Sitting at the foot of the angel watching cloudscapes and crowdscapes, I wonder what it is that makes Antony Gormley's popular sculptures so appealing.

​They're accessible, I get that. You can touch them, put a satchel on the back of them, graffiti the feet of them. You don't have to pay gallery entrance fees and stand behind tape hung with unfriendly DO NOT TOUCH signs to view them. They're interactive, involving, inviting. Everyday people art.

They're understandable. They're recognisably human (albeit a little salt encrusted) or angelic (albeit kind of rusty industrial), and the artist's explanation of his work makes plain English sense.

Then it's the scope and scale of them. They're vast, as in 'Another Place', which stretches one-hundred strong across three miles of coastline. Or huge, as in the Angel of the North, the height of four double decker buses with a wingspan wider than a Boeing 767. They can't be ignored.

But beyond that, there's more. Something indefinable. I realise as we prepare to leave, that they have presence. They evoke an ineffable kind of yearning in me. In 'Another Place' it is for another place, another space, weirdly, for a home. Here at the angel, I'm held in the moment, transfixed beneath that looming figure while the three coach-loads of tourists swarming around the foot of it taking selfies (normally a huge irritation to me) make no impact at all. 

The Liverpool Tate is a must-see. Our visit turned up paintings by Matisse, Mondrian, Klee, Miro, Dali, Picasso and Lichtenstein, to name a few 'names', as well a work by New Zealand's own Frances Hodgkins. The Walker Gallery is a delight of discovery. Entrance to both galleries is free.

Other free-to-view art are the statues that loiter around Liverpool. If Bristol is a city of street art, then Liverpool is one of sculpture. All kinds. Modern, like the neon-coloured block installation in front of the Tate; and traditional, like the statues found in the garden in front of Walker Gallery. But mostly they're realistic, life-size renditions in iron of people from the Fab Four, Cila Black and Gerry Marsden, to royalty, statesmen, philanthropists and other Liverpudlians who contributed to the city in some significant way.

The statues that haunt Crosby Beach on the Merseyside coastline (a 20 minute train ride from Liverpool city centre) are famous, life-sized and cast in iron. But they don't depict anyone from the city, nor are they native to it. One hundred clones spread across 3kms form the 'Another Place' installation by Antony Gormley (of Angel of the North fame). Originally intended as a temporary exhibition, it was decided that Liverpool should be their final home. Weighing in at 650kgs each and given the sinky mud on the beach, it seems to me to make as much logistic as aesthetic sense. 

A word about the mud. There's a notice as you enter the beach warning you of soft sand and mud along with the a fast in-coming tide. The latter I took due note of, I certainly have respect for that. But soft sand and mud? C'mon. We're Kiwis and beaches are our home. Yeah, well. . . fortunately I took off my shoes before I found myself slurped knee-deep in mud and sinking.