Ignore overcrowded Cornwall this year, and embrace the glories of Morecambe
Morecambe #Morecambe
At last! Fantastic news for Morecambe. Few towns have needed it more, or for longer. The Government has finally granted £50 million’s worth of levelling-up money so that the Lancashire resort might realise the dream of establishing a northern branch of Cornwall’s Eden Project… right there, on the Prom, along from the statue of Eric. The sum, representing half of the total necessary, is hailed as a game-changer.
Local Tory MP David Morris went into overdrive at the prospect. The realisation of the Eden Project would, he said, “quite literally change Morecambe forever.”
Crikey. We must hope he’s right. As an ex-pop guitarist with Rick Astley, there’s every chance he might be. The expectation is that the much-anticipated coastal-themed attraction – three large shell-shaped pavilions overlooking Morecambe Bay – will have visitors rolling in in their thousands, as they used to do decades ago.
Certainly, Morecambe merits a serious shot in the arm, to shift it back to this former greatness. To put it another way, over-tourism has not recently threatened this grand bit of the Lancashire coast.
And “grand” is the word. No question but that Morecambe Bay is 120 square miles of grandeur. The forever sea rushes in and idles out, gun-metal grey sheened silver where there are shafts of light. Way across the bay, Grange and the south Lakeland fells are, some days, not so much seen as suggested. Space is on a soul-smacking scale. The mad cries of seagulls – swooping lunatics of the bird world – somehow accentuate this. As do winds, squalls and very distant walkers with dogs.
In recent times, the seafront has been renewed to make it worthy of the setting. There’s greenery, a decent promenade and the statue of Eric Morecambe cavorting in full Bring Me Sunshine mode. No other statue anywhere is more cheering.
Turn back from the front and look inland, however, and things do appear knackered. Eric himself remarked upon this. “A cemetery with lights,” he said of his home-town. Much as I admired him as among the 20th-century’s greatest Englishmen, I now think he missed the point.
Let’s recap. Morecambe’s great days came from the end of the 19th-century through to the middle of the 20th. The railway brought Scottish holidaymakers hurtling in. Also, and especially, working families from the wool towns of Yorkshire. When mills shut for Wakes Weeks, Lancashire folk trained it to Blackpool, West Riding denizens to Morecambe, then dubbed Bradford-on-Sea. The place thrived. Guest-houses proliferated. The much posher Midland, maybe Britain’s most striking Art Deco hotel, went up, for mill-owners went to Morecambe, too. So did Edward VII and Mrs Simpson and, apparently, Coco Chanel, though probably not all together. Laurence Olivier was at the Midland while filming The Entertainer. Prices were high, according to contemporary hotel PR material “to keep the company select (so) there was no danger of undesirable people creeping in.” This is a policy I now operate in my own home.
By the later 1960s, though, Morecambe’s trad visitors were clearing off to Spain. The town began fraying at the edges. Revival projects arose and collapsed. As a reporter in Lancashire in the 1980s, I wrote more stories about the planned renaissance of Morecambe than they did elsewhere about raising the Titanic. Not one but two piers disappeared, as did a big funfair, the Miss UK competition, the illuminations and, in Happy Mount Park, a Mr Blobby/Crinkley Bottom attraction which I never had the pleasure of visiting. The 1977 closure of the wonderfully ornate Winter Gardens – once host to Gracie Fields and the Rolling Stones (not together, either) – pretty much put the cap on it.
Despair perfumed the air. That’s what Eric was on about. Me too, with the word “knackered”. After several recent visits, though, I’ve grown to appreciate this unreconstructed Morecambe very much. I like it just the way it is. I’m sure the town is gratified. Obviously, if you seek coastal quaintness, you go elsewhere – Cornwall or Pembrokeshire or some other place where they resent your presence. Morecambe doesn’t do quaint. Its strength is strength – powered by the great bay and muscular memories of generations of working families breaking free. Granted, things are not what they were – in Morecambe or Bradford. The resort has its share of people who have been kicked about by life, and are not averse to kicking back. There are pubs one can quite imagine getting thrown out of. The front also boasts cash bingo, the benighted bleeping of amusement arcades and burger joints apparently nailed together earlier this morning. It’s as if the splendour of the bay required a brazen contrast.
But there is, withal, a jolly and saving seam of no-nonsense sea-sidery.
The thing is that, between the extremes of natural magnificence and the human desire for buckets-full of 2p pieces, there’s room for everyone: strollers, fishermen, drinkers, bird-watchers, me, people from Bradford, cyclists and bookworms: the Old Pier Bookshop on the front is maybe the most abundantly-stocked and joyously-disorganised second-hand bookshop in Britain. I entered on spotting a Carl Hiaasen for £1. After clambering around shelves and over mountains of tomes, I came out an hour later with an armful for less than 15 quid. I’d left about 60,000 behind. Given half a chance, I’d spend the entire staycation there. Also wine-lovers. With a friend I went into a pub, back in 2020. We’d had beer, so ordered two glasses of red Corbières wine. “You might as well take the bottle, love,” said the lady behind the bar. “Special offer. It’s only £1 more.” So we did. Corbières wine on special offer in Morecambe, eh? You ask more from life?
Happiness was indeed general – and may get more complete as Morecambe seeks to break out from its base yet again, perhaps this time for good (or not: I hear the echo from the 1980s). In another pub, we spotted Tyson Fury and his family – couldn’t really miss him; he’s built like a cooling tower – which was a good sign. And Tyson isn’t all. Busta Rhymes apparently spent part of his youth in Morecambe, living with his auntie.
And now we have the Eden Project – due to take shape on the old Bubbles water-park site, in 2024. “This will secure prosperity in Morecambe for generations to come,” said MP David Morris, who is clearly very pleased indeed.
In the meantime, several Morecambe hotels have upped their game. If I’m feeling loaded, I’ll be staying at the Midland, its views over the bay startling, its modernisation quite a triumph.
From there I shall take days out, initially to Kirkby Lonsdale, for a counter-blast of undiluted prettiness. I think it unlikely that elsewhere England holds a town so fair. Or, as John Ruskin put it in 1875: “I do not know in all my country, still less in France or Italy, a place more naturally divine.” Particularly seducing the art critic was what’s now known as ‘Ruskin’s View’ which had, 50 years earlier, been painted by Turner. No wonder. Beyond the church, the landscape of curving river, pasture, woodlands and semi-distant fells is arranged with Tuscan perfection.
Downstream, the 14th-century Devil’s Bridge oversees the Lune and pools where, as kids, we swam and skimmed stones. Pre-war, my mother had been a boarder at Queen Elizabeth’s school in the little town. We returned often – for lunch at the Royal Hotel, then a place of roasts, oxtail soup, starched linen and head waiters called James and Ronald. Later, we’d stroll the weinds, cobbled courtyards and market square and bump into Jonty Wilson, legendary horseman, blacksmith and the fellow who’d taught my mother to ride.
Little has changed. After 800 years, the market is still on Thursdays. The dressed-stone centre is crammed with independent shops and cafés. There are eight pubs for a population of fewer than 2,000. A squire fast-forwarded from the 18th-century would still find his way along Salt Pie Lane and Jingling Lane and onto Swine Market, though he’d be foxed by the scarcity of drovers. And pubs. There used to be nearer 30.
I shall return via Arnside which perches under Arnside Knott – a limestone hill of forest, grassland and abundant butterflies at that point where the River Kent meets Morecambe Bay. It will be nearly sunset, so I’ll take a beer onto the terrace of the Albion pub, and watch as the day closes down in a sky-wide tableau of colour over the bay. Around here, the coast has sprouted rocks, rounded hills, cliffs, woodland and curvaceous country lanes so thin that motorists need to breathe in. Plus there’s no-one about (apart from farm boys on tractors the size of aircraft carriers; give way, for God’s sake). Everybody else is belting north to the Lakes. This coast is a conspiracy for connoisseurs, elemental stupendousness balanced by ices and a nice cup of tea.
On other days, I’ll shift south to the sands, salt-marshes and sheep of uncharted villages like Cockerham and Pilling. Meanwhile, Heysham’s headland supplies good walking, wind to blow your ears off and spiritual mystery. Who built the now-ruined St Patrick’s chapel, who hacked out the rock-hewn graves and why are they on the cover Black Sabbath’s Best Of album? In the village below, the Royal hotel – another one – sees to the outer man in sterling fashion. Then I shall return to Morecambe, delighted to revisit a wonderful spot which, from now on, will once again have a spring in its step.
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