Cut and Rune: Liverpool

Here I am Rune

Distance 12.5 miles

Total 1150 Locks 65 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1655.3miles

This will be a sort of ‘today’ and ‘yesterday’ posting since, in the excitement of getting into Liverpool I didn’t get around to posting yesterday. The trip from Bridge 10 into Salthouse Dock went pretty well, or at least it did once the rain had stopped. The first obstacle is the swing bridge at Bridge 9 which, in these days of Health and Safety, does seem to me to be a slightly odd arrangement. The guys from CRT operate the bridge for us to pass through but on the right hand side of the canal there is no barrier to stop the traffic. The CRT men put a cone in the centre of the road however is some half wit fails to see it the point of contact is straight into the canal! It is, I suppose, nature’s way of eliminating the useless drivers. I think this ‘assisted passage’ stuff began in the days when Liverpool had a horrendous reputation for boats travelling in, kids jumping on the boats at bridges, stoning the boats, etc. but things have changed massively now to the extent that the CRT people don’t ride ‘shotgun’ on the boats going in they just go on ahead in their van and open all of the swing bridges and locks for us. Once you get to Liverpool docks I thought that they might get aboard to show the to Salthouse Dock but even then they just give directions and leave you to it. As we entered the docks the wind picked up quite significantly but at least there is plenty of space to manoeuvre if things go wrong. The only thing that did occur to me as we passed through Albert Dock was that if anything became wrapped around the propeller causing a loss of steerage the boat would drift (or should I say be wind pushed) into a very expensive bunch of GRP sailing boats moored there, I suspect that my 18 ton of narrow-boat could do some serious damage to them!

John Lennon Peace Memorial

Once safely moored up on the pontoon we then popped up the road to a fair sized Tesco to stock up for the weekend and took the opportunity to have a little bit of a wander around Liverpool, and it is quite an interesting place. More chance today for a further nose around taking in a lot of the Beatle Tour sites, it is interesting that it is such a massive thing here still when you consider that it was over 50 years ago now when they were at the height of their powers (and 45 years ago since they split up). There certainly seems a lot to do here whatever the weather does, there is the Tate, Maritime Museum, Liverpool Museum, Liverpool Cathedral (good view over the city I am told) Radio City tower (another good view) and then if we want to travel wider there is always a trip across on the Mersey Ferry or a trip up to Crosby to see the Antony Gormley creation ‘Another place’, I don’t think we’ll get bored here!