Other Bidston happenings ....

 

You’d occasionally see ghost hunters in huddles of 5 or 6, some with head torches, or clubbers' from the Ford taking the short cut home after a night out in Birkenhead (or vice versa!). I also saw many of what I call “Grim Reaper” cyclists and runners, bombing through the woods in the dead of night with high lumens headgear on, bouncing along the dirt track right next to the Penny O’ Day Dyke wall.

 

You would always come across really pleasant, polite people when out walking the hill, but now and again you would meet people who seemed to have a hidden agenda of their own, out of the ordinary people and looking slightly awkward about it all. I knew some lived close by, one day they were as nice as pie then weeks later they would walk right by you. My theory is once someone realised that you lived in the Observatory, they seemed to show a twisted envy and a distinct dissatisfaction toward anyone living there. The irony is is that they more than likely lived in a 'castle' of their own, such is the standard of some of  the glorious architecture in certain areas of Bidston.

 

One midsummer afternoon in the searing heat, one chap turned up in a dark suit wearing a dark woolly hat, professing to be the imminent owner of the whole site and shaking his fists about it when we wound up our window asking him why he was on the Observatory grounds, seemingly stalking the building with 'intent'.

 

Similarly, some chap turned up in a 'Roller' preaching the same cash bashing pretence ‘one day this will all be mine!’, soldiering the hill with his clipboard and cigar. On many occasions we witnessed many rendezvous’ of a ‘suspicious’ nature in the big car park! to which the police were always alerted. As a musician, I often toyed with the idea of setting up a hidden loudspeaker on the roof of the Observatory and, together with full reverb on a microphone, then murmur at high volume moaning sounds out across the Observatory grounds. I wish I had done, it would have been hilarious!

 

We did on occasion scare the living daylights out of the ‘herbal’ fraternity, who used to come up to the grass bank in front of the Observatory to smoke their ‘cigarettes’. We would throw gravel into the trees from the Observatory roof and spook them. Within half an hour they were usually gone as they never could make out what it was that was making the sound, which got incrementally heavier with each slightly heavier handful of stones we threw.

 

     Rooftop dusk at Bidston Observatory 2009

 

I did spot a white ferret on the Observatory lawn one night, and the M53 Buzzard also would take a look this way, just to see what was on offer; however in all my time there I never saw the great crested newts on the hill that I'd heard about from childhood (are there any still there?). Amongst others we had sightings of woodpeckers, Jays, thrush, blue tit, long tailed tit, occasional pied (even grey) wagtails and on rare occasions the stealthy Peregrine falcon. The Pipistrelle bats were amazing, always stole the show for me as they were my 'pets' when I lived there They were the most friendly wildlife in the area, approaching you at dusk when you clapped your hands out on the Observatory lawn.

 

The Observatory is a Grade 2 listed building (incidentally, the Windmill is Grade 2*) so it required many planning authorisation fences to be jumped  before it could be put on the market for sale. I recall a tiny man of no more than 5ft 4" visiting the Observatory with NERC officials. He was, quite literally 'batman', his job was to crawl up into the Observatory roof space to check that there were/ were no bats living up there. He also had to check all masonry ledges, decommissioned chimney stacks and any crawl space/ ledges that the bats may seek. Although the bats frequented the grounds of Bidston Observatory, none actually lived within the Observatory building/ roof space. Bats in the belfry comes to mind, though in this case bats in the dome.

 

Dome hatch open, bolt undone for the umpteenth time!!!

That brings me to another curios occurrence that baffled me forever whilst I was in the Observatory. There was a 'hatch', a definite 1970's add-on, with a naff alloy push-through bolt latch fitted. This was basically a 2x3ft window that was cut into the lower portion of the NE dome. I can't see what purpose it served and for those who wondered, the two brass telescopes that were in the domes are now in Liverpool Museums archives after being removed in 1969. Anyway, I always had to bolt this window every week as it always seemed to be open, the floor beneath the window was always full of dead bluebottle flies, it was bizarre as at first I thought it was someone going up there for a shifty cig out of the window, but surely you would just go outside to smoke? The flies were always dead on the floor around the window yet the window was open, sometimes wide open.

 

"Apparition" in stealth mode

Without question, the most amazing 'apparition' I ever saw was a big fox, seemingly almost white in colour, sprinting along the path between the observatory wall and Penny O’ Day Dyke towards Bidston Village. I first saw it off in the distance, lost it behind the Observatory wall, only to see it reappear again in a flash like a white scarf being tossed in the air.

 

It truly looked as if it was somersaulting along the path in the almost pitch-blackness. The truth is, it likely moved like this to avoid being seen as it was likely hunting. It's movement was very stealth-like, but in doing so it made itself look like it was performing acrobatics, a trick of the dim light, but an experience I’ll never forget!

 

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