{"id":2545,"date":"2014-03-02T20:00:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T20:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=2545"},"modified":"2014-09-30T20:55:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T19:55:53","slug":"southport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/?p=2545","title":{"rendered":"Southport"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided we deserved a weekend away, so we went to Southport. Somewhere we’d always meant to go, and having had a reccomendation from friends (“It’s very Victorian, you’ll like it”) we departed.<\/p>\n

It’s surprisingly close: 2 hours, a hundred or so miles, and yes, it is very Victorian. The rather splendid Lord St<\/a> is lovely, and the Pier is fine- the second longest in the UK, and as the longest is the admittedly long, but dull, Southend<\/a>, it’s Southport FTW, as there’s a bar at the end, for a start. <\/p>\n

One building caught my eye from the pier: this lovely, huge Victorian pile of an ex-hospital:<\/p>\n

\"Tho<\/a>
Tho old Southport Promenade Hospital, Now Marine Gate Mansions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

which is now appartments, with a half-million pound price tag<\/a>(PDF, 1.2MB).<\/p>\n

Southport is a oddly laid out place: the pier bridges a lake between the town and the sea, and the actual seafront has a retail park (where our hotel was), which presumably is the type we’ll soon have in Walsall, with a cinema, and a large selection of crappy chain restaurants<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>
Share and enjoy: crappy chain restaurants and a cinema: seems inexplicably popular.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don’t know if the land is reclaimed, but it’s odd: the promenade is some way back: you’d imagine the hotels and pubs would be on the front, not a modern retail park.<\/p>\n

We had a fabulous meal, a few drinks<\/a>, and a bit of a stroll: one to revisit with more time, the town is affluent, but not up itself, architecturally good (mostly), and a blend of seaside and town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I decided we deserved a weekend away, so we went to Southport. Somewhere we’d always meant to go, and having had a reccomendation from friends (“It’s very Victorian, you’ll like it”) we departed. It’s surprisingly close: 2 hours, a hundred or so miles, and yes, it is very Victorian. The rather splendid Lord St is … Continue reading Southport<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-life","category-piers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.piglet-net.net\/pigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}