Hilbre is an island off the Wirral coast .... well, a group of islands really .... there's an even smaller bit below that small one. I expect that's why it got called Middle Island. ... and , it was on the news this morning because quite a few people had to be rescued by "the-coastguard-boaty-thing". I've not been there for many years ... but I did go quite a few times when I "lived" in the resplendent town of Widnes. When I decided to write a bit about it, I started wondering if it was the first island I'd ever been on. I think it was. I would get the train first thing in the morning,complete with cheese sandwiches and an apple and a Kit-Kat and a bottle of pop, the train would trundle under the Mersey and alongside the lovely North Wirral coastline and off I would get at West Kirby. That's when the fun began .... it is a long, long arduous slog out to Hilbre ... and you have to time it right, otherwise you'll get swept away into oblivion if you get it wrong. Obviously, dear readers, I did get the timing right ,and am therefore still alive to write this. But that, no doubt, is why those hordes of holiday-ers had to be rescued yesterday. But why would anyone be mad enough to go there ? Well, 'tis the birds. Waders. You get there, the incoming tide sloshing and slurping round your ankules, your feet are therefore froz, you make your way past Little Hilbre and Middle Hilbre onto your actual Hilbre and you watch as the tide pushes thousands of waders almost into your coat pockets as you wait, shivering and knackered and windswept ½ to death. Maybe even ¾ ..... or even, in really duff weather, 0.9 recurring. Brrrrr. It's a good job they came so close, because I didn't have any binoculars ... but the good thing was, there were always other birdwatchers there there who did. In those days "we" were all "birdwatchers." And hardly anybody had a jellyscope. Blimey.... and you certainly wouldn't want to cart one over to Hilbre .... you would probably sink deep into the hungry sludge before you got 50 yards ... yes, we had "yards" back then. All 36" of them. So ... we would spend a couple of hours mainly shivering and borrowing other peoples' bins, seeing close-up views of Oiks and Turnstones and Knots and Dunlins and the like as the tide swept in. We ignored the occasional yells and screams of those silly people who had read the wrong page of their tide table and were therefore being whooshed out into the Irish Sea, because there was nowt we could do about it, basically. No mobiles, no nowt. Happy days ! There's lots that can go wrong with Tide Tables you know. Yes, the previously-mentioned "wrong page" scenario, then there's "forgetting about BST/GMT", and there's reading the "sunrise" column or the " moon-set" column by mistake .... it's a wonder anyone survives the trip at all. Some silly sods ,as they sink for the 3rd and last time, suddenly remember they've used last years blasted tide tables by mistake. You've got to wonder why all tide tables, year after year, look exactly the same as last year's when you get them out of your pocket/glove compartment... is it just a way of thinning out the twerps and numptys ? Er .... probably. We always stick a nice picture on the front of ours, so we know we're reading the right one. This year we've got that Michael Gove on ours. It seems to work. By the way, the famous Roger Tory Peterson was "on" Hilbre once. They commemorated his visit with a fine statue but it was unfortunately swept out to sea when some not-yet-thinned-out twerpkin used a proof copy of next year's tide table by mistake. It's out there somewhere at the bottom of the Irish Sea right now, like that first pair of binoculars of mine. ( It's a wonder that there's any room for boats and things to trundle around the Irish Sea, it's so full of binoculars and statues and the like.) Then, of course, even more froz than before, only ¼ alive, leaving a few dead and dying birdwatchers behind, we would stagger back to Hoylake, crawl onto the train, and slowly thaw out while we all got back to whichever Merseyside-Related Dump we "lived" in. And then, if it had existed, I would have listened to this gorgeous song......
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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