Tropical Liverpool

We spent last week in Salthouse Dock, Liverpool, it’s not our first trip there, but our first trip in tropical weather, school holidays and the first day all the lock-down restrictions were lifted!!! The local teenagers jump into all the locks at Stanley Flight, the day we went down hoards of them just sat and watched & I said hello to them. We’d heard very different scenarios from other boaters, however.

The weather was perfect for our cruise through the disused docks.

 

 

As we came out of the tunnel under the Museum of Liverpool, there were lots of kids swimming & jumping in. Most of them got out when they saw us approach, and lets just say, we certainly didn’t get a warm scouse welcome to the city. A handful of the lads jumped in the water in front of the boat as we headed for the last lock, and they hurled the foulest language I’ve ever heard and bottles and cans at us. The lockkeeper put a report in about it and the rest of the week the boats were taken into the docks early in the morning while the little darlings were no doubt still in bed.

As it was scorching hot that week, we took out all the portholes and slept with the bow doors open, quite safe as the pontoon didn’t reach anywhere near the bow.

The city was heaving with people, so we tended to venture there early in the mornings. One of the other docks that had a water sports centre was invaded by the kids, when it was closed in the evenings. Those docks seemed to be a magnet for the youngsters and we understand the police had a dispersal order for 20.00, so around that time in the evening we could see hoards of them heading into the city. Each evening there was a massive police presents over on those docks and there were stabbings on a couple of evenings!!

Down in Salthouse Dock, behind our locked gates we were in a different world of peace & quiet, with just the gulls and their anti-social behaviour!! One evening John rescued a baby gull as it was trying to flap out onto the pontoon.

I spent my special birthday Lush voucher from last October, that my whole family gave me at the huge Lush store's Spa. I had a head & foot massage, which was SO relaxing. Then I treated myself to lots of their toiletries with the rest of the money.

We visited Ten Streets Market (where John had his weaving lesson a few years ago). It’s a quirky little place, like a mini Camden Market.

Some narrow boating friends invited to their new boat for afternoon tea. They sold their narrow boat & now have a yacht that they moor in Liverpool Marina, a few docks along from Salthouse.

Heather & the family came for a day. We just had to go on the ‘ferry ‘cross the Mersey’.

One of the grandson’s had to make a list of things he wanted to do in the holidays. First on his list was, ‘go the pub’, which all did on the other side.

Each day there was a different cruise ship docked, with the stay-cation holidaymakers. The smallest ship we saw was the one we’d been on in 2019, when we were on the ferry.

The largest ship was towering over us as we cruised out of the docks.

John & I caught a train over to the Wirral to visit New Brighton, with it’s huge sandy beaches at the mouth of the River Mersey.

 

 

 

 

 

There are lots of lovely murals in the town.

And John fell in love with this beauty!!!

The tropical weather was just right for a spot of solar dyeing on the roof. We got some funny looks and some of the other boaters thought we were cooking our dinner up there. The yarn dried in no time at all.

We took lots of photos again on our way in and out of the docks.

Edmund and Ella came to stay for a few days, they arrived at Wigan & we dropped them near a station on our way into Liverpool.

Ed brought a ‘Dave the gull’, crochet kit & was struggling with the instructions. So off to knit & natter we all went for some help. I can just dabble in crochet. By the time he went home, Dave had a head, body & one leg!!

We saw some real live ‘Daves’ on our way into the docks.

Ella decided to knit under a tree, as we were still social distancing then with just 6 to a table, when we went to knit & natter at Burscough.

We stopped at some of our grandchildren’s favourite spots. The stone fishes at Lathom.

By the disused swing bridge near Burscough.

 

Antisocial behaviour!

So, this is how the birds repay us for putting our bird feeder up whenever we moor!!! Thank goodness these crows didn’t add to the roof too.

We moored in a super spot opposite one of the salt flashes, near Northwich. These occurred when salt mines collapsed & filled with water. It was lovely to watch a family of grebes feeding.

This handsome chappie strolled along to hoover up under the bird feeder, which had been very busy with tits.

Once again, we were very excited to spot a kingfisher really close, on the boat moored in front. We showed the photo to the holidaymakers on the hire boat, who really weren’t interested at all!!!

There were some stunning sunsets over the vast expanse of water at the flash.

There are three tunnels quite near to each other on this stretch of the Trent & Mersey Canal. There's always light at the end and a sign to tell you when you’re halfway.

Two of the tunnels have time restrictions, you can only enter within a certain time frame, e.g. on the hour for 10 mins. One of the tunnels is left to guess work, southbound it’s at an awkward angle, so we approached slowly, I was on the bow and could hear this boat coming, so we moored and waited. I think we need to remember though, there are lots of silent, battery powered boats on the network and a peek into the tunnel mouth at this particular tunnel is essential.

There was a substantial landslide near Anderton during the winter. There is now a narrow channel marked with buoys for boats to use. We chatted to one of the people that lived in Barnton, the village above the slide, they lost their gas & broadband connections for a considerable time!! 

 

It appears there’s a shortage of Calor gas in the NW, our cylinders usually last about 9 weeks, and we put this one on a couple of weeks ago, so have until mid-August with it. The weather has been perfect for BBQing, and we’re using up our camping gas cylinders that must be getting on for 10 years old with our tiny alpine stove (perfect when we did motorcycle camps) to boil the kettle. Fingers crossed we can replace our empty 13 kg cylinder soon. 

 

We dyed a couple of kg of wool (before we knew about the gas shortage!) at the flash as the towpath was nice & wide, with very few passers-by.

John harvested some nettles (brave lad) for natural dyeing and along with our favourite onion skins got some great colours.

Fibre dyed with acid dyes.

 

We had a wonderful weekend with our longest boating friends Ruth & Chris on nb Mad Hatter. They’d planned to travel back to the southern Grand Union Canal via Manchester, but one of the locks was out of action, so they had to travel along the Trent & Mersey Canal. It was wonderful to catch up and maybe we shouldn’t have sat out on the towpath until the wee hours.

 

 

 

They spent a day on the River Weaver before heading off. John took lots of photos of them travelling in the Anderton Boat Lift. The following day, the boat lift was out of action for planned repairs for a few weeks.

 

The towpath at Anderton is pretty busy with people visiting the visitor centre at the boat lift. We took advantage of this and opened Jubilee Fibres, which was hugely successful, and we’ve almost sold out of dyed wool, John’s woven items and my knitted things.