Southport’s Botanical Gardens is a lovely park in Churchtown village, which itself is well worth a visit, just outside Southport. We have visited the gardens before during the winter and spring but, on hearing, that brass bands play each Sunday in summer, decided to go and see what it was all about.
We arrived at 2pm as the Farnworth and Walken brass band was due to start at 2.15pm. There was quite a mixed crowd of elderly and families already settled either on blankets, their own chairs or rented chairs (only 50p per chair with proceeds going to the band). We duly rented our chairs and positioned ourselves along with others in a semi circle around the band. The band were positioned with a background of a stream and the gardens. There were many people sat on the benches dotted around the gardens and, if you didn’t mind seeing the back of the band, you had a good vantage point of the concert from the other side of the stream.
The concert commenced roughly on time, providing us with a variety of music from traditional marches, hymns and a mash of Disney songs culminating with Happy with everyone clapping along. Their conductor was great both informative and funny and the band played for 2 hours, including a 20 minute well deserved ice cream break from the nearby kiosk.
We had a wonderful, free concert (although donations were very welcome) in lovely sunshine on a Sunday afternoon and will definitively go again but this time get there earlier and take a picnic to enjoy even more this wonderful setting.
