Ted and I met Stella and Gary on the first leg of our 21/22 World Cruise, the leg from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles. When our itinerary was completely changed, it being the first cruise after the pandemic, they decided not to continue, and returned home to England, but the connection we’d made continued via social media.
We’d always hoped to reconnect in England on later travels. Sadly, the world and Stella lost a wonderful human when Gary lost his battle with cancer last year.
While we missed seeing Gary one more time, we felt really fortunate to be able to spend time with Stella as part of our “Liverpool experience”. Her home turf is across the river in Merseyside in The Wirral (how those who live there refer to The Metropolitan Borough of Wirral), which meant we had a choice of train, bus, or the “Ferry Cross the Mersey”.
As Merseybeat fans it was a no-brainer.
Clearly the ferry service knows its demographic, because there was a wonderful mural in the terminal.
The Mersey Ferry is the most colourful we’ve ever seen.
We learned that the fabulous paint job is a design by Sir Peter Blake, who created the album cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and a 2015-16 project called “Everybody Razzle Dazzle”, which commemorates 100 years of camouflaging British warships with designs called “dazzle”.
We got some lovely views of Liverpool and Merseyside from the vantage point of the river.
More dazzling than the ferry’s paint job was our friend’s smile waiting for us at the Seacombe Terminal.
Stella had a wonderful Merseyside day planned for us, beginning with a tour of Port Sunlight Village, which deserves a post of its own and so will be the next Episode.
I’ll skip right to our Sunday roast pub lunch at The Magazine, so named because for many years this location was where ships had to drop off any ordnance they were carrying before proceeding to the Liverpool Docks. That measure was intended to safeguard the docks from explosions.
A delicious lunch, and cider (of which I am becoming perhaps too fond) was followed by a wander through Vale Park, with its charming quirky art installations.
But it’s not all trolls and pirates; there are wildflower meadows too.
Our destination via the park was the New Brighton promenade and the mural project.
New Brighton has miles of sandy beaches which line the Irish Sea and mouth of the Mersey, and boasts the UK’s longest promenade. Those things made it an incredibly popular seaside resort from the Victorian era right through until the 1960s. It once boasted a tower, a ballroom, a theatre, an Art Deco open-air saltwater swimming pool that was part of the largest lido in the UK. It’s the stuff of countless BBC period dramas and Agatha Christie novels, and yet today the area is largely neglected as a tourist destination, with a massive Morrison’s supermarket where the lido once was.
The Georgian row houses that almost all used to be B&Bs for seaside vacationers are now inexpensive homes in a town waiting in vain for gentrification.
Fort Perch Rock is a coastal defence battery built between 1825 and 1829, and fortunately never needed. For a while it was open as a tourist attraction, but is no longer accessible since the plumbing serving it was damaged when portions of the beach were paved to create a parking lot. Suddenly I’m hearing Joni Mitchell in my head.
The fact that there are no photos of the beach or lighthouse speaks to the fact that Ted was more tired than I realized. It was time to head back to Liverpool and rest up for another interesting day tomorrow.
Rose and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 