3 August 2016 - Burrs Country Park Caravan Club site, Bury, Greater Manchester

Fuelled with local knowledge gleaned from yesterday’s expedition into Manchester, we set off this morning, completely adopting public transport. 

Punctuality one of our golden rules of life, we set off twenty minutes before the bus was due to swing by the bus stop just beyond the Country Park entrance, finding our estimated ten minutes to walk spot on, allowing us a further ten minutes up our sleeve. And then we waited, and waited, and waited …. neither of us game to suggest surrender although we would have eventually returned to camp  and driven into Bury. Fortunately the bus did turn up, twenty minutes late and the reason at once evident; the driver was in training and his trainer was the most delightfully chatty person you could ever meet, neither attributes for timely schedules. However once we did arrive in Bury, our arrival coincided with the imminent departure of the tram for Manchester, and then once we arrived at Piccadilly, we found the X50 bus ready to receive us and head off to Salford Quays. This leg of the trip turned out far longer than we had imagined and we were glad we had not chosen to walk instead.

Our first destination was The Lowry, which for most of the population is probably known as a performance centre. In one corner is the gallery full of work by the artist for which it is named. The complex was opened in 2000, and is part of the redevelopment of the derelict Manchester dock area. The building is a complete artwork in itself, designed by Michael Wilford, and built on a triangular site with many levels of sloping floors.  

We thought the building quite wonderful and it certainly fits with the immediate surroundings. Personally I was not taken with the interior colour scheme, or at least that part in the foyer and facilities area; orange, yellow, purple, all clashing and not appealing to my conservatism.

We loved the gallery, arriving just in time for a half hour lecture on the artist himself, learning that Lowry was so much more than a depicter of industrial scenes and the crowds that inhabited them. He was a very sad and complex character, full of contradictions and mysteries, many of which he created for himself to hide his true character from the voyeuristic art appreciators. It was a shame that the lecturer was rather breathless and his diction not entirely intelligible to those a little deaf.

Just opposite The Lowry is the Lowry Outlets which I understood to be a centre of outlet stores;  surely there would have been something there that needed to move into our caravan. Alas, we did not have enough time to spend there and still take in the other must-see, the Imperial War Museum North, otherwise known as the IWM North, accessed from the Lowry and the immediate area by a footbridge across the ship canal, a lift bridge with a clear span of 100 metres which lifts vertically to provide a 26 metre clearance for shipping use of the canal.

The Lowry

The museum building was opened in 2002 and received 470,000 visitors in its first year of opening. The main exhibition area includes a series of six separate areas, the “silos”, whose fame had preceded our visit. I had an entirely different expectation of these, however the museum and its layout is well curated and deserves the reputation it has gained since opening.  But both Chris and I agreed that it was not a patch on the War Memorial in Canberra. Here in Manchester, this museum concentrates more on the people caught up in the wars of this last century rather than the military aspects which are better explained in Australia. Much of what we saw today was “old hat” if one dares to express such sentiment without offending the seriousness and sacredness of the subject.  It is a museum for the citizens of today, those who have not grown up with the World Wars being just yesterday, something our parents and grandparents were touched by. And really, is it not more important that our children and grandchildren are educated about the horrors their near ancestors experienced?

One of the rather bizarre exhibits in the museum was a large steel window section from the ruins of the World Trade Centre, that destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York.

We left soon after 4pm, emerging in time to catch the return bus to Piccadilly after walking along the canal basin past the many media centres, crossing a second opening bridge, past the new Grenada Coronation Street Studio , with two minutes space to catch the tram, and then a further five to catch the bus back to the Country Park, arriving near 5.30pm, late for us who like to have dinner preparation on the go by then.

Manchester is exceeding our expectations. As a tourist destination, Manchester does not immediately come to mind, although it is the home to several world famous soccer teams which in itself draws the visitors. We had made a point of including the city on our touring destinations because of its history, and to visit The Lowry and the IWM North; we have achieved the latter two today. 

The Media Centre

Manchester was the world’s first industrial city and grew rich on cotton from slave plantations in the Americas. It was also the centre of uprisings as documented in my earlier post after visiting the People’s Museum, a centre of social reforms, not least the slum clearing through the last century as the face of the industrial activity so changed. 

Manchester underwent massive devastation during the German Luftwaffe bombings of 1940 and 1941; hundreds of high explosive and incendiary bombs killed seven hundred people and left thousands homeless. Then again in 1996, the city centre was damaged following the Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing, a 3,000 lb bomb injuring more than 200 people, something I do not recall at all.

While these events were horrendous for those involved, they did act as a catalyst for redevelopment and since 1996, Manchester has been rejuvenated and this is still going on today as evidenced by the stretches of tramways currently out of operation and the Squares under redevelopment. It is this new city we are in the throes of exploring although we have still to finish with the older history. Another day tomorrow!