We live in a city which many describe as ‘a great place to go to get to other places’.
It’s not typically anybody’s main destination (though it bloody well should be!), but rather a city that people visit to visit other cities.
We have trains that take you to London (a must) and beyond (specifically Manchester or Cardiff). We have an airport (woefully overpriced, but handy). We have buses that are so regular that the teen within me (who grew up with around one service an hour to the nearest town on a Sunday) is thrilled every time she taps on and off. We can get to islands, forests, cities and seas.
The latter of these places is where I’m heading with this.
We live in a port city. Southampton. Our water’s edge is not lined with idyllic beaches (you have to visit our neighbours down the coast for sand between your toes). We don’t have a traditionally postcard-worthy coastline. Ours is lined, for the most part, with Industry.
We have Big Ships arriving day after day, taking goods and good folk around the world and back on container vessels and cruise liners. Take the train in a certain direction, and you’ll whiz past enormous boats and towering crates, interspersed with piles of scrap and big, big cranes.
You can see them from the city centre, and you can see them from our home. At dusk, which is even earlier now that BST is over (sob), they loom, giants against orange skies. They look impressive. Magnificent.
It’s not textbook beauty, but we love our unusual landscape. It’s been that way for decades – this has been a city of trade ever since the city walls were first laid. We are a city of comings and goings.
This month, we traded our own port city for a few others, temporarily. Perhaps biting off more than we could chew, we combined two events into one, taking advantage of one friend’s marriage in the North with another friend’s stint with a show in a whole other country, and made ambitious plans.
First, we spent just under 48 hours in Liverpool, making the five-hour drive straight after work and cramming in as much as we could.
We saw the sights; enjoyed a delicious brunch at Brunchin’; scanned the horizon from St John’s Beacon; walked in the footsteps of the Beatles; enjoyed creativity at the Walker Art Gallery; learned about the city in the museum; ate good, good food at the very cool Baltic Market; and played outrageous golf and darts at Golf Fang and Flight Club. We even got up at 6am to catch the sunrise from Crosby Beach, taking in the view of Antony Gormely’s Another Place.
Glorious.
On that beach, we looked back at Liverpool, and saw the same cranes we live beneath outlined on the skyline, as if drawn on in HB pencil. The forecast rain had skirted around us and instead hung in whispy curtains. The sky burned. It looked, and felt, so familiar, and so special.
Next, a day in Blackpool. Scaling the heights of the tower, walking the length of the promenade to take in the legendary illuminations, nervously agreeing to ride a coaster on the end of the pier (and then loving it), throwing away pennies in the arcade, riding the trams beneath the lights, and eventually escaping the rowdy revellers who had descended for the weekend.
Perhaps not so much a port city this one, but still a coastal destination with tall, iconic structures forged in metal, welcoming people every day.
After then spending the weekend in Cumbria with friends (and a brief moment in the Lakes, a place which almost takes up one whole chamber in my heart), we drove back down the country and flew out to Lisbon.
I told you it was a mammoth trip!
Thus ensued five days of classic city-break behaviour: cramming too much in, walking too far, eating too much (no such thing!) and exclaiming, within hours, that “I think I could live here, you know.”
I shan’t go into detail about what we got up to now; there’s enough there for a whole separate Substack post (and yet another for one solely about the food). But our adventures, throughout the week, took us back to the water’s edge, and we found ourselves once again looking up at the cranes that ran along the city’s docks. Once, in the daytime, and once more as the sun set.
And just like home, the cranes stood against the sky, the city all the more impressive for its industrial silhouette poised over the water’s surface, accentuated by the bridge.
It was only when I sat down to write something about this trip – thus breaking my most recent Substack dry spell, yet again – that I realised most of our destinations were connected by their ports, their docks, their constant comings and goings of goods and good people.
No wonder we felt so at home in both Liverpool and Lisbon.
I would return to both for sure. There is yet more for us to see in Liverpool, and Lisbon feels like the kind of place you could spend forever in (though I think I would like to venture elsewhere in Portugal for comparison).
They are, if you haven’t already, cities to be added to your bucket lists.
I’m thinking of other port cities to add to mine; where to see the same view from a new perspective, to test the theory of finding familiarity and comfort in the shadows of the docks and ports.
Seeking more giants on the skyline, along the water’s edge.
Loved this Jo! The Southampton aspect was so relatable, and I’ve spent far too brief a spell in Lisbon, and never visited Liverpool. Very much looking forward to the next newsletters delving into the Portugal leg further!
Lisbon has been on my bucket list from a while - maybe next year ☺️