Today was supposed to be very different. Today we were supposed to be out on the foreshore with a group of volunteers recording the remains of two 19th century pleasure piers at New Brighton.

The second pier on site was quite a grand affair, built out of iron and designed by Eugenius Birch, it was opened in September 1867. Stretching 600ft (182m) over the mud of the Mersey into deep water, so that the ferry from Liverpool could dock and disgorge hordes of happy holiday makers. To attract the attention of the holiday makers the pier was decked out with a saloon where you could get a bevvy, refreshment rooms for the more dainty at heart and a central observation tower where young and old could watch shipping sail up the river. But by 1977 time and tide had taken its effect on the pier and it was deemed too dangerous to be left standing and demolished.

The original pier at New Brighton was a much more ramshackle affair, constructed out of timber and tied down with ropes to large iron rings, bolted into the bedrock. The current in this part of the Mersey is treacherously fast and the timbers must have swayed each time the tide changed; no wonder it was replaced by something more stoutly Victorian. Now little remains of the two piers apart from the postholes Birch’s men cut into the bedrock to support his iron pier and those big iron rings used to keep the wooden pier from being swept away.

But today that all seems like some sort of fever dream; like most of the world our community recording sessions have been put on hold and have yet to stride back to the foreshore. For the last three months CITiZAN’s output has swung fully towards the digital. We’ve produced digital walks along sandy shores, hosted webinars on Devon’s delights, filmed the icecaps melting from London and much more.

So instead, today I’ve been working on a paper I’m delivering on Thursday for National Museums Liverpool's Twitter conference. It’s the first time I’ve delivered a conference paper across social media, I’m looking forward to it and this time the dream about turning up to the conference in your pyjamas won't matter. The conference is going to be fabulous; I just hope that I can attend the next one in person and perhaps record a Victorian pier or two next year.

To dabble your digital toes on the foreshore visit this link https://www.citizan.org.uk/low-tide-trails/liverpool-bay-liverpool-docks/ or to check out the melting polar icecaps click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuGFZvWq4sc&t=444s.