Gormley’s Another Place is twenty years old now and the novelty has never worn off. A hundred cast-iron casts of the artist’s own body, planted along three kilometres of beach, all facing the shipping lanes. Some are buried to the knees, some to the neck, depending on how the sand has moved that year. The sea has dressed a few in barnacles. It shouldn’t still work. It does.
Start at the coastguard station car park and walk north with the iron men for company. The Mersey’s mouth is properly industrial here — wind turbines, the Seaforth cranes, container ships sliding out towards Ireland — and the figures stare at all of it without comment. It’s the only sculpture we know that improves in bad weather.
The walking itself is as easy as it gets: firm sand at mid-tide, dead flat, with the dunes on your right if the wind gets ambitious. Push on past the last of the figures and the beach empties fast — by the time you’re approaching Hightown it’s you, the oystercatchers, and whatever the tide left behind.
Turn around when the sand starts to soften, and take the line along the dune edge on the way back. Read the warning signs and mean it: the mud below the low-tide line has caught out enough people that the lifeboat crew know the spots by name.
Back at the start, Crosby’s coastal café does the job. If you’ve timed it right the sun goes down directly in front of the iron men, and everyone on the beach goes quiet at once. Bring a flask anyway — the café’s hours are more honest than convenient.