A shorter day, and a princely one, but only because it was Rainier. At least it was almost all car-free and, like yesterday, involved a lot of promenade paths with me gazing at the water. Much of it this time landing on my head in the form of heavy showers.
Anyway, after a quick bit of sightseeing – ie parking my bike on a half-timbered historic street only to be photobombed by a bin lorry – I left Chester westwards on the excellent tarmac commuter path to Neston and Parkgate.
The Parkgate area is quite salubrious, with a parade of fine period buildings overlooking the shores back to Holywell, where I was yesterday. It began to throw it down with rain so I decided to sit it out in the waterside cafe, the Elephant Lounge, a bustling and likeable place with good coffee and cakes.
Unfortunately one thing was becoming clear, namely that the weather wasn’t going to be. At least not anytime soon. Reluctantly I squelched and splashed along bumpy muddy railtrails, wet puddly prom routes, and waterlogged tarmac paths. At least I’d cycled this way before, in sunnier times, so knew what I was missing.
Eventually I got to New Brighton, sodden, and the rain stopped. Stopping briefly to admire the statue of a colourful mermaid, who was smiling in a rather unsettling way as if enjoying some private joke after a very large spliff, I could glide down the prom path south to the ferry terminal at Birkenhead.
The Ferry Cross the Mersey, as well as being an irritatingly overplayed song, is now a sightseeing experience rather than a commuter shuttle, at least in my afternoon experience. To get across to Liverpool’s famous skyline, only ten minutes’ sail away, took three quarters of an hour, steaming up the estuary and then back down, with views of various things accompanied by a recorded guide.
It was OK, but at a fiver-plus for the unwantedly long traverse, I could sympathise with UNESCO, who renounced the waterfront skyline’s world heritage status in 2021 because of unsympathetic overdevelopment.
I had some disappointments in Liverpool. My two art gallery targets proved frustrating: Tate Liverpool is closed for refurbishment and its two tide-over exhibitions in nearby RIBA were a bit A-level-project-grade-C, I thought. The Walker Gallery should have been a place to spend a few hours, but despite big banners saying OPEN AS USUAL it was shuttered up because of strike action, ie inaction. Even the Bombed Out Church – which has been preserved roofless since the Luftwaffe bombed it in World War II – was locked up, again despite banners claiming the contrary.
The Philharmonic Dining Rooms was, at least, open. It’s a very ornate late-Victorian pub, full of polished wood and brass and stained-glass windows, and a marble gents’ toilet of comical luxury. And, conveniently, it’s on Hope St, between Liverpool’s two iconic cathedrals, one Catholic, one Anglican.
The Catholic Cathedral is, like Liverpool’s museum staff today, striking. Completed in 1967, it looks like a spaceship, or perhaps a midwest US church built by massive private donation, or maybe even a monumental Central Asian yurt – it’s apparently dubbed locally ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’. Nice, but rubbish cycle parking.
Slightly better cycle parking down the other end of Hope St at the Anglican Cathedral. This is ‘Liverpool Cathedral’, built between 1904 and 1978 on a design by Giles Gilbert Scott, to name but three. It’s the largest church or indeed religious building of any kind in Britain, the eighth-largest church in the world, and the longest cathedral in the world.
It also has the largest bell tower in the world. Which makes a change.
In contrast to St Trillo’s (capacity six, floor area 88 sq ft) Liverpool Cathedral can admit up to 3,500 people and cover over 104,000 sq ft: in other words, it’s something like a thousand times bigger.
Liverpool Cathedral inside is like, well, a very very big cathedral. Outside it’s like, well, a very very big cathedral. A bit dark, a bit gloomy, a bit overbearing, a bit, um, stodgy: the Taj Mahal it ain’t.
But still, it made a fine terminus to my Churches Ride: a memorable ecclesiastical showcase, and a super ride along mostly car-free, stress-free paths. Britain has 40,000 churches, and I’d gone from the Smallest to the Biggest. Compare that to Britain’s 4,000 pubs… hmm, maybe I feel another ride of extremes coming on…
Miles today: 35
Total miles from St Trillo’s to Liverpool Cathedral: 85