Get Lost With Google Streetview : Blackpool (Part 1)

This concept is really for my amusement, but I’ll document it anyway as I’m like that.

This was the first image that Liam sent, along with the clue:

“This arty boy can be found between the wish.com Eiffel Tower and a park where Henry VIII had a cottage”

To be honest, I thought this would be easy even without thinking about the clue. There is what could be described as a bloody great clue in the image itself.

I was down by Blackpool Pleasure Beach and it was evident that Liam’s clue was about two miles north, but I wanted to walk that way anyway. Here’s the South Pier which was built in 1893 as the Victoria Pier, but renamed in 1930 to its current name. As a fun engineering fact, the pier is unusual for being built with the Worthington Screw Pile System. I mean, I have no idea, but Liam knows about piling and banging things into the ground whilst making a huge noise.

I had got around three minutes into the walk before I realised I hadn’t had any lunch and it was by now evening. Sometimes, I just have to go for convenience.

£2.80 as I had a 15% off voucher. I used this time to work out where the image was taken from and realised that this might be a challenge as although the Blackpool Tower is quite obvious, the photo could have been taken from three different sides. I decided to have a think about the clue itself, but can’t say that entirely helped me. Liam had been cleverer than I had expected and he’d done this very quickly.

Blackpool Illuminations. I understand that I’m in the off-season for Blackpool, but I counted that there are over 60 hotels in the town for sale at the moment with some at very low prices. I walked by more derelict buildings than I had expected and this does feel like a challenge for Blackpool given just how many hospitality businesses there are fighting for what appears to be a limited trade.

There’s Blackpool Tower starting to appear in the distance. What is evident is just how long Blackpool seafront actually is.

I thought I’d pop in some amusements to see if I could find 2p. I was the only person in there and so thought I might look a bit out of place. I didn’t find 2p.

The King of Rock and Rollercoasters.

The remnants of the Christmas decorations, most of which have been removed now.

Luckily for blog readers, I was in Blackpool in December, so this is what they looked like lit up.

I didn’t realise that the Houndshill shopping centre was shut at night, but they left a little bit open which meant I had to leave from a door I hadn’t expected…. This is the level of top drama I have in life…

It comes out near the Winter Gardens.

It was by this time I realised that I couldn’t find Liam’s location by walking about and I couldn’t work out the clue, it went right over my head. So, I went to the Layton Rakes pub to have half a pint of the Burn’s Auld Sleekit. Under-poured, but it cost 90p and so I couldn’t much complain, and it was a reasonable beer which was creamy with some toffee. Odd service though, the manager forgot to process my card payment so i stood there at the bar whilst he looked at me annoyed why I was hanging around. He proceeded to ignore me until he tried to process the next customer’s payment and couldn’t as he still had my payment on the till.

Anyway, I decided I’d have to take drastic action at this point and sit there with my laptop to work this situation out. Through walking around the roads to the north and south of the Blackpool Tower, I worked out that the photo had to be taken from the east side. Which meant some looking at Google Street View to narrow matters down. It was then when looking at the map that I worked out that Liam’s clue referred to Kingscote Park, which I should have realised earlier. With the options narrowed down, it took just a few minutes to find where the image was taken from.

That meant I knew where I needed to go.

And here we are. I have no idea what the locals through I was doing, but hopefully they thought I was taking a photo of the Blackpool Tower from a weird angle.

Some wall art. Liam sent me the next part of the clue which was “now look right whilst heading to the pub of the extinct dog”. I decided that as it was dark, I’d complete this the following morning. But not before I had walked by the all you can eat restaurant Mr Basrai’s World Cuisines and I decided to book a table for that the next lunchtime as they had 15% off as a January offer.

At this point I popped to the pub.

Back again the next morning, this is the Salvation Army Citadel building, although it was constructed as the Raikes Road Technical School between 1904 and 1905.

My lunch at Mr Basrai’s World Cuisines, as mentioned (but more about in another post as I was suitably surprised and delighted here), before going after the final part of the clue. It took me a while to realise that the pub he meant was the Talbot as I hadn’t realised that this was an extinct dog. Every day is a learning day….

And here we are, Liam’s chosen location. This was painted in July 2022 and it was first thought to be a Banksy, and I’m sure that the home owner got very excited. It’s actually by Mr Eggs, a Manchester street artist.

I was rather pleased with this whole arrangement as I got to see some parts of Blackpool that I wouldn’t have thought of visiting and it meant I got to go to a pub that I really liked and also found an impressive lunch spot for the next day. As a reward, I’ve decided to let Liam do some more of these.