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Published: August 27th 2012
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The Whitworth Building
This was built by Whitworth as a factory. Are we there yet? Eventually we were - we arrived at our accommodation 35 hours after leaving Mum's place. Our trip was broken by a 3 hour stopover in Singapore and 1 hour in Munich but unfortunately we had to stay on the plane in Munich - so much for our plans to buy some duty free in Munich.
We'd booked our accommodation in Manchester through an online website called AirBnB and we were to stay with a couple in their apartment close to the centre of the city. We'd been in contact with them a couple of times leading up to our stay and so we were able to let ourselves into their apartment when we arrived. A brief sleep later and we were on our way to the University of Manchester.
This wasn't a work-related trip but more a sight-seeing trip. A few months ago, one of my colleagues mentioned that he'd seen the Reynolds rig at the university and I thought that Terry would enjoy seeing it, given that most of his work life had involved similar work. Reynolds was a mathematician who ended up as a Professor of Engineering at what is now the University
of Manchester. He is most famous for his work on studying the transition between laminar flow to turbulent flow in pipes and his work is used in fields ranging from atmospheric sciences through to design of ships, aircraft etc. In addition to the 'rig' we also saw the prototype models of the Rolls Royce engines used to power the Spitfire, various large wind tunnels, a tilting wave tank and gauges made by Whitworth (of the the screw thread fame). It was quite a pleasant afternoon.
Once that was finished we headed off for a bit of an explore. We went through the Gay village (that's what it's called), Chinatown and then the Northern Quarter. Last weekend was the Gay Pride Mardi Gras in Manchester and the place was full of people who had come to Manchester for the march and the parties that accompanied it. A large area of the city, centred on the Gay village, was cordoned off for the parties, dances etc. When we returned to the apartment after our dinner on Friday night the party had well and truly begun. Saturday was the march and luckily for the organisers the rainy weather held off until the
march was finished. I've never been to the Sydney Mardi Gras but my impression was that the Manchester Mardi Gras was fairly low key in comparison and tended to have a family friendly feel to it. After that it was off to the outdoor stores looking for new walking boots for me - we also purchased a nice waterprook jacket for Terry.
Sunday was not such a good day. For a change Terry managed to pick up the in-flight cold during our trip over and by Sunday was feeling pretty crook. He spent most of the day in bed while I went sight-seeing. I visited the cathedral (quite nice), the John Rylands library (looks like a miniature cathedral and has a huge reading room) and the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). MOSI was quite interesting and it's a shame that Terry wasn't with me as I'm sure that he would have really enjoyed it. I must admit that I didn't stay as long as I normally would have as I was suffering from both information overload and the beginnings of the in-flight cold.
We left Manchester this morning and picked up a hire car (we have a
Mardi Gras entrant
Alan Turing was a well-know Manchester-based mathematician/cryptographer who committed suicide some time after being chemically castrated for homosexual acts in the early 1950s. This years Mardi Gras had a Turing theme. VW Golf) at the airport. We then drove for about 1 hour to the village/town where Terry lived until he was 5 and we're now staying in a pleasant B&B just down the road from his house. The B&B has stables and visions of Inspector Morse episodes come to mind. We can see horses in their boxes from our bathroom window. Today's weather has been awful but it's supposed to clear up tomorrow. We're both starting to feel better also so hopefully tomorrow can be a day of walking in the countryside around here as it's quite pretty.
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