Bye bye Liverpool

We left Salthouse Dock in Liverpool bright and early this morning, gosh a week goes SO fast when you’re having fun. The CRT chaps were waiting for us at Mann Island lock at 08.00 for our assisted passage up the Stanley flight and onto the main line. Luckily we had another narrowboat to accompany us up the locks.

We are now moored at Litherland at the CRT yard, what a tremendous day, warm and sunny. Lyn and Kevin gave us a little portable BBQ before we moved onto the boat and today is the first opportunity we’ve had to use it. We’re staying here for 2 nights and then heading back to Liverpool, that’s 5 nights earlier than we’d initially planned. There’s a weekend of steam on and around Albert and Salthouse Docks and there was a free slot to decent the locks on Friday so we jumped at the chance to be back there. I’ve got our bunting and fairly lights out ready to put up for the festivities.

We’ve had an action packed week and the one of the highlights was going up the tower of the Anglican cathedral, it was a beautifully clear day and we could see for miles. It has the largest peel of bells in the country, 13 bells and the bell Great George the larger than Big Ben. The belfry looks very empty and clean compared to St. Margaret’s Church, Edgware, where I used to ring in the 1970’s. We attended an organ recital there too, amazing as they have the largest pipe organ in the UK. The other highlight was a trip down to the historic Liverpool wet dock, the first commercial wet dock in the world.

We have visited the Liverpool World Museum, Museum of Slavery and part of the Museum of Liverpool. We still have a fair list of places to visit next week too. We’ve chatted to lots of Scousers at the pub’s we’ve visited.

Yesterday evening I joined a knitting group at Cafe Nero. I was expecting hoards of knitters from the city, however, there 5 lovely gals with just a couple of locals the others from either sides of the globe. They made me very welcome and I came away with a huge list of ‘got to sees’ that they recommend.

And we’ve just loved having the on tap electricity, no immersion heater, electric kettle or having all the lights on for the next couple of days though. The forecast is good so our solar panels should charge the batteries nicely.