h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ship Canal...Don't go there its dirty
http://www.h2g2.com/A314966 <--- the Trafford Centre, in the Manchester Area
http://www.h2g2.com/A314911 <--- Didsbury, suburb of Manchester


DOING THE CULTURAL THING...

Bridgewater Hall:
Large, good acoustic, shielded from noises outside: The whole building sits on springs, which vibrate to dampen noises like the Metrolink and bombs going off in the area... when the bomb went off about 1km away, the builders working inside the hall didn't know at all....
Regular concerts from the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and the Manchester Camerata, Pluto by Colin Matthews is being premiered there this week, as Kent Nagano's leaving present to the Hallé, I believe.
Lowry Centre...
New & shiny, although you have to pay to go to some of the exhibitions all of the work by Lowry himself is free to view..

Manchester Museum...
in Oxford Road near the University, has Egyptian Mummies in, and a reptile house with lots of live snakes and other interesting specimens, I *loved* it as a child. Admission is Free

Whitworth Art Gallery
well worth a visit...on Oxford Road, opposite the hospitals

Granada Studios Tour
Quay Street, good fun The *Real* Coronation Street is here... although seeing a street of house fronts is very strange...

Affleck's palace...
is one of *the* places to shop in Manchester. I guess one would describe the shops here as "alternative". The best strategy (IMO) is to go right to the top of the building to the café, and fortify yourself with food and coffee before shopping your way down, floor by floor... there are some really cool shops and cafés... although the other approach is to start on the ground floor and go upwards so as by the time you reach the café at the top you're ready for your coffee...

MANCHESTER FIRST...
first passenger railway station in The World: Liverpool Street Station, now in the Grounds of the Museum of Science and Industry

The Baby- first stored program computer... rather worryingly a tamagotchi has more processor power than it had, and it was a whole big, big room...

Chetham's College Library - first library open to the general public

Rutherford split the Atom here...


METROLINK...
The Metrolink originally went to Altringham and Bury, it is now being extended to go to Eccles too, (its gotten as far as a station called Broadway). John Prescott has just announced funding for the service to be extended to the Trafford Centre, and there are also plans to extend it to Stockport, I think some time in the next five years. The Metrolink is almost always busy, it's made a big impact on travel in the Manchester locality. I think its fun too, especially sitting on the seats where the trains bend (childish? Moi?)... it can be expensive to make a short journey, but they have recently released a ticket called the MetroMax that costs £3, and allows you unlimited transport on the network.

ENTERTAINMENT...
My Fave. Bar: Revolution on Oxford Road in the City centre, or Wilmslow Road in Fallowfield Near Owen's Park...
This is a vodka bar, with more different flavours than you can shake a stick at... and of course the (skull-and-crossbones: Warning) Chilli Vodka, although according to the bar staff in the Fallowfield branch the 80% volume one tastes worse... although I can't imagine this being possible.. Revolution is themed with the Russian Revolution, and has a pleasant atmosphere...

For a cheesy night out try the Footage and Firkin on Oxford road... for a fun indie night (well my friends and I think so) 5th Avenue (Princess Street) on Thursdays... to be overloaded with students The Queen of Hearts/Scruffy Murphy's* in Fallowfield on Wilmslow road... for another student bar try Shed also in Fallowfield on Wilmslow Road...
There are many other places, though, something for everyone.

Manchester has three universities and hence an abundance of Students, the area surrounding Oxford Road/Wilmslow road has I believe the greatest population of students in Europe... If you visit Manchester in Term time and then in the holidays you'd notice an incredibly marked difference in number of people around...

*Scruffy Murphy's and the Queen of Tarts, no sorry, Hearts are different parts of the same place

THE BOMB..
went off on a Saturday morning on Corperation street. The only thing in the area which survived undamaged was the pillar box. It was horrid to walk around the edge of the area one or two days after it happened, and to see all the buildings with spoiled facades and broken windows... and the whole big area which was cordoned off... a truly eerie feeling... I could guess what it was like for people visiting places that they knew during the war after a bomb had hit...
Manchester's most back to normal now, Corperation street is busy to cross again, I nearly got run over by a bus the other day and I have to confess to being pleased! The buses didn't go down corperation street for years afterward. And Marks and Spencers has opened its massive massive store... (which has this miraculous ability to disorientate people... its very hard to leave the building on the side you are planning to)... and the Pubs which were in Shambles Square have been moved to a more "historically appropriate" location, although I fail to see how where they were built is historically inappropriate, but thats just me...


questions??

Canals:
There are plenty of other canals which go through some nice countryside bits of the city. The bridgewater canal and the rochdale canal both provide a means of traveling through the city centre by boat. (How do you think canal st got it's name )

The Manchester Museum; It's rightly famed for it's egyptology collection, but it's also got a good set of fossils. The only problem is that the fossils are in a room seperated from the main area and the last time I went the displays were rather old fashioned and looked like they hadn't been looked at for some time

There is an art gallery on Mosely St but it's currently being refurbished so it's shut.

Aflecks: It was better in my day you can also check out the arcade further along towards the arndale. The Coliseum is the place. I think that a fair number of the stalls here moved from the Corn Exchange. There is also the Manchester Craft Centre on Oak St, with small studios.

MetroLink should be being extended out to where the new Eastlands Stadium is being built next to the Velodrome (the only covered velodrome in the country I think).

The bomb, I thought it went of about lunchtime/early afternoon.
There is a journal entry on my page talking about what has been done in the rebuilding.
The pubs which have moved, The Old Wellington (probably the oldest building in Manchester) and Sinclair's Oyster Bar have been moved before during the construction on the Arndale in the early 70's.

Firsts, Rolls did meet Royce in Manchester...

any more questions

The bomb was late in the morning/lunchtime, I was at an orchestra practice at the time, I got home for lunch and my mum's like "thank God you're okay" and I'm like, "what? for pity's sake I just went to Orchestra!" And she's like, "didn't you know?"...

Joanna you are a true star...

Tell us more

*sits down with mug of cocoa*

Another Manchester person: John Dalton discoverer (amongst other things) of colourblindness

Oh, and who's been saying to you that the arndale centre's cool? IMO they lied. Big time. Its just a shopping centre, not a nice one. And if you ask true locals, who remember the days "pre Arndale Centre" they'll tell you it should never've been put there in the first place.
Looking at the outside of it I'd tend to agree with them, but thats just my opinion.
I guess I don't remember it too well from before the bomb, they did good a little while before that by adding natural light, because before then the people working in there literally had no idea what the weather was like outside, at all.

Other nice shops are in the Royal Exchange arcade, there's also some good ones on Deansgate.

Manchester is a good starting point for going walking in the peak district, you can get trains to Hope, Edale and Castleton, and walk in the Pennines, or go (probably better to drive, as there's not overly many trains) to Styal Mill, traditional place for all M/cr's school age children to be taken to several thousand times... don't go on Mondays, though, as far as I remember its shut. If you do go by train, though, its a nice walk to Wilmslow and you can get the train back from there.... Edale is one end of the Pennine way. I think.

Local dialect? I don't really do a manchester accent, but apparently according to my southern friends from time to time I do the pre-answered question: eg. "are you going to the h2g2 meet up, yes?" http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?forum=19934&thread=40420 <--- trawl through there and you may find some slang which is more m/cr specific than other places.... although I don't know, only being from m/cr nowhere else.

Another place I forgot to mention, the Costume Museum, in Platt Hall, in Platt Fields Park off Wilmslow Road. Rumours abound over its future, but its a good museum and nationally renowned.

Manchester Cathedral is apparently famed for having the widest nave(sp?) of any Cathedral in Britain, although its not terribly long, b/c there wasn't space, or something.

In one of the halls in the Town Hall (I've completely forgotten what its called, though, Lord Mayor's something or other? May just be the great hall, though) there's some very fine paintings by Ford Maddox Ford...

Food, you *have* to go to Rusholme, Wilmslow Road again*, the Curry Mile, with literally about 30 indian (well, pakistani, I guess Asian would be a better term) restaurants in less than a mile of street. Apparently what makes it special is the whole community thing, you don't just get curries, but there are other things, too, such as traditional sweets...
Don't go there if you think its Eid, though. You will not get a table. You will probably not even get to the street outside the restaurant. In fact don't go anywhere near Wilmslow road that evening at all, trust me I've tried.

other sports: Manchester has a basketball team: Manchester Giants, and an Ice Hokey team: Manchester storm, who both play at the Manchester Evening News arena.

Hulme... don't get me started on this urban disaster area...or do.. it used to have lots of 1960s tower blocks, with some architects good idea: off street walkways. They were home to violence etc.. and very creepy. Happily that mistake has been buldozed...

Manchester does have a problem with drug gangs, shootings spilling out into more affluent areas as the pushers get richer... no where's 100% safe, but the killings aren't random, they are targeted on specific people.

*my life revolved arond Wilmslow road, can you tell??

~looks for tea~
questions?

King St also has nice shops (read: the posh clothes shops)

The town hall was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the same guy who was the architect for the Natural History Museum in London. They're both big victorian gothic buildings. The town hall is shaped as a triangle, because when it was built that was all the land they could get hold of.
At the front of the town hall is Albert Square, with a big statue to the prince cosort himself. One of the pubs on the square is the Square Albert - they're original at names in M/CR aren't they
The other side of the town hall, at the front of the central library and containg Manchesters main war memorial is St Peter's Square. It was here that the army set upon a meeting of workers listening to radical reformers. 11 people were killed and about 400 injured of those gathered (estimated at between 30,000 and 150,000!).

Edale is the start of the pennine way. I know, I've been to both ends, walking
Nearer to Manchester is Hayfield, where late April 1932 walkers gathered to go out onto the moors to demonstrate against the access allowed by laws of the time. This event inspired Ewam McColl to write the song The Manchester Rambler. This event is commemorated with a plaque in Bowden Bridge Quarry, where the mass tresspass started. This was one of the events which helped get national parks set up.

If curries aren't your cup of tea then Manchester has a reasonably large chinatown area with some very good chineese restraunts.

Styal Mill, Wigan Pier both places where school children are taken to see what it was like in days gone by (and to be thankfull they live now).
Engels wrote of industrial manchester in his Condition of the Working Class in England.

The arndale has been descibed as the biggest loo wall in europe, and well that's putting it politely.

If you've seen the start of Corronation St with the rows of terraced houses and cats walking along walls between back yards and wondered if it realy is like that. Yes there are many parts of Manchester like that.

The Bridgewater canal, a continuation of the Rochdale canal from Castlefield to Liverpool, was designed by a rather clever bloke called James Brindley. It is unusual in design because it has no locks on it. It also is bright orange in places because of the amount of clay that is present in the ground.

The canal runs through the very picturesque town of Worsley, which still maintains this charm and attracts a lot of American tourists, even though the M60 runs right through the middle of it. Worsley was the central hub of a underground canal network. Branches of the canal ran to all the rich coal seams which stretched as far as Bolton and Warrington.

The M60 is the outer ring road around Manchester, or soon will be since it isn't finished. Hopefully it will be dubbed an affectionate name like the Manchester Orbital Carpark, just like the M25 around London has.

>> The other side of the town hall, at the front of the central
>> library and containg Manchesters main war memorial is
>> St Peter's Square. It was here that the army set upon a meeting
>> of workers listening to radical reformers. 11 people were killed
>> and about 400 injured of those gathered (estimated at between
>> 30,000 and 150,000!).

This particular episode of history is referred to as 'Peterloo' in the history books.

Speaking of history, did anyone mention that Manchester was the central source of the Industrial Revolution when the cotton factories began to use James Watt's steam engine to power their machines. I think Styal Mill comes in here.

Arrgh did I forget to call it the Peterloo Masacre, Late night posting and all that

I've got a date for the Peterloo massacre, 16th August 1819 (from Hutchinson Encyclopedia)

Apparently some members of Stalybridge band played that day. Stalybridge band is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) brass bands in the world!

Abduls/Babylons.....It would be impossible for anybody who has been a student in Manchester not to mention Abduls kebabs and Babylon pizza's. Student life just wouldn't have been the same without these culinary delights, well worth checking out if wandering the streets at some unholy hour and you have the munchies.

oh, and at the risk of upsetting joanna it DOES rain a lot - at least it did for the four years i was there!

i would go on about the buses but that was another forum....

All good thoughts but I have one question, what is Manchester ? Is is the City of Manchester ? Is the Greater Manchester Metrolopitan Area, which takes in parts of Cheshire and Lancashire ?

It's different in London, even people who live in Westminster will say that they're from London. But I doubt if somebody from Salford would say they're from Manchester and certainly not the people from Bramley - "We're from Cheshire".

And what's all this "between Liverpool and Leeds stuff", it's like saying London is between Southhampton and Cambridge.

It is isn't it, just South of Coventry that London place

Part of the confusion might be that outside of the contral bits of Manchester many places got postcodes and address instructions to use the old counties, eg Stockport (SK postcodes) Chehire, or Oldham (OL) Lancs.

I just felt the need to interrupt here. I'm from Salford and for anyone who asks I would always tell them that I'm from Manchester. Then if they asked where abouts I'd say Eccles, Salford.

PS Don't tell Croz I've been to this forum because he thinks I've quit h2g2. Ta! From a Manc.

I too am from Salford and tell people I'm from Manchester - This is mainly because when I've said "Salford" in the past to people from outside the area comments have ranged from "Where?" to "Isn't that near Birmingham?"

I normally say Manchester or near Manchester, being from Dukinfield originally. As you say people probably wouldn't have heard of it. Though it's suprising the number who have heard of Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar

I'm happy to stand corrected as it's a long time since I lived in Salford, Broughton in fact. I used to tell people that I was living in Salford and explain that it was near Manchester when they asked "Where ?".

(-:

Fact:
Over 100 years ago Manchester was actually part of Salford and not the other way round.

The local history books say that Manchester was part of the Hundred of Salford but that Salford was part of the parish of Manchester.