Blogs from Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

It’s hard to see your hometown through a visitors’ eyes. It’s like asking yourself the question ‘Am I a nice person?’. I can’t answer that, you’d have to ask someone else. Actually, maybe you should ask someone else about Manchester. Truth be told, I’ve never considered it to be a tourist magnet. Its beaches aren’t the best, you won’t need the factor 30 sun cream, the skiing is rubbish, and the ancient monuments aren’t ancient. Yet it is the third most visited city in the Britain with around one and a half million per year (London is first, Edinburgh is second). So, it is a tourist destination, even if I’m not sure why. Of course, I think Manchester is a fantastic town (we don’t say city), but I’m biased. I’m going to try and answer the ... read more

We have a slightly later start than usual today. Our flight out of Tenerife is not until 15.05. This is a forty day + travel taking in Manchester overnight, Sheffield / Rotherham overnight, Worksop, Nottinghamshire overnight visiting family, Derby for lunch, Aston Clinton, Bucks for lunch, Slough, Berkshire (Donna) and Bagshot, Surrey visiting relatives, then flying out to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) for ten days, boarding a Royal Caribbean cruise for fourteen nights, stopping at Muscat, Oman, Mumbai, India, Cochin, India, Penang, Malaysia finishing in Singapore where we spent a further six nights. This concluded with one further night in Dubai, three nights in Gatwick, Crawley then a flight back to Tenerife South. We got the timings slightly wrong, and our hire car had to be back for 11.00, so we had a four hour ... read more

This morning we drove over to Ashton (-under-Lyne) in the rain. We parked the car in the park and ride car park and then just sat wondering how we were going to get to the tram stop without getting soaked because it was absolutely chucking it down by this stage. So we sat ... and we sat ... and we even contemplated giving up on going into Manchester and returning to Stalybridge! Fortunately the rain let up and we were able to make our way across to the tram stop ... just in time to see a tram arrive and depart without us. The next tram was due in 10 minutes so that gave us plenty of time to work out how to buy our travel cards from the machine. At least here we can buy ... read more

On a day that had dawned grey and drizzly it was time to leave Shrewsbury and head back to Stalybridge. On the way to retrieve the car from the long stay car park we popped into a shop around in the Dogpole area of Shrewsbury to price some ‘Solar Pal’ novelty characters that we saw in the window of the local tattoo and body piercing parlour yesterday. You know, the silly toys that have a small solar panel so that they jiggle around when the sun (or artificial) light falls on it?Kerry is a big fan of these particular characters, and they weren’t very expensive, so we bought all three in the set for Kerry to put on her desk at work. I can’t name them here in the (albeit unlikely) event that Kerry actually reads ... read more

We had a very lazy day today so we caught up on some washing and then went over to Denton to check out the outlet shops. On other shopping trips to Denton we have found some great bargains, but today the offerings were pretty well non existent. We bought a few greeting cards and I bought a sleeveless blouse. I thought it was a bargain at its ticketed price of £8.99. Imaging my surprise when it was called up on the till at £3.00!! Determined to make my exercise and move goals I went for a walk after dinner up Quarry Cough to Old Mottram Road, turned right and walked along Old Mottram Road then walked down the hill on Mottram Road until I reached Bower Fold and then it was back up the steep hill ... read more