The Docks are now surrounded by housing and shops so the walk starts outside Affinity Lancashire, once known as Fleetwood Freeport. The shops were an attempt to help rejuvenate Fleetwood, making it a shopping district between here and the Market.
Go in through the entrance and when you get to the first square there is a path to the docks between the two sets of buildings.
Fleetwood Docks were built in 1869 following the Fleetwood Docks Act of 1864, and they were connected to the Railway after the second Fleetwood Docks act of 1871, and railway stayed open here for several more years after the passenger railway shut in Fleetwood.
The Docks or at least this section you can now see have in the past been used for pleasure boats and yachts, and the docks are silted up and underused. But it is a great place to sketch some of the boats that were in here.
If you follow the path to the end you can see the dock’s entrance and there is a swing bridge which you can cross and go to Fleetwood Nature Reserve, but you can’t access it from within the shopping Centre. As we walk back towards the entrance along the dockside you can see that there is actually a second section of the docks which used to house the Jacinta fishing boat. The Jacinta once set the world record of fish landed in a single voyage and that happened here in Fleetwood.
The docks here no longer a bustle with Fishing boats, but there are still some left.
We need to leave Affinity, walk across the car park past home bargains, across the road for the entrance to the shopping area and then hiding behind the fish shop on Dock Street is a sign for a public right of way.
Along here is Jubilee Quay, gifted to the fisherman of Fleetwood by Queen Victoria, and here behind fencing we can see various fishing boats, including some further away on the mud banks that are long since abandoned.
Draw whatever boats you see here today, but the walk ends here.