Preston
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: urbanwalks, upnorth, circumnavigation
Date: 09 May 2007 01:01:23
Bank Holiday Monday was the circumnavigation of Preston. Starting and finishing in Penwortham, on the other side of the river - and now sadly represented by a Tory council - I wonder if they will change the rather unconservative-sounding slogan of the council: "Forward with South Ribble!". Why do local councils need slogans and logos and brand identities anyway? And when they get them why are they always so naff? Redcar - "its not red and we can't afford a car". Why has anyone in the English-speaking world, even once since the 1970s, called any public building "The {whatever} Centre" or named any freeby news or propaganda sheet "The {whatever} Voice".
Whatever. Starting and finishing in Penwortham and walking round the city but never quite going into the centre, trying to stick to inner suburbs or the transitional zone between the central and suburban areas. Which in a city the size and style of Preston isn't at all hard to do - its not very big and its mostly all inner suburb, residential terraces, post-industrial refits.
Miller and Avenham Parks, along the river past Frenchwood, up past Fishwick...
(which sounds like it should be in Sussex) to Ribbleside, through Deepdale to the North End ground...
...then Moor Park and almost back into the centre, quick pint in the Lamb and Packet (local beer, regulars, some kids playing pool, county cricket on the TV), slower one in the Britannia Inn (at least six real ales, organic beer, pork scratchings, 70s music on the juke box, middle-aged bikers, rugby fans, some people discussing the location of the Dun Cow pub in Durham City (I could have told them!), a few elderly bearded blokes who seemed a little the worse for the afternoon and whose wives wanted them back for tea), backtrack out towards the docks, back up to behind the County Hall, (there is a pub that advertises "Disco's ECT" as part of its exciting programme of entertainment), down to Broadgate, another pint or two in the Ribbleside Inn (a very different sort of pub, a bit downmarket of the others, bar staff and quite a few of the drinkers seem to have London accents, seems to have a few thirty-something mothers with premature wrinkles, too much makeup, and young kids in tow. I was asked to play killer pool by two of the kids) - and back over the old bridge to Penwortham.
There's plenty to see round the north side of Preston. Well, there is if you find semi-ruined post-industrial desolation fascinating and or beautiful. Or if you are intellectually fascinated by the range of different solutions to the problem of packing in decent housing and open space into a high density urban network cheaply enough so that lots of not-very-well-off people can live there.
Oh well, maybe that'll just be me then. Lots of nice houses, a few good parks, but still quite a lot of waste ground, places where buildings once were but now aren't, gaps in the fabric of the urban continuum of a sort that you don't see so much in the south any more (although there were lots in Peckham until about 1997).
Some dinky little mosques in a presumably new vernacular style, shiny dark red brick like the ones used in the posher terraced houses of a hundred years ago, slate rooves, little towers with with rather pretty little minaret tops to them, usually in green and gold, that look more Indian than specifically Muslim to me, but off-the-shelf panel doors and PVC double-glazed windows that could have been bought from B&Q.
I didn't take many useful pictures of the mosques because people were using them or going in and out or at least standing around chatting and I tend to avoid looking as if I'm taking pictures of people rather than buildings (though will make exceptions for very public places and events)
A rather odd building near Burrow Road that looked cross between an engine shed, a church hall, and a ballroom.
And an apparently disused railway that doesn't seem to go anywhere, but disappears underground just a block away from it
Preston has loads of good pubs, but they are all located in the same corner of town. In the unlikely event that anyone is reading this who is both intimately familiar with the geography of Preston, and not a member of my immediate family (who will know all this already) this is how you find the good pubs. They are nearly all in an area roughly bounded by Fishersgate to the south (the main shopping street, running from the bridge to the station to the museum square), by the town Market and Friargate and Adelphi Street to the east, and by the Lancashire County Hall to the west. I'm not so sure of the northern extent of the zone. I suspect it peters out before Plungington, maybe somewhere in the region of what used to be Lancashire Poly and is now the vital beating heart of the University of Central Lancashire. (Who can't have either "ucl." or "ucla." as part of their DNS domain. Believe me, they tried. Well, believe third-hand rumour then. I never saw the application.).
Anyway, more research is needed.
Overheard from kids in Deepdale:
Two young children - maybe four years old? Possibly even younger? playing in the street. One of of those impossibly cute golden-ringletted little girls with a boy r perhaps her brother. She is trying, and failing very badly, to climb a drain pipe, he is failing to help her. I'm briefly worried that she is going to fall off backwards hand hurt her head. Which is probably silly as she is barely half my height off the ground and weighs perhaps one tenth of what I do. Older boy maybe 8 (crew cut, ManU shirt) cycles by and asks:
"Are you chasing Kim"
"Yes!"
He cycles off. Boy turns to girl
"Who's Kim?
"I don't know"
Two other children, maybe six or seven, run out of a back alley giggling, and off into some waste ground on the other side of the street.
"That must be Kim!"
"Lets chase him!"
In Preston accents so broad that if they had been Rochdale accents you could have been in a Gracie Fields biopic. IYSWIM. (I'm sure there must be some famous people with Preston accents but I can't think who at the moment. And no, its not the same as the rest of Lancashire).
And I got sunburned. On a rainly day in Lancashire. I can get sunburned by spending more than an hour or two out of doors on a cloudy day.
And for my next trick: The Quest for the Lost Land of Higher Penwortham.
It must be round here somewhere. Try going up Leyland Road...