More bedtime reading.
Our 2 weeks in
Salthouse Dock in the heart of Liverpool was wonderful. Very windy
though and not too warm either while we were there. It's a very
'touristy' city with big cruise ships calling in every day bringing lots of
Americans, Europeans and people from the rest of the UK.
So much to see too
- with the Beatles featuring largely throughout the city. There is even a
yellow submarine at Albert Dock - used as a B&B. Lots of places
mentioned in their songs are actual places in Liverpool e.g. Penny Lane,
Strawberry Fields etc.
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| The Beatles in Jelly beans! |
We
went to The Cavern where they were discovered - a huge underground place
with lots of photographs of famous musicians around the walls. It was
absolutely packed with tourists! We were there just 2 days before the
death of Cilla Black was announced. She started out as a hat-check girl
at The Cavern and was allowed to perform occasionally between other acts.
The whole city seemed to go into mourning - it was like when Princess
Diana died - Cilla was 'our girl' - everyone's favourite.
We visited the
nearby Mersey Maritime Museum at Albert Dock housed in a huge former warehouse
building. The top floor was devoted to telling the horrible stories of
the transatlantic slave trade which operated in the 1700 and early 1800s.
Another floor had a large Titanic exhibition - the
supposedly unsinkable ship was built in Belfast but was owned by the White Star
Shipping Line so was registered in Liverpool as its home port. Many of
the crew were from Liverpool on the maiden voyage in April 1912 when she hit an
iceberg and sank with the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew.
The
RMS Luisitania exhibition was on another floor. This luxury ship was
owned by the Cunard Line and also registered in Liverpool. She was the
largest passenger ship in the world when launched in 1906 and made many trans
Atlantic crossings before being torpedoed and sunk in 1915 by a German U-boat
off the Ireland coast after leaving Liverpool, with the loss of more than 1,000
lives.
Other ships including
canal boats, the work of customs and smugglers were some of the other
exhibitions on display.
We visited Liverpool
Anglican Cathedral - the largest Protestant cathedral in Europe - it took 74
years to build and is twice as big as St Paul's in London. Met up with a
lovely guide here who gave us an extensive tour and then gave us a souvenir
program of a special concert held earlier this year for the passengers of 3
huge Cunard Line Queens - the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary 2
which were visiting Liverpool to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the famous
cruise line.
Walked up the street
to the large Christ the King Catholic Cathedral - totally different
architecture, being circular and very modern (finished 1967) with lots of
stained glass windows. Think we preferred the older one.
Took a train trip up
the coast north of Liverpool to nearby Crosby Beach where 100 cast iron,
life-size sculpture figures by artist Antony Gormley stare out to sea - spread
out along 3 Ks of the shoreline and they go almost 1 kilometre out to sea.
Called 'Another Place' the figures each weigh 650 kilos and are made from
casts of the artist's own body. Sort of spooky - although now people are
starting to dress them up in all sorts of clothing so they look a bit funny as
well.
Back in Liverpool we
went to the Western Approaches - an huge underground bunker where the
battle of the Atlantic was run from 1941. Designed to be bomb and gas
proof with a 7 ft thick roof and 3 ft thick walls it had 100 rooms covering
50,000 sq. ft. The Royal Navy, Air Force and Marines worked there jointly
to monitor enemy convoys and submarines to ensure successful delivery of
supplies and equipment into Britain from the USA and Canada, with most coming
into Liverpool which was Britain's main port during WW2. Also enemy
messages were de-coded in the bunker and sent to Downing Street. All very
hush hush and people who worked down there lived there as well - must have been
very depressing.
Also went on an underground tour of the former port of Liverpool - a massive
area being excavated by Oxford Uni archeologists. It's now all covered
over by Liverpool One - a huge very upmarket shopping complex, office and
hotels.
Visited Speke Hall,
a half timber framed mansion set in glorious gardens on the banks of the famous
River Mersey. Built over 400 years ago it was handed over to the National
Trust in 1942. Beautiful house with most of the original furniture still
there - now a favourite spot for weddings etc. It's supposed to have quite
a few resident ghosts but luckily they must have been on holidays when we
visited.
Of course, as in the
famous song we had to catch the Ferry Across the Mersey. At present these
are painted in 'dazzle' paint to commemorate some British ships in WW1 which
were painted in camouflage paint to mislead German U-boat captains. We
thought they looked pretty spectacular.
On the last day in
Liverpool we went under the Mersey by train to Port Sunlight. This unique
village of 400 houses was built by Lord Lever. As a boy he used to cut up
bars of soap for his father's grocery shop. He eventually went into the
soap-making business and bought some useless swampy land where he built his
factory.
Some of his brands were Sunlight Soap, Pears Soap and since
becoming the huge Unilever company in the 1950s it makes most of the modern
soaps, shampoos and washing powders used throughout the world. Lever's
belief was that even factory workers were entitled to good housing so he
employed 30 of the UK's top architects to design the houses as well as schools
(really special as boys and girls were taught in the same classrooms - a
first!) village halls, a church and a pub.
He also built a glorious art
gallery full of treasures he and his wife had collected during their lifetime
because he said not only the rich should be able to enjoy art. There's
lots of parks and open areas and each house has access to community veggie
gardens. Even today it is managed by the Trust so if you buy a house
there your front garden is cared for by the Trust's gardeners. Everything
looks so neat and well kept - it's just a beautiful place to live.
We left Liverpool in
convoy again - on the windiest day ever! Came back along the Bridgewater
Canal and moored up next to a park at Worseley, a little village with pretty
black & white timbered houses. It was a Saturday afternoon and a
bridal party came along for photo shots on the nearby bridge and along the
canal. It started to pour rain (again!!) and they were sheltering under
a tree next to our boat. Took pity on them so we lent them umbrellas so
they could get back to their nearby reception place. Even got invited to have
a "drink of bubbly" at the reception!
Back on the Trent
& Mersey canal we came to one of the canal system's engineering marvels -
the Anderton Lift. It was built in 1875 to lift cargo boats 50 feet from
the Weaver River up to the Trent & Mersey.
It worked until 1983 and
was almost dismantled until funds were raised (about $18 million) for repairs
and it reopened in 2002. It works by hydraulically counter-balancing two
watertight tanks that can each carrying two canal boats up and down.
While we were waiting to go onto it we were approached by a lady asking
if we could take her husband on board for the trip down. Turned out they
were from Scotland on holiday in England and she said it would "just make
his holiday". The trip lasted about 10 minutes with bus loads of
tourists taking photos from the side. We spent a couple of days on the
lovely Weaver River - quite big but not with a dangerous current - before
making the return journey on the Lift up to the Trent & Mersey.
Five minutes later we came on a Salt Museum. Apparently the whole
Cheshire area has provided salt for centuries. The museum showed how
they pumped brine water up from underground into large pans. These were
heated for days from large furnaces underneath until most of the water
evaporated. The salt was then shovelled into wooden moulds and left to
dry out for a couple of weeks before it was either crushed for table salt or
cut into smaller pieces. Another hot and dangerous job!
Seems so
much underground water was removed over the years that a lot of houses and
whole villages just disappeared into the ground. These days lots of
lakes (former sinkholes) filled with water birds live around the area so some
good has come from the salt mining.
The rain and cool
weather continued all the way to Chester where we moored up right outside the
old city wall built by the Romans.
Sooz, Ten and the girls drove up from London to spend the weekend with
us. First time they have actually slept on the boat. Olive and
Iris were quite amused to think Mum and Dad were going to sleep 'on the table'
not realising until the next morning when they saw that it dropped down to make
a double bed.
We showed them
around Chester - a very ancient city founded by the Romans in 43AD with many of
the Roman ruins still on display. It was originally an important sea port
but one of the aristocrats in the 1500s changed the course of the river which
promptly silted up so then Liverpool became the major seaport on the western
coast. We went through the Chester Cathedral which even had an 'Alice in
Wonderland' exhibition which was a bit of fun for the girls.
Next
came a tour of the city on a 1914 double-decker omnibus with a
Victorian-dressed lady giving an interesting commentary about the city.
Back on the boat we
set out for a couple of hours to Ellesmere Port where we had a look through a
canal boat museum. Amazing to see the living conditions on the old
working boats - tiny cabins about the size of the kitchen on our boat where
whole families lived while transporting cargoes.
On Saturday night we
went to a nearby South African restaurant where Ten & Sooz convinced us to try
ostrich and crocodile! Next morning before we headed back to Chester the museum
where we were moored up had horse carriage rides and we followed a boat
being pulled by a horse like the good old days before canal boats had engines.
Looks like hard work though!!
On Monday, Verena
& Erwin, our neighbours from Ruffy, travelled down from the Lakes District
where they had been walking for a few days, to spend a couple of nights with
us. We moored up near Chester station to meet them and then set out
again for Ellesmere Port.
This meant we had to go down a 3 lock staircase
so Erwin was put to work winding down the paddles and pushing the gates - hope
he enjoyed it! We arrived at the museum only about an hour before
closing time so it was a quick run around but they saw quite a lot of it.
Next day we motored back to Chester with Verena helping with the locks
too. We did the old bus tour to give them a general overview of the city.
The same lady commentator gave some amusing facts - the English and Welsh
(the border is just across the river) were always fighting so all the church
towers and the town hall don't have a clock facing Wales as they 'wouldn't give
them the time of day!" Also some of the houses in Chester have
bricked up windows as in the 1600s a tax was brought in on houses that had more
than 6 window panes. Of course this meant there was no light in these
rooms so the tax was called 'the daylight robbery' tax. We went for a
walk around some of the city wall - it's more than 2 miles right round and then
saw some of the many black & white shopping rows. Verena & Erwin
left early next morning by train to Manchester airport for a flight to
Switzerland where they will be catching up with family before a cruise down the
Danube. Sounds fantastic.
Left Chester and
travelled down the pretty Shropshire Union Canal. Lots of black &
white cows in the paddocks - must be to match the Chester buildings - as well
as quite a few farm shops when we stopped at some of the locks selling veggies,
eggs, homemade cakes, pies and preserves etc. Even picked up a bunch of
highly perfumed sweet peas at one place. No one on hand to serve - just
an 'honesty box' for `the money.
Just for
something new the weather turned rainy again so we waited a day before tackling
the Wolverhampton 21 (locks).
We're now moored up at the Black Country
Museum on the outskirts of Birmingham where it is said there are more canals
than in Venice - they head off in all directions so hope the navigator gets it
right!
More news later.....
Came up the Wolverhampton 21 locks and arrived in Birmingham which
we visited by train four years ago when it was pouring rain so didn't
get a really nice opinion of the city. 
