Will Moyes Make the Move by Bicycle?

Image a trophy case with 40 awards.  Visualize a collection of championship cups so vast they take up every inch of the fireplace mantle, the nightstand by the bed and on that old shelf in the garage.   They spill out of the kitchen cabinet when you reach in for midnight snack.   And so it might be at the home of Sir Alex Ferguson who announced his retirement from football after a four decade career.  Sir Alex has won them all and more than once: League Cups, Champions League, Europa League, Cup Winners Cups, Community Shields and more.  Cups are at least useful, we aren’t sure what we would do with a shield.   In 26 years at Old Trafford, Sir Alex went without winning a piece of hardware on just seven occasions.  

And so as Sir Alex packs up his office, David Moyes assembles the necessities he will need for the move from Goodison Park to Old Trafford.  Will Moyes be the next Phil Bengtson?  Time will tell.  Never heard of Bengtson?  He is one of the all time great trivia answers—“who replaced Vince Lombardi as head coach of the Green Bay Packers?”  We think Moyes will be successful.  He has been a coach since 1980 and has been with Everton for a decade.  While he hasn’t the trophy collection of Sir Alex he does have three wins as the League Managers Association manager of the year.  The only other manager with three LMA victories is Sir Alex.      

As we speak of Moyes and his move to Old Trafford we wonder if he will do it bicycle.  It would be a bike trip of just under 40 miles one way.  The ride is scenic almost immediately, rolling out of Goodison and down Priory Road the ride splits Stanley Park on one side with the sprawling Anfield Cemetery to the other.   A large and sprawling place, Anfield Cemetery is the final resting place for a number of English war heroes.  Opened in August 1863, the cemetery covers 110 acres and includes axial and circular paths, a Gothic catacomb and two chapels.  A rather infamous interment is that of James Maybrick who died of arsenic poisoning in 1889.  Maybrick was, and is still to this day, a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders.    

Leaving Liverpool the route dips south towards the River Mersey.  A mostly traffic-friendly ride to the Manchester Ship Canal is next on the route.  The canal is 36 miles in length beginning in the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool and offers bike paths along the way.  It is a locked canal with ships moving up 60 feet to reach the higher ground of inland Manchester.  The city of Manchester was suffering from an extended economic depression in the mid to late 1800s so the idea was conceived to make Manchester a port city in an effort to revive the local economy.  This didn’t sit well with Liverpool.  That city had a fairly substantial port economy.  Nonetheless the ship canal was approved in 1885 much to the protest of Liverpool.   The canal was opened to traffic in 1894 after seven years of construction immediately becoming the largest navigation canal on the globe.   

  

So, back to Mr. Moyes…  A bike ride from Goodison Park to Old Trafford is possible, in fact it happens all the time.  British Cycling.org sponsors a ride each May.  It is a non-competitive ride done in reverse (Manchester to Liverpool).  A number of bike riders have uploaded similar rides to the internet through a variety of GPS cycling services.   Have a nice ride.  

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