Midsummer happenings around Stonehaven: 20th June 2015

Although I'm originally from the East Coast of Scotland there are still masses of tiny villages & harbours in that lovely part of the country that I've never been to before. This Father's Day weekend I was hoping to walk between a few of them, visit some pubs and then make it up to Stonehaven, where the relatively low key Stonehaven Real Ale Festival had transformed & upgraded itself into the first ever Midsummer Beer Happening.

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Bus: Dundee to Johnshaven, X7 Stagecoach (15 Dundee, 28 Panmurefield, on the hour)
  Bus: Gourdon to Stonehaven, X7 Stagecoach (41 on the hour)

The way the bus/train timetables had worked out my best option to get up the East Coast was to take the Stagecoach X7 Coastrider service which picks up from the new-build Panmurefield Village site on the Arbroath Road between Brought Ferry and Monifieth. This meant that I was able to take a leisurely walk from my Dad's house and head to the associated Chef and Brewer pub, The Bell Tree, just to satisfy my curiosity and see what it was like.

It's a Spirit Pub Company (soon to be Greene King) 'classic country pub' similar in style to the Mitchells & Butler Vintage Inns with lots of panelled wood, dark beams, bright downlighters, exposed brickwork, open fires and some nice pictures of old Dundee. It's mostly food led with lots of tables in various parts of the building and on different levels, but there's also an area at the front-right for the discerning drinker. Here I was able to see that they were running a promotion for 3x taster glasses of beer/cider and a snack, so I went for the drinks that were available on hand-pull, Sharps Atlantic (a decent pale ale), Bombardier Burning Gold (a not great golden ale) and Old Rose Elderflower Cider (wow, very sweet) as well as a bowl of cashew nuts; more than OK for £4.99.

It's a nice enough place and good to see that they provide some cask beers, but I'd definitely suggest the nearby Milton Inn in Monifieth for far superior beer, food and just general atmosphere if ever in the area. Once finished I crossed the busy A92 and didn't have long to wait before my impressive Coastrider coach arrived. I bought an East Coast Explorer day ticket and settled back in my leather reclining seat, complete with air-conditioning, reliable WiFi and a charger point (ScotRail take note!). The service is limited stop through Arbroath and Montrose with some great views of the varied coastline and it wasn't too long before I was requesting my stop on the main road above the fishing village of Johnshaven. There's a narrow road down to the shore passing the single 'corner shop' and it also goes by the front of The Anchor Hotel.

There's a bit of a step down at the main door (and a low ceiling, ouch!) but this leads to a front bar with lots of light oak panelling & bright lights, tables set around the central bar, some snob screens between the tables, and models boats, photos & pictures on the walls. There's obviously a nautical/fishing theme in here and I liked this fishing-homage hanging on the far wall.

At just before the end of the lunchtime serving it was still really busy, full of day-trippers and locals both in the bar and the restaurant further into the back of the building, so I decided that ordering a large meal wasn't a good idea and instead went for the Tuna Mayo Toastie option. Beer wise there were 3 hand-pulls, 2 in use today, so I ordered a pint of Golden Sheep (Doom Bar was the other choice, but Burnside beers have been on before and bottles of the mighty Inveralmond Blackfriars were in the fridge) and used the WiFi since there was absolutely no 3G signal at all.

The toasties were great, service was quick and cheerfully done and it was good to see such a busy place doing things well. Also in Johnshaven I found a really interesting arts/craft shop just around the corner from The Anchor, Starfish Studio, selling all sorts of hand-made, locally derived jewellery and gifts...

...another pub/inn, The Ship, which didn't seem to be open (I rattled a lot of doors trying, but it could just have been a timing/opening-hours thing)...

...and of course the lovely harbour (complete with communal clothes drying-line). It's here that the annual Fish Festival is centred around in August and there's also meant to be a spectacular Fireworks display in January.

Nation Cycling Route 1 passes through Johnshaven and I picked this up and followed it north out of the village. Here there's a large caravan site, Wairds Park, which seemed to be a magnet for a small fleet of incoming VW Camper Vans.

I followed the path as it hugged the coastline, though a few swarms of midges which had appeared as the temperature crept up, and after 3 miles or so approached the larger village of Gourdon, set well below the A92 road.

The harbours here (there are 3 of them) have more of a working feel, with a couple of fishing boats coming in as I watched, and there are still a number of large filleting/smoking sheds on the harbourside as well as the adjacent and award-winning Hornblowers Restaurant (upstairs) and fish-and-chip shop takeaway (downstairs).

Located at the start of the western harbour breakwater is the Harbour Bar, blessed with great views over the entire harbour from its front beer garden (and the smoking shed), and the owners also run a small B&B along the street.

Inside is a conservatory/games room with a pool table & juke box, a large TV lounge (which was busy and where the locals seemed to congregate) and also a fantastic small dark wood panelled bar/snug with a number of bar stools.

They only have one hand-pull, normally with an Inveralmond beer, and today it was their light and refreshing Inkie Pinkie. The day's menu was written on a small black-board next to the hand-pull; I should really have tried a crab filled roll, I suspect it would have been incredibly fresh.

As well as the harbour, the main attraction in Gourdon is the small Maggie Law Maritime Museum which houses the eponymous inshore lifeboat that the fishermen of Gourdon bought (and manned) themselves in the late 19th and early 20th century and which helped to save dozens of lives (it was named after the daughter of a local fish curer, Tom Law). Unfortunately this was just closing as I went by so I'll have to re-visit it another day.

Instead I headed up the steep hill from Gourdon waterfront where there some great views of the harbour and also lots of new houses being built (I guess Aberdeen is commuterable from Gourdon), crossed the A92 (again) and waited for the next X7 coach to Stonehaven (dead on time). This went through Inverbervie (there's another great fish-and-chip shop here, The Bervie Chipper) before heading into Stonehaven town centre. The Stonehaven Real Ale Festival used to be held in Stonehaven Town Hall every November but I went to the last one in November 2013 and there was no doubt it had outgrown that venue. Instead the organisers, including Robert Lindsay owner of six°north (bar and brewery) and The Marine Hotel, had decided to relocate to the green expanses of Baird Park just a 5 minute walk away and put-up a large array of interlinked marquees.

There had been some entry issues earlier in the day when queues had snaked down to the entrance of the park, but when I arrived it probably took less than 5 minutes for me to get in and the marshals were more than polite, asking everyone how long they'd been in the queue. I took my nice six°north glass, bought some tokens, managed to meet up with the AleselA people, and then went to find some beer in the main marquee. That wasn't difficult. A huge 4-sided bar-area has been set-up in the centre of the marquee with a seriously impressive choice of both cask hand-pulled beers (about 50 of these)...

...and shiny keg dispense beers (about 50 UK and 20 Belgian), as well fridges full of more Belgian beers.

These were all, amazingly enough, on at the same time, with the organisers having procured up to 3 casks/kegs of the same beer, but even with this planning the most popular beers inevitably started to run out late on Saturday afternoon (no Fierce Beer was left, drats!). Stand-out beers for me were the new Marooned blackcurrant wheat beer from Windswept (seriously dense and fruity), and the Saison Dupont Biologique which I'd never had on draught before (bready, hazy and spicy). Service was fine & cheery (though why people persisted in going to the completely wrong corner of the bars I don't know) and the place never felt that busy (OK, the queuing system for the toilets probably needs a bit of thought for next year) but overall I think the organisers actually pulled off a minor miracle (as well as raising a significant amount of money for the Stonehaven Dialysis Unit and the Sea Cadets). In addition the live music was very good...

...and I liked the old Stonehaven tradition of broken-up slices of bread being set down on the bar as the evening wore on to soak up all (or at least some) of that beer.

All told a really good day out on the East Coast, and maybe even the chance to do it again next year around Midsummer if the dates all work out the same.

Return travel:-
  Bus: Stonehaven to Dundee, X7 Stagecoach (53 on the hour)

On the outskirts of Glasgow, Eaglesham and Killearn Beer Festivals: 6th June 2015

By complete co-incidence (I'm pretty sure anyway, no conspiracies theories here) there were a lot of beery events happening in Scotland this weekend - up in the North-East Aberdeen CAMRA were holding their Great Grampian Beer Festival and in the same city, at the same time, there was the BrewDog #PunkAGM2015 'experience'. There were also local beer festivals in Crieff and Coldstream, and (nearer home) there further small beer festivals being held both Killearn (to the north-west of Glasgow) and Eaglesham (to the south-east). The latter of these was a first ever event being held in conjunction with the more established Eaglesham Fair so I decided to head along and show some support and if there was enough time, I thought I should also be able to make it all the way across and out of the city to end up at the Killearn event.

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Central to Muirend (05, 35 on the hours)
  Bus: Muirend to Eaglesham, 4A First Glasgow (25, 55 on the hour)

I don't think I'd ever stopped in Eaglesham before, only whizzed through on the way to East Kilbride before the town's bypass was built, so I was looking forward to having a look around, but that was before the heavens opened-up and curtailed any possible exploring. However Eaglesham seemed a nice enough place, there were 2 main thoroughfares connected by some lovely green parkland and a couple of noteworthy pubs/hotels, the Swan Inn and the Eglinton Arms (it was a bit too early to try either of these). When I arrived at the corner of the playing fields where the Eaglesham Beer Festival was being held it seemed that they had decided on a 'meet-the-brewer' approach using small stalls/gazebos rather than a line of casks/kegs in a marquee (I always like this approach, but it's a lot of work & time for the small breweries involved). Most of the guys/gals involved (Top Out, Drygate, Fyne, Sulwath, Fransciscan Well, Harviestoun, WEST) were still setting up their beer lines and other wares when I went past, so I decided against distracting them and took a bit of shelter from the weather in the lee of the Eglinton Arms.

At about 11:30am the main parade of the Eaglesham Fair came marching past - whooping fire engine, pipe band, a tractor pulling the (very young) King and Queen of the Fair, kids dressed as sheep, the Loch Ness Monster and other 'animals', the local scout troupe and lots of musicians & dancers - they looked great and there was a large turn-out, but it was such a shame to see everyone (and especially the kids) get really quite soaked in the (at that point) quite heavy, squally rain.

I headed back into the main partitioned-off area of the beer festival and decided that a coffee was a good idea, and this caffeine infusion was supplied by the It All Started Here people, who can also be found at the Partick Farmer's Market.

I took my coffee (with lid) inside the main marquee where Whole Foods from Giffnock had set-up a stall with some US & European bottled beers & associated beer munchies and where a group of musicians were already playing away.

By now it was now time for a beer and first off to try were definitely a couple of new beers from Edinburgh's Top Out Brewery. Michael and Moo had brought their new Copperheid ginger beer and also their new Altbier; both were excellent, especially the Copperheid with a huge herbal ginger aroma and masses of peppery ginger in the taste, an excellent low abv ginger beer. They also had a new amber beer with Aussie/NZ hops as backup for today (not used) and have already brewed a Loanhead Industrial Estate collaboration beer with Stewart Brewing and Black Metal Brewery for the Stewart Summer Beer & Food Festival on August 1st.

After a final stoating downpour the rain abated and things started to dry-out (except for Moo from Top Out, I don't think he'll dry out for at least a week). This meant I could leave the marquee for the Galloway Chillies stand where they were selling nachos made with a choice of different cheeses from Damn Fine Cheese (I went for the chili-cheese) and a further choice of chilli-pickle on the side (I went for the lemon). I then headed over to the Fransciscan Well stand where we (the stand's hosts and I) jointly decided that the Shandon Stout was probably the best accompaniment to the nachos. Smooth, chocolatey and with a dry bitter finish this is a more than decent stout (and a good choice) and it seems that we'll be seeing a lot more Franciscan Well outlets in the central belt of Scotland. If they keep the quality up then it's difficult to rail against the Molson Coors takeover of the relatively small Cork-based brewery, let's hope they do.

By now the winds had also died down so that the big wheel (aka the Eaglesham Eye) could be utilised and the Eaglesham Beer Festival twitter page has a couple of great photos of the site from high up on the wheel (there was no chance of getting me up there).

The beer festival was definitely starting to get a lot busier (and drier) as the afternoon wore on, great to see for the brewery people and for the organisers who'd done a fantastic job, but after a few more half-pints (the Fyne Ales Wee Milky Way was certainly back on form) I decided that I probably had to start heading back to Glasgow; I had a longish journey (certainly in terms of time, possibly not that much by miles) to negotiate by public transport.

Further travel was as follows:-
  Bus: Eaglesham to Clarkston Toll, 4A First Glasgow (41, 11 on the hour)
  Train: Clarkston to Glasgow Central (08, 38 on the hour)
  Train: Glasgow Central to Milngavie (28, 58 on the hour)
  Bus: Milngavie to Killearn, B10 First Scotland (40 on the hour)

Two trains and two buses (for reasons of connections, with a pit-stop in-between at The Drum and Monkey in Glasgow) eventually deposited me at Balfron Street in Killearn. It's a fairly easy location to judge when to get off, the obelisk-like Buchanan Monument just along from the bus stop is easy to spot from miles around.

The Killearn Beer Festival was taking place in the courtyard/car park of The Old Mill. This is a really lovely country pub which used to be an old weaving mill, but the place had closed down for a bit at the end of 2014 before being bought and re-opened in the spring of this year by the people who have the excellent Inn at Kippen - hopefully The Old Mill will work out just as well.

It was £4 to get in (for a branded glass & tasting notes, and the glasses were checked!), but the beer was set at a fixed price of £3/pint or £1.50/half, so all told it works out at about the same as a standard CAMRA-type Beer Festival. The guys doing the organising have been doing this successfully for 4 years now and were happy to chat away about the state of the pub scene in & around Killearn, how they might go to cask sponsorship by local businesses next year, and that perhaps moving the Killearn 10K run closer to the start of the beer festival next year might be a good idea (especially if the weather repeats itself).

There were a number a large marquees set-up in the courtyard with the larger one holding the casks of beer on stillage. This was dispensed in the more traditional manner by the mass of friendly volunteers and it was good to see beers from local and more far-flung Scottish breweries including Cromarty, Windswept, Fallen, Drygate and Jaw. Stand-outs here were Jaw Wave (an excellent Glasgow-brewed Weißbier full of sweet bananas, cloves and a great wheat texture) and the quite outstanding Fallen Chew-Chew salted caramel milk stout, with a slightly different, more chocolatey recipe than previously (Mr Fallen was on hand to quality control).

Most interesting, however, was a cask of beer from the Fintry Brewing Company, located at the eponymous Fintry Inn, in a small village about 7 miles or so away from Killearn nestled along the north side of the Campsie Hills. I hadn't known anything about this supposedly co-operatively run microbrewery until earlier in the week, but from asking the Killearn guys they seem to have been brewing for almost a year, have produced quite a few different beers (7 or so was the estimate) and this was the first time one of their beers had been available outside the Fintry Inn. The Meikle Bin (named after a nearby hill) was dark red, malty-sweet and with a bitter-fruit finish; a more than acceptable 70/- beer. Hopefully I'll have the chance to try a few more of their beers, but with absolutely no public transport available to Fintry it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

Even when I first arrived at The Old Mill (only an hour or so after the start time) the place was busy, but then as the live music started it got seriously busy; there wasn't that much free space to shelter from the slight drizzle under the marquees.

Instead a lot of people had decamped into the quite cosy surroundings of the bar of The Old Mill (which then also got seriously busy). However it was worth braving the good-natured queues at the bar for the An Teallach beer that was available on hand-pull, Bealach Na Ba (Gaelic for Pass of the Cattle). This was decent crisp, zesty, golden ale which was certainly to my tastes, and there's no doubt the quality of the An Teallach beers in general has been improving.

So all told an excellent, if fairly hectic day out, with some great beer and some interesting, friendly people who all like beer. However I think if I plan to attend 2 Beer Festivals in one day again I might take a bit more of an interest in the long range weather forecast or find/hire myself a designated driver!

Return travel:-
  Bus: Killearn to Milngavie, B10 First Scotland (51 on the hour)
  Train: Milngavie to Glasgow (12, 42 on the hour after 6:00pm)

Sunshine on Morecambe: 14th May 2015

Short breaks in the last few years seem to have been taken me on a magical mystery tour of some of the UK's Victorian seaside resorts - Southport, Alnmouth, Stonehaven, Bridlington and Lytham to name but a few, and now the latest of these was going be a number of days in the North-Western Lancashire town of Morecambe (home town of the late, great Eric Morecambe, né Eric Bartholomew). The town possibly has a bit more of a run-down reputation than some of the others mentioned above, but there's been a bit of development in the last decade or so, there seemed to be some decent pubs along the front and last (but definitely not least) there is also an excellent local brewery, Cross Bay Brewery, which I was scheduled to visit late one morning.

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Train: Northern Line to Bare Halt

It's not too far a walk from the small station at Bare to the industrial estate where Cross Bay Brewery is located, but there is a mass of road & construction work happening around the nearby Sunnyfield Retail Park. I managed to miss most of this by zig-zagging through the car showrooms of Northgate Industrial Estate and I eventually ended up in Newgate Street where Google Maps had indicated Cross Bay Brewery should have been found. After a few minutes of fruitless searching I couldn't see any unit which resembled a brewery, but that changed when I turned the corner to find the large premises of Morecambe Bay Wines (or MBW) and hooray, there were a lot of casks out there in the yard which meant that a brewery had to be pretty close by.

Not too far into the yard I found head brewer Nick Taylor out shifting casks & pallets, and he was good enough to chat about the brewery and the beers they've been working on lately. The brewery started off as Brysons Brewery in the early 2000's but was sold to Morecambe Bay Wines when the original owner/brewer decided to retire and then changed its name to Cross Bay Brewery (after MBW owner Peter Cross) when they started brewing in 2011. This was done on a larger 28 barrel kit which came from Moorhouses, and Nick actually came up from Moorhouses with this kit and stayed on to eventually become head brewer (he worked at Moorhouses under Rob Hill, who would leave to found the Highland Brewing Co. in Orkney, not a bad teacher to have at all). Cross Bay (and Nick) then won a number of awards for their beers and seemed to be going from strength-to-strength, but parent company MBW almost went into administration in 2012 and were bought/merged into the large Bradford-based food-and-drinks conglomerate, Narang Group. This has led to improved distribution channels for Cross Bay, but there has also been a degree of tension between the original MBW people and the new Narang management. It may be that this means a more independent Cross Bay Brewery, more separate from MBW, but that may have to come with a change in brewery name at some point in the future. Nick then took me inside the brewery which occupies only a small section of the MBW unit, here assistant brewers Arthur and Dan were racking off from 1 of the 2 large racking vessels near the brewery entrance.

Also downstairs are the large stainless steel fermenting vessels; although there are only 6 of these in use in the section the brewery uses today there used to be a lot more (I think a total of 13 was mentioned) but nowadays there is simply no free space available for all of these. Although they can brew to 28 barrels they normally only run with approximately 26, even then the yeast can still occasionally be somewhat lively (as can be seen in the very rightmost FV).

The grain mill, mash tun and the steam-fired copper are all located upstairs, allowing gravity to help with the transfer to all of the FVs. The kit is close to 20 years old and so everything is setup and controlled manually, but it still looks really quite new, and although Nick mentioned that the legs of the vessels have been replaced a few times, it's obviously been very well maintained. The other vessel at the far end is a large Clean-In-Place (CIP) unit but Nick indicated that it had hardly ever been used and really should have been removed years ago.

Today there were brewing Zenith, their award-winning IPA, and the tropical-fruit aromas when I popped my head into the copper were fantastic.

Cross Bay have an extensive range of core beers, ticking the boxes with everything from golden ales, bitters, IPAs, porters and stouts and these use hops from all around the world, but Nick also turns his hand to a number of seasonals or beer festival specials, including a saison (Sand Pilot), a blueberry wit (Project B) and a Green Hop beer (Green Eyed Monster), the latter using incredibly fresh First Gold hops. The latest special is the Morecambe's Sunshine beer brewed for fundraising around the Morecambe and Wise Sunshine Garden of Fame, although it is only the statue of Eric Morecambe that is pictured and not the great comedian himself (licensing issues around Eric Morecambe are a bit tricky).

Many thanks indeed to Nick for the look around and the always interesting beer chat and I left with a couple of bottles of the Morecambe's Sunshine beer in exchange for a bottle of my Craft Beer Kitchen beer (I think I got the better deal, Morecambe's Sunshine turned out to be a lovely light citrus golden ale, with a definite red-berry, bitter-fruit finish). By coincidence there was also just a single bottle of Morecambe's Sunshine beer left at The Wineyard and Deli, one of the specialist shops which line Princes Crescent, a lovely street which leads from Bare to the main Promenade along Morecambe Bay (a couple of miles out from the centre of Morecambe).

Although there was a range of Cross Bay Brewery beers in the window, as well as an additional number of local & Belgian beers, when I first entered the shop I was a bit disappointed at the beer choice (or complete lack of it). However that was before I was ushered into 'Brewery Lane' (there's a real street sign here in the corridor and it came from Mitchell's of Lancaster when they closed the Old Brewery) which led me to a fairly large room at the back of the shop.

I liked this, surprises are always good (especially beery ones), and it was great to see a excellent selection of local beers (Fell, Eden, The Borough & Cross Bay), as well as US, Belgian and German bottles in amongst the beer signs and prints. They obviously take their beer seriously in here and I was quite happy to fill my always present 6-bottle beer carrier-bag from their shelves.

There were also mini-casks available, specialist glasses to buy and a good beer fridge in the corner. I was able to chat away to the owner (when he wasn't selling wine at the front of the shop) and it seems they rotate the stock of local beers quite regularly (apart from the Cross Bay beers) and they also do tastings (beer, wine, whisky & cheese) and hold the occasional meet-the-brewer event. It's just an excellent, local, independent, beer and wine shop.

The promenade from Bare to the centre of Morecambe along the length of Morecambe Bay is fantastic (and this extends almost into Heysham). The sea rushes in and out of the flat basin of Morecambe Bay incredibly quickly (and is thus perfect for Morecambe Bay mussels & cockles) and it's quite amazing the change in the sea even on a minute-to-minute basis. The backdrop of this are the fells & hills of the southern Lake District and there are a number of pieces of art which take advantage of this. At the very north end (just along from Princes Crescent at Bare) is the Venus and Cupid sculpture which I liked because of its textures and fluidity...

... and then the walk into the centre of Morecambe goes past an incredible number of hotels & B&Bs but eventually turns the corner somewhat to reach the start of the town centre which is probably marked by the distinctive Morecambe & Heysham Yacht Club race office.

From here on there are quite a few lovely pubs/restaurants facing Morecambe Bay, of which my favourites were probably The Palatine, a Lancaster Brewery pub which sells most of the Lancaster Brewery core beers, their monthly specials (the Lemon Grass was a lovely subtle thai-spice beer), a number of decent guest beers and also some great food (served with a smile) upstairs until 9pm...

...and also The Royal Bar, with some stunning Victorian decor inside, special food offers most nights and a not too bad a Royal Pale Ale house beer for all of £2.00 (possibly a Marston's beer, but I never found out the actual brewery, damn!).

Almost opposite The Royal Bar is a bronze statue of Eric Morecambe, the centre of a small plaza area (with further developments ongoing), and it's not too bad a likeness at all. This was replaced only a few months ago when someone attempted to steal the statue by sawing off one of the legs - quite bizarre.

Not bizarre at all (especially in a beer-related world) was this epic train beer journey that I chanced upon as I was checking untappd during this holiday break - a beer crawl from the birthplace of Eric (i.e. Morecambe) to that of Ernie (Morely in West Yorkshire). The guys involved managed a real time twitter update (on one of the days when I was in Morecambe) and then blogged about it afterwards - a most entertaining read. The guys obviously had their photograph taken with the Eric Morecambe statue and then further on from this centrepiece are the still being restored Winter Gardens and the impressive art deco features of the Midland Hotel which does a seriously excellent afternoon tea (booking in advance is almost essential for this, especially nearer the weekend) with some great views over Morecambe Bay from the Sun Terrace restaurant.

The last section of Morecambe that I visited was alongside the old Frontierland amusement park. This was closed and pretty well demolished between 1998-2000, but the Polo Tower high-rise ride still stands (albeit only as a mobile phone mast)...

... and the huge Ranch House pub is still operating.

This actually has a good selection of local cask ales (I had an excellent resiny & bitter Burscough Sutler's IPA), and as an homage to its Frontierland past, still has a side room with lots of arcade machines, fruit machine and always inviting toy grab-claws (no, I didn't win anything).

I didn't head into Heysham village where there is meant to be an excellent pub (The Royal Hotel), but instead ended up at The Eric Bartholomew, a JD Wetherspoon establishment close to Morecambe train station.

There are a few pictures and information panels on Eric & Ernie's career & lives but I was possibly a bit disappointed at how few (although it's a pub, not a museum). However when I visited the Gents I came across a far more impressive large stylised picture half way up the stairs - this was far more like it and a good way to end a visit to Morecambe.

Return travel:-
  Train: Northern Line from Morecambe