Rolling on the river

The kids loved the air b&b in Liverpool. It was a cute house and right downtown, so it was really perfect for us. 

Amy and i walked to the store Monday morning and bought groceries and as much water as we could carry. We had to be out of the house by 11, but weren’t getting picked up until after noon, so we had all of our bags ready to go. 

The bombed out church was right in front of our house. St. Luke’s roof was completely damaged in the May blitz of 1941 and was never repaired. A few years ago an organization took over and now they host food trucks and concerts on the church grounds. I love that they are preserving history. 

We walked all around the neighborhood and grabbed lunch and then it was time to start on our next adventure. My dad took these pictures that could have been cute, but some of us weren’t quite ready. Like me, who had just taken a bite of food and Quinn, who was mid-blink. 

Another bomb shot. 

Alli and I worked on coordinating transportation out to the boat in Trevor for hours. It wasn’t easy and we compared scenarios and prices and it took forever. We finally landed on van rental going and train coming back. 

My dad loves his candids. At least adi was ready. 

It ended up being a 14 passenger minibus for our 10, which was so nice to have plenty of room to spread out. And don’t mind the missing Alli. 😂 That became a joke of our trip - why isn’t alli in the picture?!

You know when you’ve been planning something for a long time and you’ve researched and watched videos and thought about it and it finally happens? So cool to see what we’d planned!

Our boat guides suggested 2 people hear their directions and alli volunteered - it was always gonna be Matt and someone else and Amy and I were 😅 that Alli offered. 

We had gone into the office and the lady asked which route we were taking and we were like 🤷‍♀️. The website didn’t have a lot of information and all 3 of the girls had looked to try to figure out a route, but it really wasn’t clear how far we could go for the 4 days. Anyways, we bought a canal guidebook and she fast talked us through a route. I scribbled notes as fast as I could trying to understand her thick accent and without my glasses. There were several head scratch moments of “what does this mean?” as we navigated with our guidebook, but we figured it out. 

When the kids got wild we’d have Matt pull the boat over and make them walk. And then they’d be funny and hitchhike. 

We all walked a lot which was really nice. And Matt was in heaven. He loved driving the boat! Which was wonderful because that meant none of us had to. 

We had the longest boat at 70’, but with 5 rows of beds, there was not a lot of room for anything. So we all unpacked (there were drawers under beds), put smaller suitcases in bigger ones, and wedged the suitcases in the cabinets. I grabbed this shot as I unpacked the first day. 

Our first tunnel and we were all excited. And then we were like, oh, tunnels are kind of gross. They smell like gas and mold and there’s gross stuff hanging down. I walked this one, just to make sure no one came through the other side. 

Waiting for the boat to come out of the tunnel. 

The top speed was about 3mph, so she’s not a speedy vessel. 

So so so beautiful. Just like we’d imagined it. 

Still pinching ourselves. What a trip!

Welsh is the strangest language! How do you even make sense of that?!

Another tunnel, this time I hung out with Matt on the driving deck. You can see his hand there, and those doors are where you enter the back of the boat where dad and max slept. At night we’d pull the hatch and if we left the boat we’d lock it with a pad lock. 

Aqueduct! We were all excited about these, and they did not disappoint. 

We were nervous at first, but on the way back we walked this guy. 

Because I ❤️ pictures. 



We were all surprised when, after a few hours of canaling we came upon this Welcome to England sign. We thought we’d be boating through Wales but it turns out we spent most of our time in England. 

Our first day took much longer than we thought it would, I think we were going extra extra slow, and then we somehow missed Chirk, where we wanted to stop for the night. We found this hotel resort and after shocking them with our request for our party of 10 to eat dinner, we sat down to a delicious British tea (what the Brit’s call dinner). 

Delaney loves Pokémon so I find a lot of pictures like this. 

All fed and happy, Matt took the kids back to the boat while we settled our tab and spent time with our dad. 

We headed to bed around 9? 10? It was tough to sleep unless we were all trying to sleep because when anyone moved the whole boat moved. And the door to the bathroom was super creaky and loud and so was the flushing toilet, but if you didn’t flush it got stinky. Anyways, we had a fabulous first day of baiting!