Run from the Light.

This is Leasowe Lighthouse, constructed from 660,000 bricks in 1763. Situated at the north end of the Wirral, it was flashing its lights until 1908 at which time it's operator was Mrs Annie Williams, the only female lighthouse keeper in the country. It survives as a mini museum thanks to the Friends of Lease Lighthouse and it's also the base for the Wirral Coastal Park ranger service. Lease has an interesting claim to fame in that here started the world's first commercial hovercraft service carrying holidaymakers to Rhyl. It was not a profitable business and it was soon discontinued.(maybe the weather had something to do with this, the 1960's saw the coolest summers of the 20th Century.) Angela Eagle, who has been in the news lately, is the local MP - perhaps she's been to the top watching her constituency with her eagle eye!

Got my number!

Leasowe Lighthouse is also the registration point for the Wirral Seaside run which is a point to point race along the seafront, which here is known as Mockbeggar Wharf. (In April we also ran past a lighthouse at Point Cartwright, a big concrete tower built in 1978 in Australia.) Here's a picture of Vicky emerging from the building proudly displaying her race number. One advantage of a point to point race is that if you have a tail wind all the way you can get a good time - and our times were indeed good! However the only race we can compare it with is the next Wirral Seaside run as the distance is a fairly idiosyncratic 4.92K. The clear disadvantage of a point to point race is that at the finish we were 4.92K away from the car but at least it wasn't raining. Having run along the Mockbeggar Wharf it was entirely appropriate that we were able to repair to the Mockbeggar Hall for some nice pints of.

Mirror, mirror on the wall......

Still using Woolworths' trusty products? I rustled through my various toolboxes looking for some picture hooks and came across this unopened packet - is it worth anything? I doubt it and you can most likely get stuff like this at car boot sales - it's actually less than eight years since the last Woolworths store closed in the UK. The original parent company founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth in the US is still going strong and Woolworths in Australia is one of the two big supermarket chains over there. Aussie Woolies is not related at all to FW Woolworth -apparently the owners of a local store in Sydney discovered that Woolworths had failed to register their trade name down under!