United managed to get me there 3 hours late, so I was late for my private appointement and tour of Mclaren Technology Centre in Woking, but thankfully they were half shutdown (August holidays), so while I had a slightly more limited tour (factory floor was closed), my host Jeff nicely waited for me and gave me a nice private tour (read more about it here:

After a way overpriced cab to Woking so that I wouldn't be more late than necessary, I took a train to London:

After checking in my hotel, I went to meet my schoolmate Jerome Abela for a nice dinner at Orrery. Yummy french food with seared foie gras :)

For day #2, my plan was to go to London's RAF Museum, which is somewhat outside of London:

On my way back, I had enough time to go see a few others museums. I started with the British Libary which had its room of treasures closed last time I went:

Next, I went to the London Transport Museum which was actually a good visit outside of them having limitations on number of people who can visit:

I then had enough time for a couple of nice crepes (my first meal of the day), before going to see a musical (back to the future) after walking around a bit to burn time until the show:

the show was pretty good, I enjoyed it

Day #3, I had to take my post arrival covid test, which seemed very pointless as it took 7 days from arrival to get the results, but it was required for my trip to the UK:

I then took a train to [Betchley park and the National Museum of Computing, which took the entire day, they were fantastic (click me)|perso/sciencemuseums/post_2021-08-25_Bletchley-Park-_-National-Museum-of-Computing.html]

By the time I was done (full day), got a train back to London to spend the rest of the evening:

One cool thing about public transport in London is that you can now just tap your android phone and get in and out without a ticket.

I went to se Mary Poppins that night. The not so great thing was that on one was wearing a mask. Unsurprisingly London got a lot more covid after that:

Harry Potter wasn't ready yet

it was a pretty good show

anyone who knows above and beyond acoustic, knows why I took this picture :)

Day #4, I had some time in the morning to go see Mme Tussauds (much better than I expected) before taking a train to Warrington where I was going for Creamfields.

All in all, it was not an in depth visit of London, but it wasn't meant to be either. Very happy that I got to see the RAF Museum, the British Library, and Betchley Park. Those alone were worth the trip, glad I got to see them.

So, there is honestly no reason to go to Warrington, unless you're going to Creamfields, which is what I did (read creamfields report). There is unfortunately no real usable public transport to go to creamfields, and it's a really long walk. I would have gotten a bike, but it was not easy to rent one either (and still a 30mn+ ride).
I ended up relying on uber, which doesn't formally cover the city, but with a bit of luck, you could get a car driving around the area. Cabs were not super timely or reliable either. The biggest issue was getting back from creamfields, the busses were limited, the taxi line was 1h+, and getting an uber on saturday or sunday was really hard.
You're apparently supposed to camp onsite, but given that it's a mud field with occasional torrential rains, and that I had lots of electronics to keep safe and charge overnight, that was a non starter, so I went the uber route and had to get very creative to get back on saturday and sunday
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So there you go for Warrington. It is neatly located between Liverpool and Manchester, so there is that :)

I'll be honest that Manchester is not a must go destination. I was nearby and had an extra day, so I went to check it out. It had a couple of non essential but decent enough museums, and an ok cathedral :) -

Given that trains were complicated and the Manchester Imperial War Museum North was inconvenient to get to via public transport, so I just took a direct uber there, Manchester is not too far. Because it was a day trip without a car, I had my luggage in tow, which made all museums uneasy, they are so scared about bombs and they don't care about profiling, everyone is a suspect. After looking at my luggage, they agreed to stash it during my visit, The museum was ok:

those small tethered blimbs were put over potential targets to entangle planes that might want to attack

It was a decent enoough museum, after I was done, I took another uber to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (click me). It was only ok given that its biggest hangar with planes was being renovated:

After that, like an idiot who can't plan, I totally spaced on the fact that there was a google office that I forgot to visit, oops, so instead I went to the cathedral before it closed, and caught the next hourly train to Liverpool:

After things were closing up in Manchester, took a direct train to Liverpool, just about 1h away

I had already been in liverpool for less than half a day in 2017. but only saw the museum of liverpool and maritime museum, and the 2 cathedrals (then again, not bad for less than half a day). So this time, I went to see the rest :)
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After getting there the night before, I was setup for the next day.

The next morning, I got up bright and early and went to see Beatles Story first:

I had a quick look at the maritime museum again, although I had mostly seen it last time:

The Tate Liverpool, I had a quick look, but modern art is never really my thing:

Next, I went to visit the Western Approaches WWII Museum, which is a bunch of displays in underground bunkers, not unlike the similar churchill museum in london. Definitely a cool visit:

After that, I went to see the two cathedrals again. Sure, I had seen them, but they're neat, so I went back:

the other more modern cathedral

the nice museums I had been to

darn, the photo was off by a bit :)

From there, I still couldn't get the damn electric scooters working because they required to validate my drivers license, sigh..., so it was a long walk to the world museum, where I spent the rest of the day. As explained in the separate page (click me), the world museum is an everything museum, and it was actually quite good:

And that was it for visiting Liverpool, it definitely has plenty to see (1.5 to 2 days at least).