Archives for November 2016

Did you know that award-winning crime writer Ann Cleeves once lived on Hilbre Island?

Ann Cleeves (pictured above; source:BBC) spent the first four years of her married life living on Hilbre Island. Her husband Tim was employed by the local authority as the island warden and the couple were auxiliary coastguards.

You’ll probably be aware of Cleeves writing even if you’ve not read her books. Her Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatised as the TV detective series Vera and the Jimmy Perez novels as the series Shetland. She wrote her first book, Come Death and High Water, whilst living on Hilbre.

Commenting on her time on Hilbre Cleeves says: “It’s a wild, wonderful, lonely location – the perfect place for a murder.”

You can find out more about Ann Cleeves on her website.

Here’s some news that the Hilbre weather station is no longer recording data.

Having regularly checked the online readings from the weather station on Hilbre Island (pictured above)  I’m disappointed to discover that the station is no longer recording data.

Sometimes I’d use the data from the weather station as a discussion point over on my Hoylake Junction website. I noticed some months ago that the readings weren’t published on the official website. Sometimes the station would develop a technical fault that needed sorting. By chance, a friend happens to work at National Oceanography Centre at Liverpool and after chatting she said she’d have a chat with colleagues to find out what the situation was. It transpires that due to funding issues the station is no longer being maintained.

There’s an amateur-maintained weather station at New Brighton and that’s possibly one of the nearest coastal weather stations on Wirral. It’s probably about 7 or so miles from Hilbre.

I wonder if a local group could take over the running over this weather station?