Day 24: You'll never walk alone on the ferry 'cross the Mersey.....

Sometimes the perfect blogpost can be drafted and then it disappears into thin air, as has happened tonight.  I blame the Abbott government, the Cameron government and also bloody buggery BlogSpot.com, which I will never use again because they are as rubbish as TomTom satnavs, which will send you hurtling over a cliff if ever you make the mistake of taking them seriously. So, starting again from scratch.....

We said goodbye to One Fern Cottage, Back Passage, Lindale, Cumbria early this morning.

It had a lot of quirky                                                         
features, not least of which were the door frames            

which were ideal for anyone under 5 feet 6 inches,  bad luck for anyone taller.  Geoff got quite good at negotiating them,   
managing not to biff himself once on either doorframes or extraneous 17th century timber protuberances after the first day, when he concussed himself 12 times.

My only issue with Fern Cottage was the steps down and up to various rooms.  The bathroom was a challenge because once you'd stepped down into it, the floor sloped at such a steep angle that you sprinted towards the toilet whether you wanted to or not.  Handy on some occasions, less so on others.







We loved Coombria and we loved our cubby in Back Passage, Lindale. We grew very fond of our neighbouring rescue Greyhound, who we called Rowdy, and who greeted us everyday with nose boofs and tail wags.  We made a donation to the UK Retired Greyhound Trust in honour of Rowdy and I think his foster mum thought we were a bit of all right.   We thought she wasn't a bad old stick either.  Stupidly we took no pictures of Rowdy. But just imagine a lovely, chocolately, lean, muscular, blokey Greyhound.  That's him. He only came off the track a month ago.  In Australia he'd have had a bullet in him by now.

There's a big chunk I wrote that I can't now remember - you will just have to trust me that it was witty and insightful, and possibly worthy of some sort of literary award.  Ah well. It's gorn now.   But we did find this extraordinary beach at the end of our street in Hoylake, Liverpool.  The sand is fine-grained and not dissimilar to a Sydney beach and if you walk along it towards the water for at least half an hour, you will eventually come to the Irish Sea. 

We met these delightful Staffy crosses (sibling rescues) being given the once-over by a poofy Schnauzer. There were heaps of dogs having a splendid arvo on the sand, that just went on forever.





Not a great pic but intended to give some idea of how the sand goes on forever.  A local told us it takes half an hour to walk to the water. Not visible in the photo are at least a hundred wind turbines out in the Irish Sea.  Top job, Liverpool! Love your work. xxx


Tired and ready for bed now. Not even going to read Geoff's bit, which was miraculously unscathed whereas mine all disappeared into the ether.  Expect to be more sparkling and jolly tomorrow!                                                             













And another (this the building that defines the Liverpool docklandsscape (I just made up this word):

 

We wandered around Albert Dock, which is the centre of the historic part of the port of Liverpool.

 

 

... and did part of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which had a number of interesting exhibits including the history of migration from Liverpool to the colonies, notably Australia.  We thought it was really interesting, and well worth a visit.

A couple of things I need to add about the beach at Hoylake, that Anne has referred to above.  It's one of the most extraordinary places I've seen.  The 'beach' is seemingly endlessly wide.  We met a local couple walking their dogs who told us that it would take about half an hour to walk out to the waterline. So we took their word for it.  And in some places the sand is actually quite nice.

Following this modest nature ramble, we did the only sensible thing and returned to our digs at the Green Lodge at Hoylake, where a modest few tipples were enjoyed by all.