Wet, Wild and Wonderful!

 Saturday 5th August 2023 in Salthouse Dock, Liverpool.

On Friday evening, "Robert" from the C&RT came to see us at Litherland and asked us to be at the top lock of the Liverpool Link at 9:00am Saturday morning, so we started off well before 8:00am on Saturday to travel the four miles to the top lock. Wouldn't you know it, the weather was absolutely dire and the rain was falling hard. Storm Antoni had arrived. What a day to have chosen for this challenging journey!

Robert and several other volunteers were there waiting for us, some at the top lock and others at the bottom, bringing three narrowboats up the flight of four locks. The locks are wide and each are about 12ft deep so it was brilliant to have the volunteers to help. They, and we, were getting absolutely soaked in the rain. That is Robert on the right winding the paddles. What a hero!

Half way down, we met the first boat coming up.

At the bottom of the flight, Robert briefed us where to go and said that he would meet us at the first of the two other locks that we have to go through.

On our left as we left the flight stood the old tobacco warehouse. This massive building is reputed to be the largest brick building in the world, containing over 27 million bricks! It is hard to imagine how much tobacco it must have contained.

That massive building is now being converted into apartments. Certainly "Dream Big". The particulars say that it will make 550 large "Manhattan Loft Style" apartments!

As we proceeded, we have to pass under several bridges and three tunnels. This is the second bridge that sits between Stanley Dock and Collingwood Dock and, like most of the other bridges, it is very low. It is a large lift bridge and M decided that she didn't want to work it; she's had quite enough of lift and swing bridges this trip! Luckily, we passed underneath it with room to spare.

Beyond that bridge were dozens of canoeists settng up to play canoe paddle ball - like football but played with canoes and paddles. They totally ignored us, so we had to be careful to avoid them.

In the distance is the Victoria Clock Tower on the breakwater between the Salisbury Dock and the River Mersey. Our instructions were to go right up to the tower and then turn left...

On to "Sids Ditch" ("where is the apostrophe?" asked M indignantly). This old dock had been filled in and Sids Ditch was later cut through its edge as part of the Link. The name is a tribute to Sid, who is the person in charge of the Link for the C&RT.

At the far end of Sids Ditch, we came into Central Dock and the famous Liver Building came into view for the fiirst time.

The pedestrian bridge into Princess Dock was really low with these underslung supports, which we carefully steered between.

Robert met us at the Princess Dock Lock, which dropped us down about three feet and we then had to negotiate three tunnels. The third tunnel actually goes under the Liverpool Museum.

Again, the headroom in the tunnels is very low, only about seven feet or 2.1 metres. As MM is only six feet hgh, it wasn't a problem.

After going through a flood lock (about 6") with Robert's help, we thanked him and continued into Mann Island Dock and then turned right into Canning Dock before turning left into the famous Albert Dock next to Tate Liverpool, another former warehouse.

Our final bridge from Albert Dock into Salthouse Dock, our home for the next week. Hooray!

The pontoon to which we had been assigned was occupied, so we moored in the first free one with a great sigh of relief.

It turned out that we were next door to nb "Caress of Steel" and close to nb "Hirondelle", both of which we had met up with last month. Great to see old friends again.

What an incredible experience and what a wonderful way to enter the City of Liverpool! Our trip was only slightly marred by the fact that it constantly poured with rain and battered us with icy winds. This was the edge of storm Antoni, the first named storm of the year (in August!). By the end of our trip everything that we were wearing was drenched and had to be hung up in MM to dry.

We were also frozen so both of us had hot showers to try to warm up. As we had not stopped for breakfast, dry clothes and food were the order of the day. As the rain had eased and the weather improved, we walked back to Albert Dock, which is surrounded by restaurants, bars and coffee shops. We found an excellent Thai restaurant and warmed ourselves with a pair of Pad Thais.

In a warm, happy glow, we started to walk back to MM, only to be caught in another massive downpour, so we got soaked yet again. On MM, all we could do was hang up more wet things and turn the heating right up!

None the less, what a truly fabulous day and what a brilliant experience. It was all that we had been told to expect - and more.

Today: 5 miles, 6 locks and 2.7 hours.

Trip: 132 miles, 66 locks and 72.0 hours.