Adventuring To Formby Beach, Liverpool

Even though we only had a couple of days to spend in Liverpool, we managed to sneak in a lovely little nature adventure on to Formby Beach, which is a part of the National Trust’s park system in the United Kingdom. The main reason for our little trip to the countryside outside of Liverpool was, of course, Peaky Blinders.

We hadn’t really had time to find out what kind of place Formby Beach exactly is, so we went in blind. Turned out, instead of looking for some lost beach in the middle of the countryside, this was a well established and well taken care of nature center for the whole family.

The parking lot was a little tight (even for our little Hertz car), so it took some manouvering to get it parked. But from there, everything was lovely: we took a walk through a very photogenic forest towards the beach and soon found ourselves hiking in the sand.

…like, why do we always end up hiking in the sand?!

Satu climbing the sand dunes of Formby Beach

So much sand! The sand dunes were way more massive than we ever thought, but once we got to the other side of the wind swept hills, all the sand hiking excercise turned out to be worth it.

While looking for the location I’d spotted in the trailer for Peaky Blinder’s season 4, we bumped into a dog called Dave so I snapped a photo of him and had a chat with the owner. When he heard we were from Finland, he got all excited. Turns out, the guy was a big history nut, especially interested in the war history of Finland and had, in fact, been in Helsinki just a couple of weeks earlier. He knew about Mannerheim and mentioned some of the Finnish war movies even I hadn’t seen.

A fun little encounter in the midst of location hunting. And look at Dave the dog! What a cutie.

Dave the dog on Formby Beach, Liverpool

The thing with looking for exact filming locations on a sandy beach is the simple fact that beaches change. Sand, dunes, all of it, it constantly changes. So we weren’t expecting to find the exact right bump on the beach, but we did find a pretty similar-looking sand formation and used that. And it turned out pretty great!

Aside from being a pretty cool sceneframe to begin with, it’s also our first ever Tom Hardy sceneframe!! FINALLY! I’ve been wanting to frame him for ages. Massive fan here.

We’re not sure if even Tom himself could tell exactly where he stood with the dog looking all majestic.

We’re actually working on a Peaky Blinders Liverpool filming location guide, so keep checking back for more location photos & sceneframing photos!

Tadah! Our work here is done.

After some time on the beach we started to get really cold and headed back to our car.

But before returning to the warmth and safety of our vehicle, we stopped for some ambitious climbing photos. Like honestly… I used to climb trees a lot as a kid, but these days I doubt you’d get either one of us up a tree even if you paid us to do it!

But we fake it pretty good, don’t we?

Climbing upwards in life! (Or at Formby Beach)