Black eyed peas anyone?

That was an interesting and very enjoyable weekend.
We had been invited to stay with friends, our next door neighbours when we were in France, over in Lancashire. It's a part of England that neither of us know and started with a trip to Another Place, the Antony Gormley sculptures on Crosby Beach, just north of Liverpool.
For the avoidance of doubt, the sculpture is the one on the right above.
Over 100 life size cast iron figures are spread over three kilometres of beach and a kilometre out to sea. Some are submerged at high tide but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get Jan to stay still long enough to see how high the water came.
After that we drove up to Southport home to some of Liverpool's players and an attractive town in its own right.
Later that evening we went to a fireworks display at Bolton School where we met the headmistress and tried black eyed peas and vinegar for the first and possibly the last time. All this followed by a slap up meal back at our hosts home.
How cool is all that?