Bidston or Bust

When the annex to St George’s Secondary Modern School was built in 1961, it was the first building in the world to be heated entirely by solar energy. At around the same time, those boys from Wallasey Grammar School for whom playing rugby was not a massive attraction, found themselves running up Bidston Hill each week, from a changing hut that was just a little further down a track next to the revolutionary new school building.

After one such foray, we noticed a camera crew and the distinctive, Scottish TV reporter, Fyfe Robertson, who had come to record the significance of this technological advance for the BBC’s “Tonight” programme. Back home, I stuck the scrap of paper with his signature on it into my autograph book, where Fyfe still keeps company with Ernest Marples, Colin Cowdrey and Twinkle, to name but three.

That route to Bidston was still quite rural, looking back - and a little boggy, in parts. It was a true cross-country course. When this photo was taken in 1972, the footpath alongside the railway and past Seacombe Junction signalbox to Bidston was not very inviting either - waterlogged, rubbish-strewn and with the concrete fence posts askew and many of the wires missing or contorted.

From a distance, I have a feeling that Bidston is a bit more easily accessible from Wallasey these days, both by foot and by bike. My friends in the Wirral Cycling Group will no doubt put me straight on that one.