Day 12: Aintree to Liverpool.

Saturday 18 July.

We left the Premier Inn at 9am and we were back on the canal at 9:15am, with only 8 miles left to go. A short walking day, sunny but windy. At times a little too windy.

Just a correction to an earlier post. What we saw previously, on the other side of the canal were probably bullrushes not bamboo. We saw some close up today.

The walk into Liverpool was one of contrasts. The canal was both dirtier and cleaner than we had seen   before. The water was cleaner, you could see the bottom of the canal, but the litter in, and beside the canal was at times atrocious.

We also  had to watch our footing today as canine faeces were more of a problem. We didn't notice any council bins for bags of dog droppings and as a result bags of faeces could be found hanging in trees and on fences. There may have been bins but they were not obvious.

You now might be thinking yuk, why continue, but actually in general the walk beside the canal had a rural and clean feel, even within a few miles of the city centre. It's one of the better features of the city and only needs a little care and attention to keep it really beautiful. We met a couple, Len and Imelda who were trying to do just that. Even their dog, Flash probably made the odd contribution.

 2

They cleaned the bank between two bridges and they really made a difference! It just needs a few more like them. There are more 2,000,000 people in Liverpool.

The bridge numbers counted down from Leeds 231, 230 etc but at times you get numbers like 99a, 99aa, 99aaa where new bridges have been added since the canal was built. In some areas they are numbered 99a, 99b, 99c instead. This morning just before lunch, at a Costa Coffee in Bootle, we passed under the "Hamlet Bridge". It could have been numbered 2b or 2aa. 

2B or not 2B, that was the question.

The contrasts remained as we approached the end of the canal but the area around the flight of locks was almost pristine. I've appended a series of photographs in the order taken. 

The end of the walk was a bit of an anticlimax as we could find nothing that marked it. Perhaps there was something but we didn't find it. 

The walk into Liverpool had a much more rural and less urban feel than we expected. It was just the abundance of litter that marred it.