I pity the poor Viking, coming back after a hard days pillaging and losing his boat, only to find someones built 'Ye Olde Pub ' in its place.

"Bootnote: The first reader to make a quip about the ship probably having been stripped of all its fitting and left propped up on bricks will be banned from reading El Reg for a month."

Is El-Reg suggesting that our current Chav problem can trace its roots back to the Vikings?

Even though I once lived about 100 yards from the Railway Inn. It's in Meols (pronounced "Mells").

I'm reminded of that old Nigel Kneale drama, "The Stone Tape"; perhaps this pub echoes to the psychic emanations of drunken Vikings. Drunken scouse Vikings. From hundreds of years before the dawn of Guinness. No-one knows why they were there, or what they were doin'. Perhaps they're coming to take us away on mystery tour in their magical swirling ship.

Yeah, yeah... who nicked the mast?

As a local person - seriously, though - old news. I remember some ancient & revered knowledge of this being under the Railway Inn's car park. The only new bit in the whole BBC Merseyside article (presumably where the Reg sourced it from - now the scousers are getting their stuff nicked by southerners, eh? ;-D ) - that Prof. Harding's team pinpointed the exact location using a GPR device. A rather whizzo combination of new tech & old knowledge.

'For God's sake cover it up. We don't want an archaeological dig to stop the build.'

Best thing that could've happened to it. Archaeologists in the 1930s would have made a pig's breakfast of the thing, missing loads of interesting remains. In fact, unless there's a pressing need to remove the ship, e.g. because it'll be destroyed by imminent building works, it's best to leave it alone until it needs shifting, simply because excavation & recovery techniques will have improved in the future. As any archaeologist will tell you, this is the best excuse you can have for being a shiftless layabout.

This must be the only example of transport in the UK that was left longer than 2.7 minutes and didn't get clamped.

"it's best to leave it alone until it needs shifting, simply because excavation & recovery techniques will have improved in the future."

That may always be true. In which case it would neve be dug up.

I agree about the 1930s (Indiana Jones and the Viking Longship), but I can't see a problem with excavating it now..

Spam, spam, spam spam,

spam, spam, spam, spam...

Apparently they are now calling for an enquiry as to how it came to go aground and who was to blame, blah blah blah... The union of rapists and pillagers expect that any of their members discovered to be on the boat will be cleared of wrongdoing as they were all about to go on duty at the time.

They've been back on & I'm not getting cooked. We could do with raising that ship. ;-)

Why spend 2 million quid raising the ship when you could probably spend less money and reduce the risk of damage by extending the pub around it and have it as a Viking theme pub and tourist attraction! I bet it'd also generate more revenue that way too.

As if it had been a Viking submarine. Or a Viking tarmac spreader.

Scousers do not come from the wirral or meols

I grew up in meols, lovely place and I knew the Railway Inn. About as scouse as calling Gerrards Cross or Ascot Cockney!

....under my local Ikea?

They'll prolly find a dead Viking sleeping it off in the Boot of the ship.

As they say; some þing is definitely up! :-D