Strangely Sunken

Chaplin loves to dance! I swear that music is in his bones. Toxteth Lifestyles Centre had advertised a Funky Tots dance drop-in class today. I asked Chap if he would be interested in getting his grove on and he said yes. So off we went, and only got lost once. It was NOT google maps fault this time!

While lost I walked past this fantastic house. For sale!

The home has been vacant for many years now, trees have over taken the court yard and anyone interested in buying it should be warned that it needs some work. A few chimneys have collapsed and a princess or two have escaped from the towers.

We quickly fixed our navigational error and found our way over to Toxteth Centre. But we were now 10 minutes later for the class. Did that matter? Not at all! The class was cancelled due to nobody showing up for it. We were the only ones and the teacher had already gone home. Chaplin was disappointed until I told him we could go across the street to a very clean looking playground and play "olympics" together.

Bobsleigh

Freestyle Swing Skiing

Spinning like a figure skater

His fan club!

After our Olympics I took Chaplin over to visit the St James Cemetery Grounds.

I immedatley felt the strange beauty of the place as we decended down a gravestone-lined tunnel, and out into a strangely beautiful garden space. The grounds are very sunken and almost hidden behind the Cathedral. Hundreds of years ago the area had been a quarry and when it was exhausted of useful stone the city had to decided what to do with the big ugly hole. So city council hired an architect and turned the hole into a cemetery of real dramatic grandeur. In the early 1930's the cemetery was considered full (some 60,000 people buried here) and it was closed. It feel into a state of disrepair and was at one point going to be filled in! That would have been a total shame. Luckily the grounds were cleaned up and a vast majority of the moss covered gravestones were moved to line the walls. Really all the walls are lined with gravestones, and some still stand in their original places.

The east wall has a ramp/walkway lined with catacombs cut into the rock face, that leads down to the burial grounds. This walk that Chaplin stands on was used by horse-drawn hearses!

Chaplin with two walking sticks.

This is looking up at the Cathedral with my back towards the east wall. I saw this tree with it's exposed roots, heard a booming noise inside the cathedral and thought... Saruman what are you doing! Treebeard wake-up!

And get this interesting feature: during the quarry years (1700's) a natural spring was unearthed and that spring is now flowing out of the East wall (to the right of me). It's still drinkable today. We touched it! How amazing is that.

This is at the top of the park, called the St James Walk.

These pathways were laid out in 1700's for the gentry to stroll on a Sunday.

You can still see the groves and they are lines in areas with brick.

I let Chaplin dig around with his walking stick and he found...

an earthworm. Chaplin said we need to put him in a safe place, and suggested a 'cereal bowl'.