A Poem for Thursday...."The End of the Line"

With so much relayed over the media and the papers full of the sad stories of flooded homes and broken journeys...I'm putting up this post as a memory of another sea...another train journey...another ending...though for how long none of us can be sure any longer.

The End Of The Line

Let's go live at the end of the line
Where breakers fall over rolling stones.
We'll ride the train that we rode when young,
Watch how the steam mists our view of the sea
As it hisses and cools on the iron, on the brass.
And the cry of the gulls as they dive, as they soar
Will welcome us back
Will welcome us back.

Let's board the train that we rode long ago.
Where the end of the line will have water and sand.
We'll be welcomed again by the mewing of gulls
By the smell of spun sugar and hot lardy chips.
And there, will be space enough for our thoughts
With salt winds to blow away stale urban fog.
To welcome us back
To welcome us back.

They're saying the crust is beginning to crack.
That the cold winds of change are blowing our way.
Yet, when I take  the journey again to the end
Of the line, where the seagulls are soaring above,
To the edge of the tide, to the line in the sand...
The memory of all things, of all being well
Embraces me back
Embraces me back.

The Bike Deserted.

The instructions from the medical man....no cycling at the moment!

Oh dear....it's a bit like cutting off his arm, for the potter.....he is used to cycling everywhere.
In younger days I can remember him coming back from the local wood yard with half a shed on the back of the bike and the usual grin on his face which always meant that he knew I would shake my head in exasperation....but with nothing that I could do about it!
So walking out has now sort of taken over, which means it's much easier for us to do it together.
Yesterday we walked from Sankey Bridges....

 
... along the Sankey Canal to where it meets the Mersey.

While we have lived in this area for more than 40 years...we had never taken the path before!
Partly because, when we first arrived here the site, which had been part of a farm, was just being turned over to a rubbish tip.....so pungent smell and seagulls in their thousands!
Now it's greened and treed...if that is a word... you know a bit like treen....and if not then I've just made it up!!!

Sankey Brook runs a few yards from our front door and was used in the earliest attempts to make a usable water way down to the River Mersey, and thence on out to the port of Liverpool.

It was Sankey Canal that was then dug out as the first proper one, and used to send coal  down to the  Mersey and bring chemicals  back up for the glass works at St. Helens....

 ...and the mooring post for the barges are still there as a reminder of the history gone before.

The canal has now become a heritage site, and the route for the cycle and footpath of the Trans Pennine Trail...

..where there are always lots of serious walkers and cyclists .........

....and  there in the backround.... the power station at Fiddlers Ferry.

... this is "The Meeting of the Waters", as we say in Ireland.....
....Sankey Canal and the River Mersey.

Of course there is now that grand Manchester Ship Canal running through the town as well as the Mersey River.  but that's another story!

The railways came later and the tracks still run parallel to the canal ...coming from the direction of Liverpool...

...and travelling on east towards Manchester.

Anyway this is not a history lesson....honestly!!....just a post to put up photos of our local environment and for me to be shamed into realising that as I drove past it all every week, and never gave it a backward glance.......what other goodies have I missed in my hurray to grow old!!!! .