Crosby, Formby and Southport

One day trip found different weather in the morning and afternoon to suit each location.  By train to Crosby's Blundell Sands, the moody clouds suited the Gormley statues gazing out to sea, and so many of them you had to look closely to spot any real people moving about.  Sea holly prickled through the dunescape looking back to seaside coloured buildings under a doomladen sky.  By the afternoon, Freshfields, near Formby, where the red squirrels live in what is the archetypal Winnie the Pooh wood, was sunny, tropical beached and as deserted as Crusoe's island.  The squirrels, after a tantalizing wait, skittered chittering down a tree trunk, like auburn chipmunks.  We finished in Southport, Napoleon the Third's gracious boulevards a Parisian glimpse, before taking the train back to Manchester.  It was worth several days out.