A Ramble around Liverpool

I did promise you a bit more about Speke Hall, Liverpool.  But that can keep for another day and first I shall tell you a bit about our journey there.  It might have been but a few miles but there was a fair bit of interest on the way.

Firstly we had to go through the Mersey Tunnel.  This is the ‘new’ tunnel (Kingsway).  Partner-who-loves-tea travels through bit at least twice a day on her way to work. 

We also passed the Pier Head.  The tall building on the left is one of the ventilation shafts for the ‘old’ Mersey Tunney (Queensway).

This is part of the Cunard Building, one of the Three Graces as the three main buildings of the Pier Head called. 

This is another of the Three Graces -  the Liver Buildings with the Liver Birds on top.

Any piece of waste ground is covered with Dandelions at this time of year.

At Wapping, near the Albert Dock there is a reminder of days gone by – a disused drinking fountain. 

 When I was young these could be found everywhere.  There was one embedded in the wall on our route home from prep school.  We would often stop for a drink on those hot sunny days we used to have back then.  I think those hot days were in a now forgotten season called ‘summer’!

There are, of course, a lot of places to consume alternative drinks on the way.  The dock road has always had plenty of pubs. This is the Baltic Fleet.

And the Coburg which, unusually has a sloping floor.  It is named after Coburg Dock, part of the South Docks of Liverpool, opposite which it stands.  Coburg Dock was opened in 1840 and I suspect the pub is not much newer.

I enjoyed reading the reviews of people who had visited this pub.  One commented – “It's difficult to see who would ever go to the Coburg of their own volition.”    

It is supposed to have Real Ale (in this case London Pride) but one reviewer said - "I paid another visit to the sloping Coberg the other day but their sole cask of London Pride wasn't on, so I had to make do with a half of wicked Tetley’s something or other, which I couldn't finish. To add insult to injury they don't have Sky, so they didn't have the England match on, so we legged it."  Do people 'leg it' in other paces or is that one of our peculiarly Liverpool expressions?

This is Menlove Avenue and we are just passing the tennis courts in Calderstones Park where – unknown to each other – both P-w-l-t and I played in our young days.  

It was lovely to see the fresh green of the trees as they were just coming into leaf.  We then passed the football pitches were Son-who-watches-films used to play football for his school.  Then there was the childhood home of John Lennon with the usual little crowd of sightseers outside.


On the way home we passed the Church of St Austin, Aigburth, built in 1838 and described by the Liverpool Mercury of July 1838 as 'a neat and commodious building in the plain Gothic style'. The church presents a bold face, with its large rose window and octagonal pinnacles, to Aigburth Road; it is surrounded by mature trees and a cemetery.

It is interesting to note that the church is still blackened with the pollution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Most of the city centre buildings were cleaned in the 1980s and 90s and no longer show the marks of the smoggy atmosphere of earlier days.

 (If I were Adrian I would do something magical and remove the lamp-post!)

This is St Anne’s Church of England Church.

Outside The Reach, furnished apartments near the city centre.  

And back, through the tunnel.

To The Wirral with its quiet corners.