Walk the length of Antony Gormley’s Another Place … to the pub: the Hightown, Merseyside

The iron men dotted along Crosby beach form an ethereal backdrop to this coastal saunter

Life goes on day after day for the statues standing sentinel on Crosby beach, all of them facing out to sea near the mouth of the River Mersey. Their view is the coming and going of container ships and ferries and the turning of wind turbines. If they could just move their heads a little they could see, as I do, across to north Wales, the Wirral peninsula and, closer, the imposing red cranes of Liverpool docks.

Gradually, time and tide change the statues, and a visitor’s view of them. Water comes in – and partially submerges the 100 cast-iron lifesize figures, modelled on the 6ft 2in frame of their artist, Antony Gormley – and then it recedes. The elements etch their caustic marks just as marine life finds a home on them.