Manchester Holiday: Friday 3rd August 2018. Manchester perhaps isn’t everyone’s idea of a holiday destination, but we spent a very enjoyable short break there at the start of August 2018. It was a nostalgia trip for me and Linda, as this was the city we met in and lived for a couple of years after our marriage, though since we’d only returned for an occasional conference usually somewhere in its outskirts and seen little of the city.
On My London Diary you can read a long and rather profusely illustrated account of our 2018 visit, when we stayed in a budget hold overlooking the Ashton canal a short walk from the city centre. But here I’ll just post a few details and pictures of our activities on the Friday we were there.
After a rather long buffet breakfast we walked into the centre and caught a bus to East Didsbury for a walk beside the River Mersey there. Didsbury is a suburb and an area we knew well although we had only lived a couple of miles closer to the city centre in Rusholme, an inner city area.
We had once or twice in the 60’s walked by the Mersey, I think then rather covered with detergent foam. This time it was clearer and cleaner looking, but despite having a walk leaflet and a map we managed to get rather lost. Fortunately we eventually managed to find our way to Fletcher Moss where the gardens are worth a visit, though I found the cafe something of a disappointment. After a quick visit across the road to Parsonage Gardens we caught a bus back into Manchester.
We got off the bus at Oxford Road station and walked across to see a show at a trendy art gallery close to Deansgate station, where as I commented “the most interesting thing on the walls were the 13 amp sockets.” Walking further on we crossed the “hidden footbridge” over the canal to another gallery where I found work more to my taste. This whole Castlefields area is one that when we lived in the city was a commercial area around the canals, more or less hidden from the public and has now changed completely.
Here now is one of Mancester’s largest and most interesting museums, where we had spend some time the previous day, but now made another short visit before continuing to follow “a published but extremely vague walk around the area” which took us to the developing ‘St John’s Quarter’ which was then expected to be completed by 2022.
For me one of the highlights of our visit was the overgrown entrance lock to the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal, built in 1839 to let boats pass from the Irwell to the Rochdale Canal without having to pay the exorbitant tolls on the Bridgewater Canal. It was also a more convenient route from the Manchester, Bolton and Bury canal which ran into the Irwell around 130 metres downstream.
Much of the canal was underground and is still there, although navigation became impossible in 1875 when Central Station was built. The lock here was rebuilt in the 1980s and given a bascule bridge at its entrance to the Irwell as an attractive feature in front of the new Victoria and Albert Hotel, but has since again become derelict.
We continued to follow the walk to St John’s Gardens, where there the family grave and two memorials to the founder of Owen’s college, the forerunner of Manchester University and then on to the former Owens College Building before before walking back into the centre to follow a little of an architectural trail which took us to the Town Hall and then to a Wetherspoon’s named after its architect.
After dinner there was enough time for a little more of the trail before we made our way back to the hotel tired after a long day. We should have given ourselves a week or more rather than just three nights stay to revisit the city.
Longer descriptions and many more pictures on My London Diary at Manchester Visit