First day of out 2 day booked trip to Liverpool. BW opened Bridge 9 at the start for us and then met us to open Bridge 6 and that was all they had to do. From what we can gather it is something to do with the locals complaining that they get held up when all these thousands of narrow boats keep opening the bridges!!! We were the only boat going on this stretch today
and there were just 4 coming out who were all together. So that would have stopped traffic for not very long....still there may be another reason that we are unaware of...anybody reading this may be able to enlighten me......
We stopped at the reported last place to empty loos and water at Litherland. Petroc had a bath which was long overdue. This was partly due to the weather and also trying to find a water point where we were not holding anyone else up whilst we had a mini spring clean.
I did do my fair share but Geoff decided to take a picture during coffee break.
Further along we spotted this strange edifice on some waste looking land that said it was a marina. There were people sitting on blue striped deck chairs having coffee so maybe it was!!
Reached Eldonian Basin which is where we night stop. As advised we reversed into the basin to make life easier in the morning. Geoff got off ready to take lines as is our normal practice but then I discovered that the mooring was on the other side so I went across and Geoff said he would walk around. I continued to skilfully reverse (with only a tad of bow thruster!) and lost Geoff. Moored up and discovered he was marooned on the other side with no way of getting across as my side was completely fenced in. Eventually discovered a small gate which our handcuff key opened and I could let him in.......
There were two narrow boats there when we arrived but surprisingly for narrowboaters were not very chatty. They left soon afterwards so we were not able to glean any good gen from them for the day ahead.
Geoff left to explore Liverpool and I sat on the stern in the sun. My afternoon was livened up by a police chase at the end of the basin. A car roared up hotly pursued by a police car. Both stopped and a man got out of the first car and ran off swiftly followed by one of the policeman. A helicopter then appeared overhead and appeared to be co-ordinating the chase. It remained there for at least half an hour but we shall never know if they caught their prey or not.......I hope so because the helicopter must have used a lot of fuel!!!
Now ready for the next step tomorrow which is the run down through all the docks.
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