Hooptedoodle #468 - Another Nostalgia Trip - Football Safari

 Last week I visited Liverpool, with one of my sons. Although it is my home town, it had been six years since my previous trip there.

 

Tourist-style photo (not mine)

We had a very loose agenda; my son was keen to have a look around the dock area, and visit the football grounds; there were a few personal memories I wished to see again, I hoped to meet up with my last surviving relative in the area, and also - following my recent wargame based on the ECW siege there - I was keen to have a walk around some of the relevant sites from the 17th Century.

Let's start off with something of a spoiler: the weather was dreadful - torrential rain with very few pauses. We had to modify our plans quite a bit; we enjoyed some excellent (but very wet) walks, had some terrific evening meals (including a jovial dinner with the aforementioned relative!) and quite a few beers [I had a couple of pints of an ale called Titanic, which, as you might expect, went down very well]. Some of the proposed walks were shelved because we didn't fancy another trek through the monsoon, so the ECW sites were left in peace until another occasion (though we did look around the area that used to be the Pool, the inlet which served as a port in 1644 - subsequently replaced by Hanover Street, Paradise Street, Whitechapel). Eventually we ended the trip and returned home earlier than planned, partly because I had run out of dry walking gear!

On our drive home, the rain stopped somewhere near Wigan (maybe 40 miles from Liverpool river front), and it was a lovely sunny day all the way back to Edinburgh. Yes, quite.

One other result of the weather was that I took hardly any photos. Never mind. Where necessary, I shall borrow someone else's.

On the first full day there, we initially abandoned a hefty hike up the hills to see the Liverpool and Everton football grounds, but then - mostly because we couldn't think of anything else to do on such a wet day, and because we knew we could always give up if things got too bad - we did it anyway. We walked from the Pier Head, downstream (North) into a disused area of the old docks, and had a look at where Everton FC are building their new stadium, at Bramley Moore Dock. It should be ready for the start of the 2025/26 season, so it is to be hoped they will still be in the Premier League when this happens. How the economics will stack up if the home games are in the next league down, against teams like Plymouth and Bristol City (no offence), and the TV companies are not interested, remains to be seen. On the other hand, the fans may come pouring in if they actually start winning some games. We wish them well.

 

Bramley Moore Stadium, nearing completion

This part of the walk took us past some historic Port of Liverpool landmarks such as the old Stanley Tobacco Warehouse, which I knew of but had never seen close-up before. The Tobacco Warehouse was (maybe still is?) the biggest brick-built warehouse in the world. The fact that it is still standing, despite the best efforts of time and the Luftwaffe, is entirely due to the fact that it was built to be fireproof - which means bricks, masonry, and vaulted ceilings supported on cast iron pillars, no timber - and when the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board specified "fireproof" they were not messing about. More recently, the continued survival of so many of these old buildings is because no-one fancied the expense of trying to demolish the beggars, and there is now a big demand for them to be converted into riverside apartments, at fancy prices. My dad would have been astounded. 

 

Stanley Tobacco Warehouse, built in 1900 and still unmovable - you can buy a posh flat here if you fancy one

After we had a look at the Bramley Moore development, we cut inland, up Boundary Street and the hills leading up to Everton. Not much tradition left here; Everton was once the site of some of the worst slums in Europe, and there is a lot of modern housing up there now - much of it very attractive.

We got to Anfield (Liverpool's stadium), dripped dry for a while, had some lunch, and on a whim, because we found there were spaces on the afternoon session, paid for the official tour, which was a significant first for me, and a marvellous experience - recommended, even if you are not an LFC fan.

 

Son No.2 on the Anfield tour, enjoying a short break from the downpour

Subsequently, we walked through Stanley Park (which is lovely - a big surprise) to Everton's current ground at Goodison Park, which is looking very shabby these days - hardly surprising, since they will be moving out next Summer. As a schoolboy, I often went to Goodison (Everton were my number 2 team), and it was always an eye-opener. They were the big team locally (this is the 1960s), played in the old First Division (Liverpool were exiled to the Second for years), and benefited greatly from the ownership of the Moores family, who also owned Littlewoods Pools and the retail stores. Thus Everton had expensive players (many of them Scots, in fact), their ground was bigger, safer, better floodlit, more businesslike. I can also remember the ground being smartened up and made to line up with international regulations in preparation for the 1966 World Cup, and they were selected as one of the official venues for that competition. [In 1966 I saw Brazil vs Portugal (Brazil lost, and Pele was kicked off the park after about 20 minutes), and Brazil vs Hungary (Brazil lost again, and Pele was still injured)]

Time has not been kind to Goodison Park. The new stadium looks marvellous, so I hope Everton thrive there.

 

Interesting aerial shot of the old Goodison Park stadium, looking over towards the new site next to the river

We didn't attempt to enter Goodison - we were too tired and wet, so from this point we took the bus back into Liverpool city centre, and started to search out enough dry clothes to go out for dinner.