and… back to St Mary’s Marina

We had a wonderful trip on Dipper – and are really sorry to vacate the lovely boat… however – Mark and Vic from the marina made us an extremely generous offer and have invited us for a complimentary weekend back out on Dipper, … because we weren’t at all bothered about the few days we had a problem with the alternator, which for us was all part of the adventure anyway! so – we’ll be back… Here’s a pic of Dipper’s signwriting reflecting on the shiny surface of Greyhound.

Back out into the countryside..

The route back to Rufford … remember the corn field? – well – the farmers had a busy weekend as it was all bailed up when we went past on our return journey…And the winter migrant starlings have started to arrive.and there are stil a lot of herons to see…

Beware of the low flying swans

just on our way out of Liverpool

Pride of Sefton

On the journey back up to Rufford we passed The Pride of Sefton, and The Pride of Sefton 2 – the boats that Frank, our skipper on Sunday, normally drives. Both Pride of Sefton’s are part of a charity that provides canal boat trips for disabled children and are all kitted out for this. You can see what is going on on this website 

 

 

 

Locked in with Greyhound

We accompanied Sarah and Andy on board Greyhound in the locks leaving Liverpool. Lovely signwriting on their boat – and 4 actual greyhounds on board. We really enjoyed chatting to them, and it turned out we had some friends and interests in common… small world. It turns out that Andy is Professor Synth, THE main man when it comes to mending analogue synthesizers… ace!… so we geeked out by asking Andy about all kinds of synths… hurray!

Leaving Liverpool

Well – we have not posted for a while, since returned from our adventures on Dipper, life has been a bit hectic… anyway – we realised we hadn’t finished uploading some pictures from the of our voyage out of Liverpool and back to Rufford.

For the morning we had a visitor on board Gerard Fleming – an enthusiastic photographer who knows a lot about the history of Liverpool. We were very happy to have him on board as he explained some really interesting facts about the docks and their history, and he was happy to be able to take pictures from the front of the boat as we cruised out of town.

Just a few facts absorbed from Ged’s fountain of knowledge… here is a picture of the tobacco warehouse at Liverpool’s Stanley docks, built in 1901, once the largest brick building in the world – it is still the largest brick warehouse in the world -

and we also learnt that this is a vent for the Mersey tunnel… rather than a retro, concrete space rocket.

The Olden Hinde Navigates The Rochdale Canal