Life in Northern Towns

After our extended trip to Headingley we headed into Leeds city centre.   We’d been here once before many moons ago, so I only had a sketchy memory of the place. Whilst it’s only a 10 minute drive into Leeds, parking is tricky.   We spent another 10 minutes circling around the city centre looking for parking.   Eventually we found multi storey parking at the St Johns Shopping Centre .   City centre parking can be rather expensive and this place is no different.   £7.80 for three hours – I was not impressed. It was a busy day in the city centre, especially as the football was on and Leeds were playing at home.   We really didn’t have a clue where we were going and kept getting lost.   I had to keep in the back of my mind that the St Johns Centre was up a hill.   One thing is for sure is there is plenty of shopping that can be done in this city.   There are some high end shopping opportunities at Harvey Nichols, House of Fraser and...

Amazingly Life in Northern Towns has been shortlisted for this year's Blog North Awards in the Best City and Neighbourhood blog category.  The Awards are part of the prestigious Manchester Literature Festival  and never did I think I'd be involved in such an event.  I've been writing this blog for four years now and it's wonderful to receive this recognition for all the writing and travelling I have done .  Special thanks goes to my partner Neil who has been both travelling companion and proof-reader for my tales of Northern Life. I would be truly grateful if you could spare a couple of mouse clicks to vote for my blog.  Here is the link: http://www.blognorthawards.com/vote Thanks for all your support!

A fact of life living in the north of England is that when rain is predicted in Manchester, then odds on the weather will be better in Yorkshire.  So we decided to test this theory once again and travel over to Leeds as it’s a place we’ve rarely explored.   As Leeds is a city we thought it would be good to check out one of the suburbs first.  After a shout out on Facebook, Headingley was the top recommendation.   So off we trotted on the M62 to Leeds.  The awful roadworks that have plagued the M62 for the past year or so have finally finished - I punched the air with excitement!  Normally at this point I would give the directions to Headingley, however truth is we got there more by luck than design.  I never use a satnav, although on this occasion I would definitely recommend using it.  Headingley really isn’t that well signposted, although we eventually picked up signs to Headingley Cricket Ground.  Parking in H...