From Breakfast to Firefighting Cadets.

 Saturday 12th August 2023 in Liverpool.

We were due to leave Liverpool this morning but, as the leak at Burscough will not be repaired until at least 19th August, we are staying on for an extra couple of days and are now due out on Monday.

Towering above MM and Salthouse Dock is the Hilton Hotel, built on top of the "Old Dock" that we visited earlier in the week. In walking past the hotel yesterday, M noticed that they offer a buffet breakfast to non-residents for just £10 per head. 

It's all of two minutes'walk away so we decided to try it this morning and walked across the road into the very plush lobby.

The breakfast was brilliant with a vast array of hot and cold food, fruit, cereal, pastries and as much tea and coffee as you wanted. We spent a very happy hour or so eating our fill.

In Salthouse Dock, an historic diving club was doing a demonstration with original old diving equipment. They were suiting up club members in all the gear and then sending them to the bottom so that they could experience what it was like to dive in the old days. The next person in the queue was a young lady who looked far too small for the suit!

They had a safety diver to go down and keep an eye on them and were happy to explain all the equipment. The suit alone weighed 190 lb (86 kg) and the wearer had to be helped to get up, sit down or move.

Dan, R's son-in-law, is an ardent Everton supporter and today Everton was at home playing Fulham in their first match of the new season. We found out which train Dan was on and so walked up to meet him and his friends, John and John, at Lime Street Station. Dan was really surprised to see us, it was great to see him and to meet the two Johns. Sadly, Everton lost 1-0, so they were probably not so happy on the return journey!

In one of the old warehouses surrounding Albert Dock is the "Tate Liverpool" museum, which has a temporary exhibition dedicated to J M W Turner. M very much likes his work so it was a "must".

There were a dozen or so of his large paintings, mainly some of the more abstract seascapes. He clearly preferred wind, waves and storms to calm seas!

What was quite remarkable was the fact that there were 16 of his notebooks or sketchbooks on display; these were full of beautiful sketches, drawings and watercolours. Talking to one of the staff, we said that it was a pity that you could only see one image from the open page of each notebook. He said that beside each book was a QR code and if we scanned that we could see every page of the book!

What a great idea. The image below was our favourite, drawn about 1801 and with the QR code we were able to see the one before (above) and after (below), which look as if they were done at the same time and recording a rather disastrous attempt to launch or beach a boat.

Does this mean that they managed to save the boat, or was this a different one? We weren't sure.

As we walked back from the Tate, we saw this National Fire Cadet Competition taking place on the quay. This is a three day competition and this appeared to be practice runs with the main competition tomorrow. These two teams of cadets came from Oxfordshire (in red) and Cheshire (in blue).

They had to perform a series of tasks including running out hoses, hooking up a pump and running over and across obstacles.

Finally, they had to use a hand stirrup pump to fill a bucket by squirting water through a small hole while other team members had to tie a series of knots correctly.

There were teams from all over the country and it was great to see so many young people,including girls, enthusiastically taking part.