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Liverpool Beatles trip questions

Planning a trip to Liverpool for three days of Beatlemania this August. I have a few very specific questions that I haven't been able to answer with Google, any help would be so appreciated.

We're booked for the National Trust tour of Paul & John's homes, on the tour that leaves from Speke. I can see on the NT website that they require everyone to arrive at the houses on the official tour minibus from Speke. What I don't see is whether they allow you to split off from the tour at the end and not take the bus back to Speke when it's over. Ideally I'd like to use the end of the tour as a jumping-off point to explore the sights around Woolton. If anyone can shed some light on this I'd appreciate it! 

Ye Cracke and The Grapes- planning to stop in both for a pint, but they look like they don't serve food. Are children allowed inside with their parents? We're traveling as a family of 3 and we'll have our 13 year old son with us. 

Cavern Club- does it serve food? The website is really unclear!  I see that the Cavern Pub and Cavern Restaurant serve food, but I really just want to go in the replica club itself. Trying to plan for whether the Cavern can be a meal stop or if I'm just going to pay the entrance fee to go inside for five minutes and then turn around and leave. 

St Peter's Church in Woolton- we'll be in that area on a Monday, and it looks like they generally open the hall only on selected weekends. I've seen vague reports online about people either lucking into the caretaker opening the hall so visitors can step inside for a few minutes, or potentially visitors emailing ahead to schedule a time to go into the hall. Any experience with the best way to approach this? 

Thanks!  I have all the other major fab landmarks on my list, but open to any other tips/suggestions!  We aren't planning on taking any of the organized multi-stop Beatles tours because a lot of the sights look like we can walk to them from the city center or take a taxi to a point (like Strawberry Fields) and then walk to other points from there, but if there is a compelling reason to take a specific tour I'd be open to hearing it. 

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wildflowersoul, we did the National Trust visit to the homes of Paul and John. It was fascinating to see how people lived in the 40s and 50s. I don't recall anyone leaving the tour before the end of it, but I don't think they can keep your prisoner on the bus. We also did the half-day private tour. Here's one of them but I'd Google search for others. https://fab4taxitours.com/. The 2-hour tour was enough and included the church and homes of Ringo and George, with visits to Strawberry Fields, the roundabout, and barber shop. All quite fascinating. We just walked by the Cavern Club as the street was wild on the night we were there. Tons of people and many quite drunk.