Along the River Mersey Again

Making full use of our "Travel Pass", we walked down to Maghull Station and caught two Merseyrail Trains to Cressington Station, changing at Central Station in Liverpool.
I've saved our 4.9485 miles (7.9639 km) route, from Cressington, and it can be viewed at...

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6793529
We had the choice of walking towards a very low sun, or, walking into a strong, cold wind. We chose the latter.
As we walked from the station, down towards the River Mersey, we spotted a number of spring flowers...

First Daffodil we've seen on our 2016 walks

 Part way along the river, a small inlet caused us to re-route, leaving Grassendale Park...

 ...and taking a footpath along the boundary fence of Liverpool Cricket Club.
Turning left, along Riversdale Road, we reached the Sitting Bull Sculpture...

 Now we did turn into the wind and headed towards Liverpool.

Sun was out for most of the walk but dipped behind clouds every now and then.

 We continued along the the river, past where we turn off when we do the 'Three Parks Walk"...

 ...enjoying the views...

 ...and the various items from the River's past...

 It always surprises me how wide the River Mersey is, compared with other UK Ports...

 ...and today our walk was as the tide was coming in. 

The plus was the range of birds, feeding on the shore...

 More anchors...

 and, up on a balcony, a "Pirate Skeleton"!

 We paused, every now and then, to enjoy the views and to look back, up stream, to wards Runcorn...

 More Bollards and anchors... 

 ...before we eventually reached our lunch stop; the "deli fonseca"; a food hall, butcher and eatery. We'd seen it many times but this was to be our first visit.
As we'd hoped the drinks and food were excellent...

 We'll have to revisit another time to enjoy the main meals, rather than a snack...

 It was then time to catch the trains and a bus back home.
You can watch a slide show of the photographs I took at...

https://sharalike.com/s/k9Rs 

or play the embedded version below...