Sunday 21 May 2017

A Brief Trip to Liverpool

David went to Liverpool with his Photography Club a few weekends ago (okay - I admit it - back in April!) and I was invited.

We had a relatively casual trip there. We find we can’t do trips in a rush and need a couple of breaks to stretch and have a comfort break. We’re getting rather stiff. We went in my car and shared the driving. I don’t like driving David’s car.

We arrived on Friday afternoon. The hotel was pretty basic but okay. A number of the others had gone on trips within Liverpool during the day but while we had a couple of things planned if we had arrived in time, that didn’t work out.

Friday evening, we had a Turkish meal in a restaurant just a 15 minute walk from the hotel. That was a great meal! Originally, I hadn’t been going to drink as David wanted to take a night photo of the Liverpool skyline but we put that off to the following night as the meal was rather late in the evening so I was able to have some of their lovely Turkish wine. I really want to try to get some of that for home use.

On Saturday, we started the day by going to Crosby beach to see Anthony Gormley's ‘Another Place’ AKA The Iron Men. We wanted to get there as the tide was starting to go out. We spent a couple of hours there (it was very cold and windy! Sand got into all of our equipment - not good). I hadn't realised the statues were so spread out - a hundred over about 5 km I think. I think I got some of his message but probably not all of it.




Then we went in to Liverpool to explore a bit. Because it was so cold and windy, we decided against our Mersey Ferry trip. Years ago, over 40 years ago,  we had a trip across the Mersey and I was photographed wearing a yellow jacket. One of the photography themes for this field trip to Liverpool was ‘a touch of yellow’ and David wanted to try to recreate the photo. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find it before we left so that recreation will have to wait! I'm not sure the comparison will be flattering to my current self!

It had been a while since I last visited Liverpool and it has changed a lot. David was busy taking photos and we met up in passing with some of the others in the group. I decided I wanted to go to Abakhan Fabrics so walked through Liverpool sightseeing on the way - it was quite a distance and took me past quite a few landmarks. I’m not going into detail as that’s not really the purpose of today’s post.




I first visited another little fabric store on the same street and picked up a couple of metres of fabric suitable for making Joanne some new shorts. Black and floral georgette and plain lining (the shorts have two layers). Very good value.

Abakhan is big. I didn’t really have enough time to fully explore it but I wasn’t intending to buy much of anything for me anyway. I did buy a jacket pattern. The shop has a lot of crafts - I think it must cover anything you can think of! In the downstairs section, fabric is sold by weight and I saw (yes, and bought!) a piece of beautiful lime green microfleece which will be great when I come to make Ben a bigger gilet. Orange would have been nice but there was none of that. The fleece feels lovely.

I had arranged to meet David at 3.30pm so left and chose a different route to get back to our meeting place.

I walked a lot and my step count really increased that day! Over 25k. In the evening, again quite late, we had a Moroccan meal. This was a kind of banquet with lots of different dishes and bring your own wine. This time we really weren’t drinking as I took David through one of the tunnels to the eerily empty Ferry terminal at the other side of the river to allow him to photograph the skyline of Liverpool across the Mersey. The ferries stop running at about 6pm. His photographs came out quite well though were less colourful than he had anticipated - he had seen some photos of the skyline when there was special lighting.

By this time, we were both shattered and didn’t get back to the hotel until after midnight.

The next day was home time but we decided to go via Cheshire Oaks outlet village, yes a few miles out of our way but I had heard it was good. David got a jacket (have I mentioned he absolutely loves jackets and has quite a collection?) and shoes. Long time ago, he had a Jaeger jacket which he loved. It was expensive, even though bought in a sale, and was worn to death. This jacket reminded him of that, though it was a cheaper version. He has asked me to recreate his original jacket as close as I can. Unfortunately, the jacket was long before my sewing days and we don’t have it any more. I’ll see what I can do one day! Oh, and I didn’t buy anything other than a card for Dan for her wedding which was a couple of weeks later - now in the past, it was the bank holiday weekend at the start of May.

The photography club stops from now until September. I was invited again to the end of season presentation of prizes and an interesting talk and presentation of the Lifeboat Project. The photographs we took in Liverpool, because, yes, I took some too, aren’t presented until next year around this time. I did take some but thought I'd lost my camera or had it pinched so was without it for a while - it had been in the car in full view all the time! So most of my photos are snaps on my phone. I’m considering joining the photography club with David as it is nice to have a shared interest and my attempts to interest him in golf or bridge have failed! He’s more involved with my sewing, which is nice, though he still hasn’t used his machine. He's suggesting I buy a better camera but I'm not keen. I'd rather buy an embroidery module for my machine! I'll wait and see if I enjoy the club.

3 comments:

  1. Anne, what a lovely getaway! Unless we fly to the US and then drive somewhere there is not much to do for a getaway.
    It just sounded so pleasant.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Susan. Liverpool was nice. There are a lot of places we can go for a weekend including Europe. I fancy a break in the US and Mexico and Canada - not all in the same break though! That's a few breaks.

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    2. We have a lovely guest room...

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