Manchester 1 (Northern Quarter +)

Well I have finally arrived at both Manchester and my blog. It took a long time to get here in my blog having experienced a personal roller coaster and lost my laptop photo library due to numerous errors and duplications. I had to seek technical help to re-install it and as I'm not happy with the way it re-loaded, I may need to repeat the process at some point in the future.

Manchester is the culmination of a journey that took 6 blog posts to get here and where I would reconnect with people I met earlier in the process. I met up for lunch in the northern quarter with someone I had loosely stayed in contact with from the weekend of retreat and Yorkshire Dales walking blog post and then later with other new friends. I was due to attend a Charity Ball but it got cancelled at very short notice due to lack of numbers relating to poor availability of affordable accommodation. I found out from the hotel reception that I was staying in that it was last game of the season at Manchester United Football club and there was a big concert happening in the city as well. There was a hastily arranged Birthday party in the Ball organisers house that I was invited to via a social networking site.
I had to return to Manchester two months later to utilise my Ball ticket at the re-arranged event. The next post will include photos from that trip and part of town I visited.

Manchester Cathedral is essentially a medieval church that was built and extended over a period of time from 1421 to the late Victorian age. At which point there was extensive restoration carried out, followed by a second period due to World War II bomb damage. As a result, all the stained glass windows needed to be replaced taking 50 years to complete.

An IRA terrorist bomb in 1996 destroyed part of the town centre and the final (Healing) window was installed to mark the occasion in 2004.

As a result of the IRA bomb in 1996, there are a mix of architectural buildings both refurbished and new that have given rise to the new vibrant Manchester. However some would argue that these changes also took place in nearby Liverpool without a bomb, but there were very different reasons for that.

The person I met for lunch recommended me to go and see Manchester Victoria Railway station.

All is not what it seems when you look through the main door as the station has been somewhat  modified since I last visited many years ago.

Some classic walls of the railway station were left intact albeit decorated with vending machines !

On my first visit I managed to miss this ceramic tile wall map which my lunch colleague couldn't quite believe. When I cast eyes on it on the second trip, I couldn't believe I had missed such a display either.

The Old Wellington pub used to be home for the original bankers of Manchester and also John Byron, an inventor of early shorthand writing, who was born here in 1692.
           

Strangely enough, during a city centre building programme, the building was relocated 100 metres from its original location.

Hmm, see if you spot the 21st century banker !

Manchester is a city that is renowned for it's not quite so Brazilian weather ! No doubt revellers have to sample such things indoors !

Tib Street horn is an unusual sculpture that stands as a kind of gateway to the entrance of the Northern Quarter built in 1999. The creator, David Kemp said "It's not a saxophone, nor a dragon, coiled on the gothic stump of a Victorian hat factory. Perhaps it's a listening device, filtering the left-over sounds from the street corner below, where the past bumps into the future, shooting the lights."

Taking the art to another level and managing to keep the streets clean (New Broom 1999) .....