Litherland

Here I am Rune

Distance  10.1 miles

Total 3598 Locks  223 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5283 miles

A straightforward trip today, the last in the schedule to get to Liverpool, taking us to Litherland Visitor moorings which, by all accounts, is about an hour and a half from the top of Stanley Locks at Eldonian Basin so, barring any disasters, we should be in Salthouse Dock about 3 hours after leaving here.

The only comment of note regarding today’s trip is that there certainly seemed to be a lot of swing bridges to operate. Last time we came through CRT operated the swing bridges but now it is all self operated until we get to Stanley Locks and go down into Liverpool Docks. It is interesting that a number of years ago the section of canal we have just travelled on was covered by British Waterways workers (as they were then) riding ‘shotgun’ on the boats to prevent problems with youths on the way. Today everyone seemed to be very friendly and sociable, even to to extent that we helped a couple of fishermen out who had cast their bait dropper and got it caught up in a tree on the opposite bank, we cut it down and returned it to them for which they seemed quite grateful.

With Coxhead Swing bridge being out of action and not due to  open again until Monday, we were the only boat on the move today all the way from Maghull to Litherland. The moorings here were pretty full so I pulled onto the service moorings to top up the water tank and empty the Elsan and, whilst we were there another boat moved off, so we rapidly nabbed the mooring spot. Sadly he returned about 30 minutes later but seemed happy and said that he was leaving anyway, so we were able to stay on the mooring.

Tomorrow it’ll be down to Salthouse Dock for the week.