River Mersey: Liverpool and Merseyside

Today, I caught a train to Liverpool, intending to rest my legs, and have a poke around in a few museums. This did not happen. Instead I walked north out of town, following the bank of the Mersey River as it progressed towards the Irish Sea. Mersey means "boundary river" in Old English, and the river served as the boundary between Mercia and Northumbria for along time. 

The walk along the Mersey was not as easy as yesterday's walk along the Dee, because the owners of actual functioning port docks don't like you walking through them, so a lot of it was through the shabby towns of north Liverpool and Everton. I saw the new stadium they have built for for Everton FC, who are nominally my English football club, although to be honest, I chose them when I was nine because I liked the colour blue, and have only vaguely stuck with them. I also went through the grimy town of Bootle, where Ringo Starr grew up, and I can see why he was considered to be the hard man of the Beatles, because it's a tough place, even now. Finally I reached my destination of Crosby, where I intended to go birding. Unfortunately I missed the turn to the actual birding site and instead walking along Crosby Sands, where there were no birds, but a lot of interesting sculptures by Antony Gormley, strung out along the beach. 

A train back into Liverpool took no time at all, and then I found myself wandering around on the famous Liverpool docks, looking for the Liverpool Tate Gallery. You can forgive me for thinking that it was in the huge warehouse with TATE written all over it, but no, it was in a black glass building about half a mile away, with no signage. The gallery was tiny and the art very bad, so I gave up on the docks, which are scenic but a bit overdone, and went to find the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played many of their first shows. 

The Cavern Club is on Matthew Street. There are now three other venues on the street, all called 'the Cavern something' (bar, restaurant, cafe), as well as bars called Rubber Soul and Sergeant Peppers, and many other nearby Cavern imitators and bandwagon jumpers. All of them have absolutely terrible live music blaring out. I was considering seeing music at the original Cavern Club but the sound from within was so bad I decided to move on. (The best sound by far was coming from the nearby Beatles karaoke venue - a hilarious Scouse version of 'Bat Out of Hell' by Meatloaf, sung by a woman who had clearly been drinking since about 9am...)

I went to Ropewalks, a better district, where there are many Irish bars, and not the lame kind we have in Australia. The nightlife there looked excellent, but I couldn't stay, and it's a Tuesday, anyway. So, after a trip to the 'bombed out' Church of St Luke's (the walls are still there, but there's nothing inside), I walked down Lime Street to the station and then got the train back to Chester. 

All in all it was a rather silly day, the first on my trip where I feel like I wasted it a bit, but, I did get a lot more walking in. About another 10 miles, today. During my daily phone conversation with Louise, she admitted she is extremely glad not to be having such random (and very tiring) experiences with me, and in a way, I am glad I am on my own here, because I can do whatever I feel like on the day, and I have no one to blame but myself if I have an ordinary day...