Travel & Holidays in later life

Beatlemania is the heartbeat of Liverpool's tourist industry, attracting visitors worldwide, right around the year. The excitement comes to fever pitch every summer in late August, with an International Convention featuring Beatle-style bands and a Mathew Street Festival. Liverpool is so deep in the 60s-nostalgia industry that even the airport has been renamed as Liverpool John Lennon.

This year, 2007,  is Liverpool's 800th birthday and the fifth themed year in the run-up to 2008 when the city becomes European Capital of Culture. The city is planning to spend a whole 12 months celebrating eight centuries of remarkable heritage! Festivities will culminate in the official birthday celebrations on 28 August 2007.

Meanwhile, year-round, Beatlemania flourishes with Magical Mystery Tours costing £13 making two-hour circuits of Beatle haunts in buses identical to the one used in the Beatles' 1967 film. 

The standard circuit includes stops at Penny Lane, Strawberry Field and Paul McCartney's former home, now owned by the National Trust. Several of the Beatle guides were dedicated fans in the 60s. The tour ends at the resurrected Cavern Club in Mathew Street - the epicentre of the Cavern Quarter. 

Across the street is the Cavern Pub, with displays of musical instruments and memorabilia. The outside brickwork lists all the 1,801 performers who played the Cavern between 1957 and 1973. The Beatles Shop at 31 Mathew Street is well stocked with CDs and all the essential souvenirs like reproduction posters, key-rings and T-shirts. 

A model Yellow Submarine marks the entrance to the Cavern Walks shopping development which centres on statues of the Fab Four. At Lennon's Bar down the road, you can fight off hunger with a Lennonburger. Around the corner is a statue of Eleanor Rigby presented by Tommy Steele to the City of Liverpool for Half a Sixpence. 

Another year-round attraction is The Beatles Story - a highly commercialised exhibition located on the Mersey water front at Albert Dock. Scenes are reproduced from the group's early days in Hamburg and Liverpool through to their triumphant world tours and well-known films.

But there's much more to Merseyside than Beatle memories. Pop culture and classics live side by side. Football, horse racing, rich museums, art galleries and all styles of music and vibrant nightlife are added reasons for a short break in Liverpool. 

If you last visited the city 10 or 20 years ago, a lot has changed. Another date for your diary is 2008, when Liverpool will be honoured as the European Capital of Culture.

You can easily spend a day at the Albert Dock, where five-storey Victorian warehouses were solidly built of iron, bricks and Scottish granite. 

Closed down and derelict in 1970, the complex has been totally restored to become Britain's most popular heritage attraction - three times winner of the 'Best Large Attraction in the North West' award. There are boutiques and bars, restaurants, cafes and world-class museums. 

Merseyside Maritime Museum is Britain's second largest after Greenwich. Its five floors include galleries on the Slave Trade, which was the basis of Liverpool's wealth until abolition in 1807. 

You can see the gruesome contrast between transport conditions for Emigrants to the New World and those who travelled first class in the floating palaces of the Titanic and the Lusitania. Another gallery displays Liverpool's wartime role as a front-line port in the Battle of the Atlantic.
For anyone tempted to do some smuggling, a visit to the Customs and Excise National Museum can give some useful tips on the methods used by Customs officers to spot smugglers. 

If you'd like some social or political spice to your visit, look at the Museum of Liverpool Life, which surveys the local development of trade unionism, political parties and votes for women.

For art lovers, the Tate Gallery Liverpool located at Albert Dock displays Britain's largest collection of modern and contemporary art outside London. Since a £7 million development a few years ago, superb new galleries now feature more of the Tate's national collection of modern art. 

The Walker Gallery has likewise benefited from a major upgrade completed in 2002. The Gallery houses a great collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. It's also worth visiting Port Sunlight for its model industrial village and Lady Lever Art Gallery, packed with 18th- and 19th-century art and furniture, all financed by Sunlight Soap. Between them, the two galleries include important works by Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt and Burne Jones. 

Of course, Liverpool is far better known worldwide for football. On non-match days you can tour the Liverpool ground at Anfield, or Everton at Goodison Park. Stadium visits include the dressing rooms, and then walking through the tunnel onto the pitch.

Another sporting option is to visit the Grand National Experience at Aintree. The tour includes the chance of being weighed in the jockeys' weighing room. You can walk the course, inspect Becher's Brook and The Chair, and pay your respects to the life-size statue and the grave of Red Rum.

The highlight is a white-knuckle virtual ride in the classic race. The film was shot during a Grand National itself, when lightweight cameras were perched on the helmets of three jockeys.

Liverpool is also highly rated for its architecture. Albert Dock is the UK's largest group of Grade I listed buildings; St. George's Hall ranks amongst the world's finest neo-classical buildings; the two 20th-century cathedrals are stunningly different in design; and the National Trust's Speke Hall near the airport is one of Britain's grandest half-timbered houses.

Among the other attractions, there are 15 golf courses in the Liverpool-Southport area -- six of Championship status. On the theatrical scene, choice ranges from family entertainment at Southport Theatre to large-scale productions and musicals at Britain's largest two-tier theatre, the Liverpool Empire. Innovative drama is featured at the Everyman. 

Finally, don't forget a Heritage Cruise aboard Mersey Ferries, for a fabulous waterfront view and transport across to the attractions of Birkenhead and the Wirral Peninsula.

Copyright: Reg Butler

Consider these other destinations in the North West

CHESTER - going for Romans, shopping & bats

LANCASHIRE COAST - Turning the tide

MANCHESTER - is more than United

SHIP CANAL - Cruising on the Manchester Ship Canal

"The Beatles Encyclopedia" by Bill Harry  - For Beatle fans, here's the most complete 1200-page record of the band's history.

The Official Liverpool FC Illustrated History  by Jeff Anderson and Stephen Done - a fascinating account of the Club's rise from its early struggles over 110 years ago to become a legendary cup-winning team of international status.

Liverpool in the Age of the Tram - Nostalgia of Britain Series - Worth buying to get another view of the old-time seaport.

Liverpool (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides) - a detailed and practical guide for anyone with a serious interest in architecture.