Instead of our normal foray's along the North Wales coast we opted for a change of scenery and decided to paddle on the River Mersey through Liverpool. Unfortunately the weather wasn't being that kind, and a fairly thick fog greeted us as we prepared to launch from Crosby Beach RNLI station.
Crosby is famous for the iron man sculptures by Antony Gormley. A hundred of these cast iron statues look eerily out to sea and provide an unusual feature to paddle through. Not sure if I'd be too keen on them if there was a lot of surf though!
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| Crosby Beach |
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| Graham approaches one of the sculptures |
We made our way along the beach and after a few kilometres we met the breakwater that marks the start of the Bootle docks. Work is ongoing improving the breakwater with what looks like a new berthing area and the dockside supports a number of large wind turbines.
Conscious of the shipping hazard we were checking in regularly over the radios with Liverpool VTS (Vessel Traffic Services) on VHF channel 12. There was little activity though because of the fog. We heard reports of the visibility from the vessels in the area and around the Crosby Channel it was "1 to 2 cables" (a cable is one tenth of a nautical mile).
We passed a number of large dock lock gates and the Victoria Tower and made our way down to the main Liverpool riverfront and the city docks. We were being carried along quite fast on the incoming tide as we took photos of the famous landmarks.
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| Victoria Tower |
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| The Liver Building |
Once past Albert Docks and the exhibition centre we were starting to think of somewhere to stop for lunch. This is not easy, as the whole riverfront is either docks or vertical walls. We ended up stopping on some steps near the Dingle Festival Park - the others used the steps and I had a quick leg stretch after mooring up to a vertical ladder.
I returned to my boat and ate a snack on the water. We then started to head back with the tide now on the ebb.
There was more shipping activity on our return - the fog had lifted slightly, and a big tanker headed out from the Tranmere side. We were twice mentioned over the radio by the VTS so we had to check in and report our position. We were on the east side of the river and a ship was about to leave Gladstone dock and they were concerned of our whereabouts. We paddled swiftly past the lock gates and reported that we were clear and shortly afterwards they opened the lock gates and the ship eventually passed us out in the channel.
With the swift tide it was not long before we were back on Crosby beach making our way past all the iron men back to our launch site.
30km paddled. We left Crosby at 11:15, with high tide Liverpool just after 2pm. We were off the water just after 4pm.
