Final walk

As we are scheduled to leave Liverpool tomorrow I wanted a final long walk through the last part of the city.  However before I describe that I though I’d share a self-explanatory photo with you.  Those of you following the blog of Paul on The Manly Ferry will know that recently he rescued a couple of dogs and then his latest post covered the acquisition of cheap drugs.  Now I understand why.

Sorry Paul…. It’s kiwi payback time! 

The route of today’s walk was south along the riverfront passing the various docks and eventually reaching the marina.  Not many narrowboats moored there, obviously it’s a plastic farm with aluminium sticks.  I like the way the developers have kept some of the history.  However I’m glad I was never required to wind the windlasses on these lock gates.

The working lock from the river to the marina was reached about halfway down the riverfront and I needed to cross the lock gates to continue south.

All the plastic stuff in the distance.

Eventually I headed east and then turned north when my eye caught what appeared to be a tunnel.  As I got closer I could make out the words SOUTHERN EXTENSION and 1896 above the arch.  Getting even closer I could see the word LORy even higher.  Not much of this made sense.  Why would a tunnel be located halfway up a cliff and why the small “y”.  Below are what appear to be a row of railway workshops.

Common sense suggested this must have been some type of railway facility.  But this didn’t explain the location of the tunnel.  I found the answer during my afternoon visit to Liverpool Museum.  From 1893 to 1956 Liverpool had an overhead railway (LORy) The railways had a number of innovative world firsts. It was the world's first electric elevated railway, the first to use automatic signalling & electric colour light signals and electric multiple units. The line was approximately 6 miles long running from Seaforth in the north to Dingle in the south.  The latter was an underground station.  One carriage and a section of the railway can be seen in the museum.

Two buildings were quite prominent on the skyline as I headed back north.  The first of the two is the more important.

It’s the former Higsons Brewery & Stables on Upper Parliament St.   Higsons have been brewing beer in Liverpool since 1780 moving to this site in 1914. The building is now Cains Brewery.

The second building is Liverpool Cathedral.  By volume this is the 5th largest cathedral in the world.

Upon getting closer and then entering the building I realised it wasn’t very old. It was actually completed in 1978.  The design of the cathedral was decided by competition with the winner being 22-year-old Giles Gilbert Scott, who was still an articled pupil working in Temple Moore's practice, and had no existing buildings to his credit. He told the assessors that so far his only major work had been to design a pipe-rack. The choice of winner was even more contentious with the Cathedral Committee when it was discovered that Scott was a Roman Catholic.

Not to be outdone, in 1930 the catholic bishop of Liverpool decided an equally magnificent new catholic cathedral was required.  It would be the second largest cathedral in the world. Liverpool had a large catholic population after more than half a million Irish had migrated to the city as a consequence of the potato famine.  Most of the cost of construction was paid by donations from poor working class Catholics (who probably couldn’t afford it).  Eventually the project became too costly and was abandoned.

Eventually I reached St John’s Gardens in the NE corner of the CBD where I spent some time walking around looking at the architecture of St George’s Hall, the Walker Art Gallery and the City World Museum.

On the pavement in front of the gardens is the memorial to the Hillsbourgh Disaster where 96 people were killed and 766 injured at a 1989 football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield.

The last stop was synonymous with Liverpool.  Although my initial photo was of the wrong building.

Aaaahhhh…. It’s the Cavern Pub.  Wrong building!

Got it right.