After our overnight stop it was time to get ourselves to tomorrow’s rendezvous point with the C&RT team who would ‘chaperone’ us into Liverpool tomorrow. It’s was only a 6 mile journey today but there were 5 swing bridges to operate on the way and each one of them had a different method of operation much to Joy’s dismay. They ranged from footbridges which you simply pushed round to fully automated ones with flashing lights and barriers to stop the traffic and hydraulic operation all by pressing a couple of buttons after unlocking them with a special ‘BW’ key.
We saw this fellow on the way, is it a cormorant?
On the way down we passed a couple of anglers who had just caught a huge carp (so they told us) and were taking photos, so we snapped them too.
At Maghull we stopped for lunch and took the opportunity to visit the nearby Morrisons, it was then just an hours cruise down to our destination for today. At Holmes Swing Bridge we caught up with two guys on another boat who waved us through and advised us to moor up there.
“It’s right scally country further on, down there” they said, “Take it from us, we’re Scousers born and bred!”
Although there were a good number of walkers passing by, it was a peaceful enough spot right enough and we had an early night ready for an 8 am start tomorrow and declined our neighbours’ recommendation of the Bootle Arms which was just 5 minutes walk away.