Done a few rides with Brain, but Friday did a solo ride from underneath a motorway, this is right next to the new Kingsway tunnel on the Wirral side
Its very urban grafitti,but I'mjust trying an unusual way to get to the Bidston Observatory
It leads across a railway line and a river to a nature reserve that is a reclaimed rubbish tip.
Its mostly a dreary isolated place, but the lake is quite nice.
Descending the other side leads you to the inland end of the Wirral docks, fly tipping capital of Merseyside.
I'm heading to the observatory and this is the only car wash I've seen for years that is staffed entirely by migrants
Big climb up the hill, this track was strewn with carved stones and plinths.
And then around the corner the building appears, its now a conference hall, but used to have two telescopes and strangely was an excellence of tide predicting, it
was used in the WW2 invasion of France as it housed incredible mechanical tide prediction machines, the telescopes were actually used to accurately determine
the buildings exact position.
It fell into disrepair for a long time and actually had squatters move in, we are really good at throwing historically significant buildings onto the scrapheap.
A magical ride down the long destroyed stone path reveals the 15th century Bidston Hall and attached farm
Bidston village has been around since the stone age and appears in the Doomsday book, the church is 12 century, its just nice to see it has kept its character,
even though the road is now rush hour.
The ride backup to the top along another track I found was simply stunning, like a movie set of approaching the ruins of a forest temple, ducking under long tunnels of
foliage and trees.
The area was chosen for the observatory because of its solid granite and the Victorian engineers had their work cut out making roads
Things went a bit south just here as a pack of Surron riding masked up youths appeared and called over to me, I just took off down the hill like a DH rider.
They didn't follow and might have been a perfectly nice bunch of lads, but I'm not taking any chances with the modern highwaymen
I waited a bit and returned to find this windmill ,there is a slab trail from here to the observatory with incredible views.
Great day out only temporarily spoiled by the unnerving appearance of the seedy side of life, I found myself scanning the horizon for them.
This view in person is fascinating and all around is the remains of Victorian splendour when it was a major tourist attraction.
