Many positive surprises during a transport day... Including summer weather and Scooby Doo.
The Carlens were on the move again. Farewell to Wales and back into England again. The direct drive from Rhos-on-Sea to Liverpool would have only been slightly longer than 1 hour. Hence, we took the scenic coastal route wherever we could rather than North Wales Expressway.
Here is a final look back onto Colwin Bay. Bye, it was fun while it lasted.
We drove through a town called Rhyl which was something else. For a start, we have not seen this many mobile homes in one place since... probably the US. Secondly, their other main business seems to be... amusement arcades. Here are a few examples... The shop staff were setting up their rides around 10.30am... which probably means that no punters would have slept through and recovered from last nights drinking yet.
On the beach side, the was a... Hmm... "Fun Fair"...
Although it did not look that fun...
In fact, Di dubbed it "The Haunted Amusement Park" in the spirit of Scooby Doo.
All these British seaside places have a promenade along the water. Here is Di along Rhyl's promenade with the beach behind her... At least during low tide. Again, no swimmers. In fact, hardly anyone anywhere. Spooky.
Rhyl is a poorer seaside town - as we looked into one of the side streets we saw a tattoo parlor next to a "Cash for clothes" shop. There was also a huge McDonalds there. So, we soon moved on. Rhyl was a bit depressing to spend too much time in.
After a bit of further driving, we came across a craft market which was advertising a cafe. Why not? We parked and got ourselves a cuppa from this demountable barrack. They were building a new cafe facility next door and in the mean time, this was it. Cheap and cheerful though.
Something peculiar happened there though... A cafe knife accidentally slipped into our bag. This turned out to be quite useful as we've been missing a cutlery knife for some time. A real Costa Concordia moment...
After a bit of further driving, we spotted this along the water's edge of the river Dee through the woods. What was it? We had to stop to check it out, of course. More Scooby Doo? The "Graffiti Ghost Ship"?
There was a Sunday country market on nearby so we stopped in their car park, near Mostyn, and we soon found the story behind the Duke of Lancaster ship in one of the market sheds.
The Duke of Lancaster used to be a "funship" and was planned to be a hotel when it was put in dry dock here, although that never eventuated. A poster from a bygone era...
We wandered across to the Duke of Lancaster to explore it a bit further. The ship had clearly seen better days, but the graffiti was quite impressive.
The mandatory self portrait in front of the "funship"...
When we left the area, we met two young ladies who were going to check out the Duke of Lancaster after seeing it featured on TV in the "Coast" program. Actually, they called the TV program "Coast to Coast", but our subsequent research clarified it for us. Here is a link with more details:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/imagesofwales/5971027375/
We liked this cute little boat in the canal next to the Duke of Lancaster and think it had been afloat more recently than its neighbour.
Back among the market stalls...
Di was almost drooling when she checked out the meat prices from this meat truck. You got a lot of meat for your money here.
After buying a couple of small things and some bargain fresh fruit, we were on our way again, leaving Wales and driving into England. Being Sunday lunchtime, we had set our thoughts towards a roast lunch. We found it in Neston at the Brewers Arms pub.
The pork roast that we both ordered was very nice. Good pricing too. You may see the price on the blackboard behind Hans, £6.25 for roast only, £7.95 if you want a dessert to go with it. The roast was sufficient for us as it was a lot of food on the plate.
After lunch, Di went away to use the pub's facilities... And almost got locked in. The offending door can be seen in this picture. No door handle and the door could only be closed and locked with a bit of force. No obvious way back out. No reason to worry though. Di used her Houdini skills, and after several attempts, is still with us...
Again, instead of taking the straight route to Liverpool, we circled the Wirral peninsula bordered by River Dee on the west, the Mersey to the east and the Irish Sea to the north as can be seen on this map.
We stopped in West Kirby to check it out...
And we were glad that we did... We parked the car, walked a short block to the waterfront and saw this... People walking "on water"...
We had to check it out, but first another self portrait along the promenade in West Kirby on this almost summery Sunday. Bare legs, flip flops and shorts were in abundance. Jeans for us...poor planning.
We just had to take another photo, it just looked so weird with the people walking across water.
It turned out that there is walkway almost at sea level around an artificial lake. The lake is probably dredged down to some level as the surrounding coastal waters here were very shallow. The lake seemed to be used mainly for young people to learn sailing and sea skills. However, swimming was not allowed, and beware, a hidden danger is lurking down there somewhere... No, we had never heard of weever fish either and that it can "ambush"...?
OK, we thought the breakwater walkway around the artificial lake was very cool so here follows several pics of it...
Hans "playing chicken" with the water...
He's not the Messiah...
The water was ebbing towards low tide so we managed to keep our tootsies dry.
The local watercrafts were mainly stored on the southern side of the lake. It looked like "Sail-ability" had set up operations here as we saw at least three wheelchairs on land and this tool, like a hoist, on the left which is probably used to help the disabled people to get onboard.
Well, being such a gorgeous autumn day, we just had to have an ice cream after completing the 2km or so strolling loop "on water". Di is getting into the goodies...
It was time to find our way into Liverpool. The owners of the Old Dairy Inn actually called us to check what time we would be there as the place is not consistently manned and there were special instructions for the gate and entry.
So, we headed east, took the "tunnel... under the Mersey" (with apologies to Gerry and the Pacemakers) and found our street after some 10 minutes or so of more driving. This is Kempton Road where the Old Dairy Inn is located behind the row of houses to the left a bit further in.
The streetscape looked very Liverpool to us.
We drove through some black iron gates and were met with this. The reception is in the garage to the left and the roller door is only for decoration. This is a quirky place. And we loved it instantly.
The inside of the Old Dairy Inn is very modern and has a unique hostel / hotel mix. We had a private room with facilities and also kitchen facilities. Breakfast is not included, but you could buy that for £4 per person extra. We decided we would use the facilities with our own supplies, and probably cook at least one dinner as well (not today though, we made up a couple of warm croissants for dinner as we already had a cooked roast meal today). Our room...
Now, we checked in, but didn't stay very long in our room. A big game of football today, a Manchester derby between City and United was due to start at 4pm. We asked the owner for a local pub with Sky TV and he pointed us to this place, the Wellington, on Picton Road.
TV screens everywhere, so we ordered drinks and sat down to watch the game with the locals. One old local gent chatted to Di (she does attract them...she had one at lunchtime too) about his family in Brisbane and his visits to Oz. He also gave her a tip not to walk further eastwards down Picton Road tonight. Nothing there, not good...not somewhere for after dark.
Terrible. Absolutely terrible... City was up 2-0 by halftime and after 50 minutes or so it was 4-0. Hans couldn't stay (it was awful to watch) so we left and walked back to the Old Dairy Inn. We saw later than Man United lost by 1-4 after a late Wayne Rooney goal. Not good enough, Moyesy.
Now, even if our street looked good including the houses, the Wavertree area of Liverpool is not fashionable and it looks like a long way from gentrification. Apart from pubs, only bottle shops and pizza joints seemed to be open and all shops had their roller shutters drawn. Lots of litter on the streets too. Not classy.
There were a couple of these kind of buildings... No, we will take the advice and not wander the streets here after dark.
We spent the rest of the evening in our room, researching Liverpool things to do. We booked ourselves into a walking tour for tomorrow with the same grouo who ran the good one in Edinburgh.
For now, it's good night from us...
Footnote: But not before a little bit of bragging...
Di has been in contact with "The Walking Englishman" and submitted a walk that we did on Friday 13 Sep. Our synopsis has now been published and is available to a larger audience. Cool, hey?
http://www.walkingenglishman.com/lakes49.html
Our blog for that day...
http://awaycarlen-gapyear2013q3.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fri-13-sep-keswick-lake-district-england.html
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