Find the River

To paraphrase Basil Fawlty “you can see the river, it’s over there between the land and the sky”
Hard to believe, but Parkgate was once a major port and there would have been ships tied up alongside the length of The Parade. But the Dee was notorious for silting up and gradually, where once was sea is now marsh. The actual river was cut and dredged and now flows a lot closer to the Welsh shore - the hills you can see in the background.
When I was young, it was still possible to see the sea lapping against the wall once or twice a year at the Spring tides, but I have a feeling that hasn’t happened for some time, looking at how expansive and green the marsh is.
Parkgate was a regular haunt in my early twenties. A group of us would go there most Friday nights to a pub called the Boathouse. Great place for a night out, and it was even rumoured that a couple of members of Frankie Goes to Hollywood drank there from time to time (wouldn’t have recognised them, even if they’d been stood next to me!) A very posh restaurant now though, so no chance of recreating those sessions!
Since moving to the Lakes, we haven’t been back that often - I think today was the first time in about five years. But the one we thing we definitely do if we are there is have an ice cream from Nicholls of Parkgate. Loved their ice creams as a child, still love them over fifty years later. Weirdly, I found the picture from five years ago and realised we’d ordered exactly the same today as we did then - one rum & raisin and one mint choc chip. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever tried any other flavour than rum and raisin in all those years. Which sounds like a great excuse to go there again - all in the interests of research, you understand!