KYQ4: River Ribble

Preston Docks

Another trip to Preston to visit my sister and a chance to explore old haunts alongside the River Ribble. I had spent most days when not at school going through the nearby Brockholes Woods to the river at Halfpenny Bridge to fish, swim or slide on the ice during the winter freeze-ups. When the M6 was being constructed in 1958, we used to see how fast we could freewheel down the steepish gradient of the unfinished carriageway to the new bridge over the Ribble. At secondary school, I had run cross-country races against the hundred or so boys in my year along what is now the Ribble Way on the weeks when rugby or football had been cancelled because of waterlogged pitches. As a teenager, I had cycled up the Ribble Valley to the Trough of Bowland to climb the hills or fish for trout in the Hodder, a tributary of the Ribble.

The Ribble was the timeline of my childhood. What I had not revisited in decades were Preston's celebrated Miller and Avenham Parks, which provide glorious green space between the river and the city centre. I had also not visited the massive Preston Dock to the west of the then town centre, next to the British Aerospace factory. The Dock, which closed in 1981, was accessed by 16 miles of the Ribble estuary that was dredged daily but was unable to take the larger ships that became dominant. This was a chance to revisit sections of the Ribble and conjure up more memories.

We started our walk at Broadgate, next to Penwortham Holme, just across the river, where my primary school had entered me in the Lancashire Primary Schools Sprint Races. My Dad had taken the afternoon off work to watch. Despite the Elliman's Muscle Rub for horses and dogs that he had bought for me and insisted I rub into my legs. I did, but in my 3s 6d Woolworth's goloshes, I was no match for the boys in spikes. I made the final but only came fifth.

Broadgate had benefited from some impressive flood-protection measures, with sturdy concrete walling topped by thick glass to prevent the Ribble from bursting its banks onto the low-lying houses of Broadgate. We entered the recently upgraded Miller Park under the main railway bridge. I had spent many hours here on Saturday afternoons and school holidays as a 10 and 11-year-old watching the magical procession of steam locomotives whilst playing football with other train-spotters on the asphalt footpaths below the magnificent offices of Lancashire County Council. Austerity has resulted in the offices being sold and then emptied by developers and subsequently vandalised. The developers planned to redevelop the offices into a hotel. The location adjacent to the railway station and splendid Miller and Avenham Parks, and proximity to Winckley Square, could not be better, but developers are notoriously fickle when it comes to delivering projects. I can envisage it being demolished to make way for luxury flats.

We walked along the banks of the river to the new Tramway Bridge, which provides a direct footpath/cycleway from Bamber Bridge and Walton-le-Dale to the City Centre. We wandered through Avenham Park, which the family had visited every Easter Monday for the pace egg racing down the slopes. In those days, before the commercialisation of Easter by the chocolate companies, easter eggs were boiled eggs that had been painted. Avenham Park is a natural amphitheatre below the city centre and, as well as being a popular park, also hosts outdoor concerts and the Preston Guild every 20 years.

Preston's City Centre is built at the top of the scarp slope above the parks. It takes you into Winckley Square, a green space in the midst of Georgian buildings that host professional offices, numerous restaurants, the majority of Preston's blue plaques and an asylum centre. We reached Fishergate, the main shopping street that has been made pedestrian-friendly and traffic-calmed, allowing only one-way movement of buses and taxis. It worked well, and even on a dull Tuesday morning, there was a good footfall, interrupted only by the ubiquitous scourge of city centres, the Uber e-bikes that are ridden with little respect for pedestrians. We retreated to the 1950s for a coffee in Bruccianis, which has hardly changed since I was taken there as a toddler by my mother every Friday morning to meet my gran and be bought a hot milk and toasted teacake.

I had walked 4 kilometres by the time we returned to the car; my third-longest new hip walk. On the way back, we took a diversion to see the old Preston Dock, which had been the largest single dock basin in Europe before it closed in 1979. It was where cotton, bananas and wood had been imported. I had often visited it with my parents or with Uncle Jim, who was a lorry driver who would get access to the dockside, where I could watch the ships being unloaded. It was a busy port with twenty or so cargo ships docked in the basin, but the Ribble estuary could not take the larger ships, so it is now a massive marina, largely unused. My nephew has a flat in the residential development that overlooks the dock on the south side, whilst business units are on the north and east sides. Jaunt over, the next step was for only the second time in seven months to find an EV charger that was available and worked; range anxiety was real.