The Theatre of Dreams

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Saturday 27th June
The Theatre of Dreams
Everyone knows what The Theatre of Dreams is and where it is located......don’t you??!!
Well for the unintiated and those who don’t follow football or soccer as we in NZ know the name of the world’s greatest game,even to a small degree,it is the home stadium of the world’s greatest football club...Man United or as the large red sign on the outside of the stadium says...Manchester United FC.
Manchester as a city didn’t have a lot of offer the tourist according to our copy of the Lonely Planet Europe on a Budget but it did have the #1 visitor attraction Old Trafford football stadium.
Actually I shouldn’t sound that unkind to a city that has seen a lot of redevelopment and there were other attractions that the Lonely Planet didn’t mention as we found when we got there.
The distance from Settle to Manchester is only about 40 odd miles so it wasn’t going to take long to get there except we did have to find our way from the ring road into the city where the stadium is located.
The weather in Settle again was bright and clear and seemingly getting warmer by the day as the week has passed.The forecasters are predicting a heat wave for the southern part of England for next week so we guess the north where we are will be warmer too.
As we discovered last weekend when we went to Skipton on Saturday and Liverpool on Sunday opposing traffic was heavier than traffic leaving Settle as the weekend hikers arrived by car,bus and motor bike in their droves.
With the aim of taking as many different roads as we could we took the A56 at Nelson giving us a direct road to the M60 and its fellow numbers that make up the ring road around the sprawling city of Manchester.The area is actually made up of several towns and cities all running into each other giving a large urban sprawl.
We hadn’t been on an M road for a week or so and it took a moment or two to get used to the much faster moving traffic on these types of road again.With our side of the highway having 4 lanes it is funny somehow that you seem to have ample time to change lanes without waiting too long for other vehicles to pass before overtaking.
After a small wrong turning once we were off the M56 and we arrived at Sir Matt Busby Drive,the street that runs in front of the 76,000 seat stadium,and drove into the FREE carpark across the road from the stadium.It was almost hard to believe that the richest football club in the world gave free parking to its devotees who came in their thousands to tour the stadium.
One cannot miss the bronze statue of “the three lads” ,Law,Charlton and Best,who represented their own countries while playing for the “Busby Babes”as the team became to be known after the disastarious Munich air crash in 1958 that claimed the lives of 8 players returning from the European Cup final.
Following that crash the club had to go through a major rebuilding period and ever since have always held some trophy or title or both for the many competitions it enters each season.
Above the entrance to the stadium main doorways was another bronze statue,this one of Sir Matt Busby himself,probably the most remembered and well loved Manager the club has ever had and that includes the current Manager Ferguson.
One of the things that hits you as you enter the megashop selling everything a football fanatic would ever want to buy is that almost everything is R E D !!the colour of the teams football jersey.
We joined the queue for tickets to take the tour of the stadium and also look over the museum which has extensive displays of the history of the club,a timeline and a display cabinet of the hundreds of trophies the club has won over the years of its existence.
There was a also a display outlining the great Christian Ronaldo a player the club had just sold to Real Madrid for a record transfer fee of 80 million pounds!!!Ferguson being the shrew Scot he is has a canny knack of knowing when to move even the great players on and that includes David Beckham when his time with the club was up.
We had half an hour to stroll around the museum before our one hour tour was due to start.The timeline gave the history of the club which started as a team of railway workers and the stadium which will be 100 years old in 2010.The club has been bankrupt twice and been saved each time.We don’t think they are currently experiencing any monetary problems even in these difficult financial times!!!
Our tour to be led by Terry,a devout Manchester United fan of 60 odd years,was made up of 48 other people plus ourselves making 50.We calculated as we waited to get underway that with 6 tours an hour(yes a tour started every 10 minutes)for 8 hours a day that was 2400 people a day could potentially pay the 8 quid for the tour.When that is taken out over a month or a year it adds up to a heap of money....and that is just to tour the place!!
Our party was made up mainly of mums and dads and their kids from other parts of England,a couple of Asian girls in their early twenties and us all the way from downunder!!
First stop on the tour was to sit in seats in the largest of the four stands at near ground level.The first sight of the interior of the stadium is quite breathtaking as you look around and visualise at the space taken up on any match day by 76,000 people almost entirely of United fans dressed in their red replica shirts of their favourite home team player.We learnt that the club has to hold aside 3000 seats for visiting team fans for a Premier league game or 13000 if it’s a European Cup game.
There are 65000 season ticket holders which means getting a seat for a league game is nigh impossible as the stadium is always fully sold out for every league or cup match.It seems the best chance to see the team play in the flesh,if you aren’t a season holder, is a pre season game or when Man Utd come touring to your country!!
Interestingly though was the fact that for a 10 pound annual subscription,a disabled person in a wheelchair, could attend any match for free and have their own space in one of the corners set aside for them and their attendant.Even the wealthiest of sporting clubs has a heart!!
Before we moved on to the next advantage point we were informed in no uncertain but friendly terms that we could not go onto the lush green pitch as this would greatly upset the head groundsman.Even the home team doesn’t practice on the pitch and the only team allowed to practice is a visiting European Cup team before a match for a maximum of two hours.
Terry had said the view from the disabled enclosure/stand area was the best of the stadium and he wasn’t wrong as we could take in more fully the largest of the stands that our first stopping place had been.
We were now at the end of the ground where the visiting supporters had their few allocated seats and looking to the other end,the Stretford Road end for the diehard home supporters,it became obvious how distinct the colour of the backs of the seats spelt out the name “Manchester United”.
Then it was outside the stadium itself to the Munich Tunnel which was developed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the crash that so affected the club and its supporters.
Next stop was the players lounge where they gather before the match and then into the hallowed room of the players dressing room resplendent with the first team players shirts hung on the coatpegs around the room.Everyone on the tour scambled for a seat under their favourite players shirt to have their photograph taken.I sat Gretchen down for a photo with Ryan Giggs shirt in the background.
Finally it was down the corridor to where the polayers ran onto the pitch and with a recording of the crowd cheering we the kids and the “big kids” in the group all ran down and... ......almost but not quite, onto the pitch.
It had been a great and very informative tour with lots of photos and video taken and another memorable hour or so of our adventure and enabled us to tick off another of our must do’s.
With the tour behind us we had lunch in the FREE carpark and then drove off in search of the Imperial War Museum,which was the #2 sight to see in Manchester according to the Lonely Planet.
We found it not that far away from the Man U stadium but this time there was a 4 quid fee for the carpark.BUT the entry to the museum was FREE!!
We spent an informative and interesting couple of hours strolling around the relatively new museum which is an offshoot of the London museum.
The museum is all about how wars that Britain has been involved in since the First World War has been involved in and how it affected society here.The timeline running all around the wall of the rather futuristic building was very informative and we personally learned a lot of history that we didn’t know as to why various wars began.
On the hour the main area of viewing went dark and a 15 minute slide show with commentary began.There are several shows that play during the day and the one we saw was about children in the war and how they were affected.
There are static displays of tanks and vehicles used in various wars but it is really the timeline and display cabinets of clothes,letters and articles that related to a particular war that made the museum so interesting.
The timeline ends with Britains current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan where their troops are still involved.
We ended our visit to Manchester with a mini tour of the outskirts of the downtown area and then headed home and for the first time with a lack of alternative straightforward route we took the same roads home that travelled to Manchester on.
With our time in Settle at an end we did some housework to be ready for our departure for Kendal in the late morning.

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Photos

The shirt of the great Christian Ronaldo
As from 1st July this shirt will no longer be on display as he has been sold for 80 million pounds to Real Madrid

The Busby Babes
Best,Law and Charlton

Comments

[Rin]

So you didn't manage to make off with one of the players shirts then? Did they show you the big spa pool in the dressing room where they get all-in-together-boys after a match?

[Leebee]

Well, I shall consider myself very, very lucky to have secured an amazing seat in the stands to watch Man U play....it certainly was one of those experiences that stay with you!