Liverpool

From Nottingham we needed an early start as we could only get on-street parking in a ticketed zone for our beloved goat. We made tracks north to Sherwood forest where the Robbin Hood festival was on. Somehow I ended up as the volunteer in street theater for a 'fool', i was tempted to juggle his fire sticks, but decided it was poor form to show up the performer, even if he was playing a fool.


After watching Robbin Hood defeat the sheriff. We went to Liverpool via Manchester and the scenic snake pass through the peaks district.

Finding accommodation in Liverpool proved challenging - after finally getting the nottingham hostel computer at 1am I started the search and found everything initially booked out as expected. After checking a few more sites i found the "Beatles Brain Epstein Guest House" had room and was cheap.

It had a tenuous connection to the Beatles - the house was once owned by the grandparents of Brian Epstein manager of the Beatles, but that didn't stop them going to town on it, with photos all over the place of the Beatles and the name of the place itself. The reason it was so cheap and empty was that it was still being renovated - but other than a jet of water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom at one stage, this didn't really affect us and the people that ran it were very helpful (They were kiwi's of course).

The only other downside to the place was its location - right across the road from Anfield, soon to be old Anfield. All the houses surrounding it were burnt and vandalized after being abondoned to make way for the new stadium. Trying to find a pub that served anything more than larger and football also proved challenging.

During the next day we made it to the Beatles museum, the Tate Liverpool and had a good wonder round the city. Maybe we just saw the wrong side of the city, but it didn't seem that appealing.

Following that we had another early start to catch our Ryanair flight to Dublin. Nothing overly eventful happened, but that didn't stop ryanair playing an ear pitchingly loud trumpet sound on their arrival to gloat that they in fact had not delivered us to Dublin late.

Dublin seems pretty good so far other than their weird sports like hurling and constant drizzle. Tomorrow we're off to Belfast to catch some of the north. There is also the constant search for somewhere to stay in Edinburgh - it turns out the hostels fill up during the festival and doubly so on weekends.