Between the Mersey and the M60

between the Mersey and the M60 wes foster

a low hum of generators thinly masks the distant motorway, combining to create a white noise blanketing a landscape that is far from it’s own place in the world.

wires and cables lead from the substations and generators along masted steel towers, like trading ships from the days of the empire, jutting out over trees.

this is the beginning of the garden city – a mass of steel placed into a warped countryside, diluted and degraded by the cities it lies dormantly in between, every detail of capital interest managed down to the last foot.

they stand as the gateway to a proposed utopia; a far away land with a better life, settling outside the city with green space and green gardens.

warped steel doesn’t shine or glow, the matte surface seems to take in the sunlight on the edgelands – the space between the city and the countryside.

walking up and down these lanes, leading to allotments, leading to containers and leading to strange farms, immovable despite the wave of progress.

underfoot the ground is sticky, thick mud, the type that clings to yours shoes and walks with you: part of the ill kept lanes you are now, this land is consuming, and despite following many paths, there seems to be no way out, no clear way through, the golf courses, the builders yards and the strange costa del sol style residential and business areas, strangely coupled together as one, in a money saving but also pride in owning ones own business way of being.

too rich and too poor to be anywhere else.

a magnetic pull coming from the city behind you - it is a difficult place to leave. intriguing and dull both at the same time; the edgelands almost conjure the feeling of stepping onto another planet, but don’t quite get there, something always underpinned by the absolute ordinary, thrust into absurdity when next to each other.

caked, deep ground makes for slow going, push yourself forward, foot after foot and propel yourself in the direction, any direction.

it doesn’t really matter.

this isn’t a place to explore – all land is private, even if it isn’t really owned by anyone.

grey tarmac that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, a single road, forced to sweep around an incline in an unnatural, illogical way.

these areas are all the same – paths are created around golf courses and businesses; paths are prescribed, and only allowed to exist with legitimate reason.

temporary fencing draws permanent boundaries,

metal becoming a natural part of the landscape,

steel grey mixing with greens seamlessly.

is it the landscape that makes it seamless, or is it our view of it?

security against those too poor - security for those rich enough

barbed wire, bollards and barriers, and a feeling of security washes over the area – this is anything but the open space of the countryside, this is a place that you are not supposed to be, not supposed to see.

a no-mans land between city and countryside; the Mersey and the M60

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