Garston Shore

I’ve labelled this grim stretch of polluted mudflats as a beach when it is about as close to being a beach as the Elephant Man was to being Miss World.
Another corner of our fine city that resembles the apocalypse, even on a good day, Garston Shore is littered with the rotting, rusting hulks of ships that looked like they were blasted across the horizon from some distant nuclear carnage. Now they lie forlorn and disintegrating, streaked white with seagull crap. As a kid, this place was one big playground, a haven of fun where you could clamber into the captain’s wheelhouse or throw bits of wreckage off the deck into the sludge far below. Looking back, I’m amazed I didn’t tumble off or lock myself in the hold.
I wouldn’t advise anybody to go here alone. I wandered round the place a few months back and regretted it. A gang of lads were speeding round on a quad bike and even though the worst thing they did was give me a casual glance, in my mind I was one print run away from being mentioned in a headline featuring the words ‘MISSING’ and ‘POSSIBLE LINK TO SHORE CANNIBALS.’ It wasn’t a relaxing stroll.