Manchester...

Last month we headed back to Manchester - yes it's been a whole year since our last trip there when we went up for the National Winter Ales Festival. That has now relocated, and this year's festival was simply called the "Manchester Beer festival". Once again we went to our favourite rather fabby cafe for breakfast...

..and this time we got stripey mugs! As last year we had a bit of spare time before we needed to head off to the festival, so we had a bit of a wander around drinking in some of the wonderful architecture. Down a side street, the old Fish Market...

Just the facade now - with newer buildings built in the space behind - but how wonderful that it's been preserved! The gates and the panels above are particularly stunning - look -

A bit further on and another imposing old building, although this one still appears to be in use by its original incumbents...

...as one of the modern day arms of the Co-operative Society seem to be making good use of this and any number of other buildings immediately nearby too. Saving the best for last from the morning though - we found it - Manchester Victoria Station. (Manchester, your penchant for "borrowing" station names from London has been noted) What an absolute gem - and so pleasing to see that it's current refurbishment appears to be making most of the existing early Victorian splendour. The ticket office alone is worth seeing...

There would be an extra little thrill to buying a ticket from there surely, although I'd feel as though I needed to ask for a standard class ticket for my Lady's Maid, also...!  The War Memorial is also rather special, sitting below the tiled route map showing where services would once have left Victoria to travel to.

I'm gaining a new interest in War memorials of late thanks to a rather lovely friend of mine who is involved in researching the Memorials in her area, and i always try to seek out station ones as they're often rather wonderful.

Reluctantly we peeled ourselves away from the station to head to the Beer festival - as the weather was fine we decided to save the Tram fare and walk there along the Ashton Canal - we were glad we did too, what a lovely walk!

Locks galore (including one of the deepest that I have ever seen), old factory buildings, and as we got close to the Festival venue a rather good view of a large Football stadium, although I confess I had to ask which club it was home to...! The festival venue itself was seriously impressive...

...yep, that's the National Cycling Centre, and when we first arrived there were indeed cyclists whizzing around it! Full credit to the organisers for this festival - they were far, far busier than expected during their first few days open, so they dropped admission prices for Saturday due to depleted beer supplies. This meant that as CAMRA members we got in free, and for a dark beer fan like me there was still an excellent range to choose from. Throw in lots of good pals and some cheerful chat and all in all we had a brilliant day!

Robyn