“Tales from the City”

Sunday was shopping day with vast quantities of foodstuffs being lugged from Aldi in Manchester’s Arndale Centre. After that it was on to some toilet maintenance (yes, they occasionally need attention like most things boaty) in the form of a new non return valve – it’s not very nice to get your ‘black water’ retuned to you!

The day ended rather well when Les and Chris came aboard for drinks and, when someone suggested a takeaway, we all settled down to a nice Chinese meal.

On Monday we took the Metrolink to Media City where we picked up a few bargains from the Lowery outlet centre,  ……..

…… then walked around a bit and found the Blue Peter garden (with Petra’s bust on a plinth in the corner).

Most of this very futuristic looking complex is now complete and looks pretty good. Viewed from the BBC side of the water the Lowery Theatre is left of centre and the Imperial War Museum, with its odd shaped tower, on the right.

Crossing the footbridge and looking back the BBC Centre dominates to the left – and it’s all is very clean and tidy.

A quick trip up the tower of the Imperial War Museum (£1.80 for the two of us) to view the now finished Coronation Street set was an immediate disappointment for Doug as they’ve  built a gigantic brick wall to stop the likes of us doing just that!

From the other side of the tower however, on clear day, you get a good view of the centre of Manchester and the Pennines beyond.

The landscaping has just been completed and the approach to the ‘beeb’ will be quite impressive when the grass and trees grow a bit more.

We walked the two miles from Media City to the Trafford Centre where we had some late lunch at Pesto.  It’s all very “Las Vegas”, with a great tonnage of marble and painted ceilings with the outlook from our table a pleasure.

The Great Hall has, as its centrepiece, a mock up of a ship’s bridge and foredeck (including swimming pool) and a star studded night sky for the ceiling.  You can sit and watch TV if you want!  Although it’s all very impressive, we didn’t want to watch TV and had really just come for the walk and some lunch.

Deciding not to walk back, we got the bus from the equally impressive bus station at the Trafford Centre back to “Chance” in Castlefield basin and a well deserved cup of tea.  The skies look very threatening a good deal of the time at the moment but we’ve had remarkably little rain (for Manchester!).  We hope it will continue.

In the evening we had a visit from blog reader Dave, who travelled from his home in Liverpool (with a bottle of wine!) for a very enjoyable evening together. It was good to meet you at last Dave.  Our other swivel chair found a new home at 11 o’ clock last night (!), after Dave had left, and we are now awaiting delivery of the two new ones.