Booze, Scousers & Jellyfish

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It seemed so simple at first? A quick dash over the Ribble and up to Lancaster and Kendal. Then back across the Ribble and into Liverpool. I will not bore you with the tales of my woes except to say that ‘a few weeks’ turned into two years!

I had been hoping to be in Liverpool in June of 2008 to join Her Majesty when she opened the Liverpool Link but since they had to dig up a major section of the city and the docks it surprised no-one that BW ‘opened’ only one bit of the Link and we had to wait until last April for the remainder!

Even now you find yourself dodging swinging cranes (the metal ones not the groovy feathered ones!), towering piles of timber, concrete and soil, men in yellow coats trying to make you go away and Scousers leaning over the bridges saying.... something totally incomprehensible and probably unrepeatable!

“The Link” is as confusing to the local populace as they are to me! Essentially you take the Leeds & Liverpool Canal to ‘the terminus’ at Eldonian Village.

This is a charming development of new executive houses quite beyond the pocket of anyone who might want to live there and before you ask, I have no idea What or Who an Eldonian is!

The journey down to there had been somewhat ‘trying’ since I was floating ‘solo’ and there are 17 major swing bridges.... Every last one of them with the mooring on the towpath side and the bridge controls on the other side! [If you don’t understand the problem of a solo boater and a swing bridge then ask around the club?] Even when you find a helpful member of the population to help you, the 10-year old ‘Steve McQueens’ on bicycles waiting to jump the gap as it opened is enough to add a lot of white hairs! Or maybe the idiot motorist who drove down the outside of a line of waiting cars, calmly opened the security arm and drove across - AS IT STARTED TO OPEN!

While I am talking about the travails of the journey to Liverpool then I will gently mention the p***head with the can of beer who opened the stern door, wandered down to the kitchen and asked “Can ‘ave a beer mate... I’m on me last one?!” Or maybe the 9-year old who asked “Where do you keep your gun mate?” and when told I didn’t carry one said “Geesh... yer’d never catch me down ‘ere on the canal without one!”

Thus getting back to the story and Eldonian Village, it did turn out to be the most secure and tranquil mooring site I have ever stayed on. Chez ‘Stalag Edonia’ I suspect. Which is not surprising since it has a 10-foot steel fence around it with barbed wire and anyone anchoring inside cannot get out! Although it does have seemingly never used BW showers, loos and pumpout!

The L&L is linked to the dockyards by a flight of 4 monolithic Victorian locks which had fallen into disuse until they were rebuilt in 2007. These are operated by 4 of the most helpful BW staff it has been my pleasure to meet! But like most people from The North they only really want to hear the juicy bits of your life story! No wonder Coronation Street never runs out of ideas. The script must be written by someone in BW?

When you get to the bottom of this flight then you have a tiny BW map which is quite inaccurate and you are on your own! I mean these docks are BIG.... I mean BIG! Some of them are over a mile long and ½ mile wide!

Happily someone had the foresight to put a passage of orange floats for you to follow. Without those I would still be hunting for the exit. One of the biggest - Princes Dock - has 12 exits!!

I should explain I ‘know’ Liverpool... very well... once....! I was at university here from 1958-1962 and we practically lived on Pier Head! You could take your bird for an evening of passion on the Mersey Ferry for as long as you liked and for FREE as long as you did not get off in Birkenhead!! After all it cost 6d; that was a whole lunch in 1958! [For my younger Readers - an ‘evening of passion’ in those days was a cuddle, a kiss and a handshake!]

It was obvious that the city must have changed dramatically in 50 years but this was your REAL ‘Phoenix’ from the ashes of World War II. 

All the old bombed dockland buildings have been cleared and most of the 21st century architects given a slice of the Euro-dough that came from being the European City of Culture 2008 and what a fantastic job they have done of it!

Even the Link is really a joy to use! In the main it is a simple concrete V-shaped channel that runs for about 4 miles and joins the various docks but passes under Pier head except for one small section right opposite the ‘3 Graces’.

These are the wonderful mid-Victorian edifices of Royal Liver Building, Cunard House and Port of Liverpool HQ. A great photo-opportunity if it had not been torrenting with rain at the time!

Finally you pass through the ‘infamous’ Albert Dock that has all the bijou shops, clubs, pubs, fights and restaurants... although.... I have yet to see the word “restaurant” here because the ‘local’ word is.... “Canteen”.

They also have ‘The Liverpool Tate’ in Albert Dock which is described in it own literature as “A joyous Northern extension of the London Tate Gallery!” Great... really looking forward to visiting that? What do I find...? One Epstein sculpture and a single room with all the walls painted like a Dutch flag (3 horizontal stripes of red, white and blue) and entitled... wait for it.... “Chaos”! If that is Chaos then the artist must be the most exciting person in the world....?? I asked where to go for the Tracy Emin, Hockney maybe even a Lucien Freud? But no! That’s it!! A flag and a 5-ton block of marble!! At least they had the decency to return the price of my 'cappuccino' when it turned out to be a cup of cold brown water with scum on top! Come to think of it I should have put it on a stand in the Flag Room where “Coffee Waiting” would have been greatly admired!

The REAL delight was the excellent moorings in the nearby and very quiet Salthouse Dock. There are 32 floating pontoons of different lengths each with water and electrical point and - as I found out - a free wireless internet link! But there were a few ‘small’ problems...? I was the ONLY boat there in this enormous dock! The water is ‘not connected yet’; the electricity ‘has teething problems’ and ‘might be working later this week’, there is no rubbish bin for miles and it is possibly the windiest place on the planet! On top of all this - from 10 am to 4 pm - the Yellow Submarine (it is a yellow boat with wheels!) roars by every 15 minutes and puts up a tidal wave! However they have ‘got the message’ since I bellowed at the driver whose Scouse-laden reply failed to impress me!

But..... BIG “But...” the city is just fabulous! The natives are really friendly to the point where I have now taken to handing out small sheets with my life-story written thereon and managed to hurry away while they read it!?

But the Walker Art Gallery, St George’s Hall, World Museum and Pier Head are just ... excuse me... The Fab Four!

Anyway... I remembered where the Central Library was and now I have a large bag of brochures about everything this city has to offer me for the two weeks I am here...

I will tell you more when I have visited... the two magnificent cathedrals, my old university campus and The Court Bar in the exclusive Adelphi (“Victoria slept here”) Hotel where you could look at but not afford some of the amazingly beautiful girls that waited there 50 years ago although I forget what for!

As for the jellyfish…? They will be reporting next time!

This memory donated by Tony Newey (July 2009) MWYC