Narrowboat Serafina: Touring Liverpool

I've just finished off a long cruising day by our standards. We are currently moored at Bangor's Green Visitor Moorings after leaving our Liverpool mooring at 7:45 this morning. That's around eight hours, most of it cruising but there's also a considerable amount of waiting time too. We knocked over the six locks coming out of the docks, cruised to the Services at Litherland, filled the water tank and grabbed a few things from Tesco to fill in a bit of time before heading for Bridge 9, the first CART operated swing bridge which they opened up early for us at 12:45 instead of 1pm. The other CART operated swing bridge is Bridge 6 and there was an additional six swing bridges to do with another boat, all with different operating procedures. Why so far? Rain is predicted all day tomorrow which I don't fancy cruising in.

We spent six days at Salthouse Dock, we initially booked four days and managed to get a two day extension to do a couple of more walking tours and also a chance to spend a few days with Sylvie and Michael from NB Chartwell. I've posted a selection of photos from our time in Liverpool.

Strolling around the Cavern Quarter

Checking out the Cavern Club with an old friend

The Fab Five! I should have worn a suit!

Mersey Ferry Terminal

The Mersey

Chinatown and the Imperial Gate, the largest outside China

We took a cruise on the Mersey; The River Explorer Cruise, and got off at Woodside to take in The U-Boat Story. We spent around an hour going over a recovered WWII German U-Boat U534 recovered by a Dutch salvage company and sold to the British. The boat has been cut into five lengths to give visitors an idea of what happened in each section. It was amazing to see that so much could be packed into such a small space, the boat 77m long x 7m beam (approx) with 48 crew and 22 torpedoes just to start.