Image courtesy of The National Waterways Museum 

As I got up today, upon looking out of the bedroom window, I saw that the cloud structure and light levels for that time of the morning were great… So after having a quick shower, grabbing a bite to eat, I was out with the lark so to speak, to travel to a favourite spot down on the River Mersey.

I was after an old Mersey Flat Boat… beached on the Mersey mud flats, but had to get out early so that the sun would illuminate the boat in the right position. I had looked at my Photographers Ephemeris some days earlier so knew the time and shadow cast to get a good shot.

The last of the Mersey Flats

Sadly… These boats are now of a bygone era. Abundant in the 1700-early 1900’s, these flat bottom boats, were agile enough to sale over the shallow mud flats, to pick-up and offload cargo to and from the City of Liverpool along the river. However, I personally do not know of any surviving working boats either in private ownership or in a museum, and the only ones to be found now, are the boats, beached on the mud flats of the Mersey… after there usefulness had passed.

an old Mersey Flat to Fiddlers Ferry

The new Mersey Gateway is now well under way…. up until now the only way of crossing the river (above ground) has been via the Runcorn Road Bridge and the old Runcorn Rail Bridge, which sit side by side. However a huge undertaking is now well under way, building a new bridge to span the Mersey. When complete… this will be a fare collecting endeavour, and they will close the old road bridge to make people use the new Toll Mersey Gateway Bridge… but the authorities plan to install toll booths to the old road bridge… so they’ll get us both ways in the end !!!

The new Mersey Gateway… well under-way.

As my time on the flats went on… I could see that the predicted storm clouds were on the horizon, so decided to make my way back to the car… but before I got to the car-park, I made a quick detour to visit the old Brick Kilns at Spike Island, once again these obsolete working kilns are no longer in use but when they were in use, they were used for the building of the Sankey Canal which terminates with a large Lock Gate to the main river, however, there are still working brick kilns to be found in the area…

The old Sankey Brick Kilns

The old Sankey Brick Kilns