Thu - Hitched to Manchester |
- I wanted to visit a city instead of staying in the countryside, but it kept raining everyday, eventually I decided to go and visit Manchester and Liverpool.
- Lucky to get ride all the way so was there around 12pm. Went to info then to MOSI Museum of Science and Industry. Saw a talk on the cotton mills etc. Then walked along the canal towards Salford Quays, but turned back cos of the rain. I went to a suburb to see a play Charley's Aunt, but it was expensive, bad weather and I saw the same play 6 weeks ago.
| Friday- Museums|
- Did the Manchester Museum .. not that great then I finished off MOSI.
- I had heard the BBC was trying to fix its London bias and save money by moving Radio 5 to Salford. I was surprised to find Salford is on the other side of the river in Manchester town centre so that means it's just moving to the centre of another city, when they could have located it in a cheaper area like a rundown mining town instead of going to a place where international banks would want to have offices.
- After MOSI I went on to Salford Quays, where the new Imperial War Museum North sits opposite other new developments around the Manchester Ship Canal Docks, but the it was closed when I arrived. The Lowrey gallery is on the island and a new development labelled media city is being built on the north bank so I guess that is where Radio 5 is going to be.
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Actually Salford is the historic old town and Manchester only developed when the industrial mills came. Yet strangely almost every building on Salford's main road is empty and abandoned... how did the council let it get into that state ? Rainy night.
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- Saturday - disappointing Imperial War Museum North
- Went back to the new Imperial War Museum North. - The museum was disappointing
.. the architect designed building and layout are crap. The guide anticipated criticism and tried to claim the building is deliberately designed to have aspects which are difficult like claustrophic, noisy, badly lit to recreate the awkward situation war ... absolutely ridiculous.
- The place is full of glass cases with no clear order set to the room. They've tried to be innovative by not having a separate cinema room, instead every hour the main room lights dim and films start .. It is is really irritating when you are trying to walk around and read the labels. The IWM in London is far better.
- Instead of leaving for Liverpool right away I went all the way to the other side to a music festival. As it was still raining I found it in one far corner of a muddy park. A band were singing "Yo, yo rap for Jesus" and it became obvious the whole thing was a Christian festival . That's not fair they didn't put that on the posters .. and if they had I wouldn't have gone.
| Wigan |
- Since Wigan is a town on the border of the Manchester metropolitan transport system I decided to test an idea of traveling cheaply by using my Manchester day ticket to get there and then using a Liverpool area ticket to get out.
- Cos of the rain it was already too late to travel on when I arrived in Wigan so I took a local bus out to an old historic village called Standish. There was nothing to see really and that night the rain was very heavy.
| Sunday - Wigan countryside|
- I walked on to an old mill village and the nearby canal. I should have walked along the banks back into Wigan. Instead I walked to a lake park for breakfast and then the rain started again.
- I should have got a £5 Liverpool transport pass and got the train to Liverpool, but there was a big queue at the ticket office so I just missed it. Instead I used a £3.70 Arriva bus North-West day pass to get to St Helens and then to Liverpool.
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