Sorry if I am not returning reads and rates but I have no way of telling who has rated my reviews no...
Sorry if I am not returning reads and rates but I have no way of telling who has rated my reviews now despite the fact that Ciao says it is possible!
Member since:21.10.2000
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My partner and I visited Southport in 2000 to stay for a weekend in The Prince of Wales Hotel at the top of Lord Street. It was a nice enough break and the hotel was lovely, but Southport isn’t a place to which I crave to return.
The reason we chose Southport is that the hotel is part of the Paramount group and we have joined their Leisure Break club so we get discounts at the hotels in the chain. To be fair the hotel was lovely, although not quite as nice as The Imperial in Blackpool, which also belongs to Paramount. It was noisy during Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning as the clientele leaving the local nightclubs were very rowdy.
Lord Street itself is a street of mainly exclusive shops together with the representatives of the major stores so it’s a shopper’s paradise. Unfortunately as I’m not a great one for shopping it didn’t really appeal to me. I’m afraid I’m not a typical woman at all! That said there were some lovely shops and we did have a good walk down Lord Street just to have a look.
Southport is a resort that has a Victorian feel with a long sandy beach and sand dunes. The only problem for me was that a large park with a boating lake separates the town from the seafront. The park itself is very pleasant and made a nice after dinner walk for us both, but I prefer a seaside town where I can walk easily along a promenade and watch the sea. There is a road along the seafront but it seems very isolated with nothing but building work on the land side of the road.
The pier stretches from the town, across the park and out to sea and is famous as one of the longest in the country. I can’t comment any further on this as it was under reconstruction when we went and so we didn’t get the chance to walk along it.
There is a fairly big amusement park in the seafront which has cheap rides during each weekend in March (which, luckily, was when we were there). There is a wooden roller coaster for the purists amongst us and the big ride is The Traumatizer, which is a roller coaster ridden with the feet dangling free – like Nemesis at Alton Towers. There is also a ride called Chaos, which my partner was brave enough to try while I held the coats! It consisted of double seats set around a large disk. When the ride started the seats spun on their own axes while the disk also spun and rose from the horizontal to the vertical position. I feel queasy just thinking about it. Give me the roller coaster any time! There are many more white-knuckle rides, together with plenty of children’s rides too and we thought it was one of the better seaside fun fairs we had seen.
Southport also boasts the Royal Birkdale Golf Course on which the Open Golf Tournament is sometimes played. So, if you’re a golf enthusiast, this is heaven for you, but sadly golf isn’t my game! I won’t say that it’s a good walk spoiled just in case Ken reads this opinion!
It’s easy enough to get to Blackpool from Southport although you do have to travel inland to Preston in order to cross the River Ribble before travelling back to the coast and on to Blackpool. If you’re a fun fair fanatic, as we both are, then it is possible to visit both resorts in the same weekend as we did and the cheap rides were also available at Blackpool during March too!
As I said at the beginning of the opinion Southport is a lovely place and if you like shopping or golf (or both) I’m sure it’s an ideal place to stay. Unfortunately I wanted a traditional seafront to walk along, you know the sort of thing hotels one side of the road and the sea the other, as I love to watch the sea so I was a bit disappointed with Southport.
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I think this is a good review because it shows how popular perception can be different to the actual experience of a place. Even though you weren't that impressed, you've given some detailed descriptions regarding what you were expecting against what you experienced, which anybody wanting to visit a coastal resort is bound to find helpful.
pauljm 17.09.2001 02:57
Sadly (for your tastes) Southport has been a victim of geography. When the town was built, it was as described; hotels along one side of the promenade, sea on the other. Unfortunately the sea has moved further out (due to silting from the river Ribble). The town made the most of the situation by building a lake and park in the gap between the old promenade and sea defence and the new sea wall. You will have noticed that the first 500 yards of the pier is over land this was originally all over the beach/sea. Paul.
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