Yep, you guessed it, another winter light show in North West England. This time, Lightport in Southport. I heard someone on the radio talking about this on Saturday afternoon. It was only on for three nights, which seems like a shame, especially as it was half term. Anyway, we went on Sunday. We took my Dad along too.
Spring is looming on the horizon, so to make sure we got a night-time experience, we went to Hickory's for dinner first. We parked up on a back street a few minutes' walk away from the trail, wrapped up and walked down.
When you get to Lord Street, you're met with a wonderful display of lights. It was about 1945 when we arrived, so it was fully dark and there were lots of people mooching about. I was surprised that there weren't more things selling stuff there — burger van, drinks, merch and so on. There was nothing really. I wonder if they weren't expecting it to be busy.
Our first view was of Monument Square. As you can see from the image, there were laser projectors beaming patterns in flat planes, with low-key smoke machines wafting atmosphere into the arena. It reminded me of a late 90s club. Awesome.
We had a wander about in this bit for a while then went back to Mermaid Gardens. I enjoyed End of the Rainbow the most in this zone. It is beautifully simple: just a projection of a rainbow into the pond.
It was freezing and the Enchanted Gardens had a whopper queue, so we observed it from the path and did not actually walk through it.
There was low-level music playing in the background. Teamed with the lights and smoke, it was a true multimedia experience. We then walked back through Monument Gardens and through Christ Church Gardens. Nicky's parents belong to this church, so we had a good look round here.
The finale is called ARC. It is a 10m tall rainbow you can walk through and interact with. Another lightly smoked exhibit, it had a steady stream of people walking through it the whole time we were there. This was Mitch's favourite one of the night. He's always wanted to touch a rainbow; I'm not sure if this has satisfied that desire, but he enjoyed it.
As I write this, the event is over, so this is probably a redundant link: Lightport website. There is other fun stuff on in Southport this year though, so have a look anyway.
We enjoyed the show. I can't fathom why it was only on for three nights; I'm sure it would have been busy for a week. It feels like they missed a trick, that and not having stalls. Maybe they know something I don't. No biggie though, it was a great show.
