A “Pilgrimage” To Liverpool
While attending an “Abbey Road on the River” (AROTR) music festival in the US, I had the pleasure of meeting David Bedford, the Liverpool author, historian, and authority on the Beatles. During our conversation, I mentioned that a trip to England was on my list of places to visit, with a definite visit to Liverpool. David said to be sure to look him up whenever I decided to visit as he offered tours of many famous sites connected to the Beatles.
A few years later, in 2014, I made that trip to England. It was 50 years after the Beatles first came to America.
After landing in London, I drove approximately 200 miles north to Liverpool. The next day, I took David’s day-long tour to see places such as Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, The Casbah, and others. As part of the tour, he arranged admission tickets to visit the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney which are now owned by The National Trust and open for tours. Afterwards, we went to see the childhood homes of George Harrison and Ringo Starr. However, they were not open to the public, so we were only able to see the outside of their homes. Still, it was moving to think of who once lived there.
I visited other areas in England including, of course, London where I “did the walk” across Abbey Road… along with other tourists from all over the world and much to the annoyance of the local drivers. It was a trip of a lifetime to visit so many places the Beatles had immortalized in their songs and places I had read about in books. A “pilgrimage” is the only word to describe it.
Crossing Abbey Road, London, England