably well-defined, residential town. There's really no rail-connected North Berwick in the Liverpool-Manchester area (one branch of the Flannerclan provided North Berwick's civic administrators and Kirk elders in the 19th century), because just about all the towns on a railway got turned into suburbs the way they did in SE England. A couple of the hilltowns NE of Manchester (like Clitheroe) kept an identity, but they're really messy to get to Liverpool from.

The closest to a North Berwick between Preston and Crewe is probably Ormskirk. Absolutely nothing to do, might be too close to Skelmersdale for comfort, but - unless the Skel scallies are raiding - a pleasant almost-rural small town.

flanneruk, thanks for the information. I will go back and check out Southport in more detail. Also Ormskirt. If something comes to you, as a suggestion for a visit could you let me know. I do like military, transport, rail and similar type museums. Have seen a bunch, but know others lurk out there. Like The Locomotion Museum in Shildon was asurprise and fun to visit last year.

My impression after staying in Southport a few days is much like flanner's take - kind of a small town feel - and its glory days as a beach resort long gone.

But on weekend nights 20s somethings pour out of the train station into the town's clubs - a real hot spot it seems - but the rest of the time it was very quiet.

"I do like military, transport, rail and similar type museums"

For a city with the largest concentration of state-funded museums in Britain after London (www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk), Liverpool's surprisingly short of military and transport museums.

Though proper railways first saw the light of day in Liverpool, there's no railway museum (there is of course one in Manchester, because the railway was built to let its natives flee to civilisation). Edge Hill station, the world’s oldest standing passenger railway station, still has bits of its original buildings accessible, though a foundation is currently turning some of them into a "vibrant creative space", so heaven knows what state the place is in now. The National Museums include the Maritime Museum unclegus liked.

The only major transport museum in the area is the National Waterways Museum (http://nwm.org.uk)at Ellesmere Port. The museum - mainly Britain's largest collection of canal boats - is 10 mins' walk from Ellesmere Port railway station. There's also the North West Road Transport Museum in St Helens, about which I know nothing.

The Pier Head, next to the Albert Dock, was made a World Heritage site primarily because of the city's pivotal role in European migration to the New World (something like 60% of all 19th century European migrants to North and South America, Africa and Australasia are supposed to have sailed from Liverpool). Apart from a few plaques and a "migrant" sculpture, there's little recognition here of this crucial contribution the city's made to global transport, though there's a lot of colourful stuff about emigration at the Maritime Museum.

One of the Pier Head's other roles, though, is as a war grave. The Battle of the Atlantic, one of the six crucial battles in British history since Agricola bopped the Scots at Mons Graupius, was commanded in Liverpool (the others: Battle of Britain, Battle of the Boyne, Bosworth, Hastings and Edington), and the Pier Head is the official Commonwealth War Grave for those killed in it. It also has an enormous range of naval war memorials (everything from the Merchant Navy to an extraordinarily quixotic anti-U boat commander, including memorials to navies of countries you'd never really thought of as actually having a navy). The battle control centre is visitable at the Western Approaches centre (www.liverpoolwarmuseum.co.uk): it's a Churchill War Room on steroids, but has very erratic opening hours and always seems closed whenever I walk past it.

10 miles outside, Burtonwood was once the biggest airfield in Europe, with 18,000 USAAF personnel, and between France's walking out of NATO and the end of the Cold War housed Europe's largest warehouse (50 acres, all under cover). It's now been decommissioned, but there's a Burtonwood Museum commemorating the military aspect of the base - and, what's more important in local folklore, the impact of thousands of US and Canadian troops on Liverpool's womenfolk when their men were away fighting.

The major military museum in the NW of England is the Imperial War Museum North, at the wrong end of the Liverpool-Manchester railways, in Salford

Wow, really good stuff. Regarding the IWM North. Is that the one in Cosford? If so, saw it 3 years ago having spent the night in Wellington.

Are you going to Liverpool *only* to visit the Albert Dock ? Last time I visited Liverpool I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express which is actually in the Albert Dock buildings (converted warehouse or whatever), and within walking distance of lots of good pubs etc. There was at least one other hotel right there too.

No-one's mentioned Formby, near to Liverpool. It's a pleasant small town with red squirrel reserve and I think Anthony Gormley's statues are still on Formby beach.
Southport at the weekends- best avoided. Liverpool footballers and their hangers-on flood the clubs and pubs.

Metal :: News - Edge Hill Station
An historic landmark, Edge Hill is the world's oldest standing passenger railway station and possesses a proud history of innovation, aspiration and ...
www.metalculture.com/News-Edge-Hill-Station

thanks flanneur - adding this to my upcoming trip to Liverpool

This is taking me back to my childhood. Anyone remember Albert and the Lion?

The Gormley 'Another Place' installation is at Crosby beach (a dull middle-class, suburb where Mrs Tony B Liar grew up but still barefacedly pretends is working-class), not Formby (an extraordinary mixture of Footballers' Wives villas, religious institutions, red squirrel reserve pinewood and immense sand dunes. Sadly, there's an epidemic of squirrel pox, which means a lot have died and the rest seem to have taken to their beds with a glass of squirrel Lucozade so they're not very visible. Not connected with ordinary pox, so the footballers' wives probably aren't implicated. But that Chardonnay...)

For the Gormley, train to Waterloo: for the squirrels, train to Freshfield.

The IWM North is in Salford, 30 miles NE, and a doddle by train. Nothing to do with the near-inaccessible RAF museum at Cosford, 40-odd miles SE.

I think I will spend a couple of nights in Chester after being up North for a couple of days. The train to Liverpool from Chester is only 40 minutes and stops neat Albert Dock. Then the following morning I can head to Manchester Picadilly, take the tram to Harbor City stop and visit the Imperial War Museum North. Now I need to figure out where to head that afternoon. I do do it in reverse order and finish up in Liverpool, then head out, perhaps Ludlow?