Life in Northern Towns

It’s that time again - the Christmas Markets are up and running in Manchester City Centre.  I’m actually quite a big fan of the Manchester Christmas Markets, although year on year it’s getting busier.  As a result it gets really uncomfortable to navigate especially on a Friday evening and the weekends.  So I thought it would be useful to have a street by street guide to the Christmas Markets: Albert Square is the main draw for Christmas Markets, especially on a Friday evening when it becomes a huge draw for the workers having their celebratory ‘thank god it’s Friday’ drink.  It does tend to have a later closing time than the other markets, so you can understand the appeal.  The crepes stand appears to have a permanent queue.  Weirdly I find the mulled wine not as good from here compared to the other markets across Manchester city centre.  I find it can be really intense in here with the amount of people, so I don’t tend to spend much time here ...

I've got to 'fess up now - I've fallen out of love with Chorlton . I spent nine years of my life there and I have to break it to you that there's more to life than Chorlton.  Let's start with why I fell out of love: Back in 1999, Chorlton was an okay Manchester backwater with teachers, social workers and musicians. Cheap rents are always good as well as a solid Irish community to keep pretentious behaviour in check. Marvellous, count me in! However, by 2008, Chorlton had become burglary central and we had an attempted break in.  I also realised I hardly ever went to the centre of Chorlton anymore as most of the shops I'd liked had been turned into another bloody bar, cafe or artisan something or another. Taxi!   So what turned me off Chorlton? 5) The normal and very handy shops being turned into bars, restaurants or fancy overpriced shops.  I still mourn the demise of You, Me & Us.  It was your perfect stop gap odds and sods shop before yo...

Life in Northern Towns has been entered into the 2015 Blog Awards UK under the Travel and Most Innovative categories.   Help me celebrate five years of Life in Northern Towns by voting for the blog.   Thousands of miles, three laptops and two cars have gone into the creation of this blog, so it would be  lovely to win a nice, shiny award.  Here are the links to vote: Travel Most Innovative Many thanks for your support!

What do you do on a grey Saturday afternoon in Greater Manchester when you don’t want to go far?  Bizarrely we decided to go to Tyldesley . Tyldesley is tucked away off the East Lancs Road (A580) about 12 miles west from Manchester city centre.  It’s well signposted and easy to find, although they do have a one way system to cope with the traffic.  The traffic was particularly bad through the town as it seemed to be the main route to nearby Atherton.  We parked in a free car park off Elliott Street which was handy, although the nearby Morrisons is another good place to park. We’d been to Tyldesley previously for a meal at the Spring Deer Chinese Restaurant (fine by the way) and had a drink at the Railway pub on Wareing Street (nice and had a jukebox, but we sat in a loud spot so not good for conversation).  I liked the fact the local taxi firm is in a local shop, so you can shelter from the elements whilst waiting for a taxi. On this second visit, whi...

We'd been to Lancaster on a couple of occasions, but recently I'd been wondering why we didn't go there more often.  It was within my one hour drive time limit and it's quite a nice city - so what was stopping us? It was actually the drive into the city that reminded me why we don't come here often.  We were stuck in a queue of traffic before we got into the city.  Then we were caught in a myriad of road works, missed parking opportunities and then we were heading towards the M6. Woah there! We had to spin around again and on our second time navigating the one way system we got parked in St Nic's Shopping Centre.  Honestly I was beginning to lose the will to live. The parking at St Nic’s Shopping Centre was one of those grey and grimy multi-storey car parks.  The sound of the air con system for the shopping centre reminded me of being on a ferry going to Ireland.  It cost £2.40 for 2 hours, which is pretty reasonable for city centre parking. ...

Map out, well actually my iPhone map app (we are in the 21 st century after all) and I was trying to find places to go that take under an hour from Manchester.  It’s getting harder to find places we haven’t been or I haven’t yet written about, but I remembered I hadn’t written about Lancaster.  In order to make the journey worthwhile I needed to pick another location. I’d never really heard of Garstang , so a quick Google and a check on Yell for charity shops, this place seemed like a winner. Getting to Garstang from Manchester is easy – M61, M6, M55, first junction off onto the A6 and follow the signs.  It was quite a misty morning driving to Garstang along the A6, but I could just make out the countryside.  I reckon on a nice day you have pretty views as it’s not far from the Trough of Bowland. In all honesty I didn’t know what to expect when we got to Garstang.   However when I saw there was a Booths Supermarket I knew two things: That’s where...

The last time I went to Blackburn it was for an interview and I was on crutches.  Funnily enough the crutches meant I really couldn’t go for a wander around the shops after the interview.  This time I was crutches free, so I was free to explore. You can get to Blackburn from Manchester three different ways: the shorter distance but longer time scenic route through Bolton on the A666; or if you are coming from east Manchester the M60, M66, M65 and off at junction 6; or what we did: M61, M65 and off at junction 4 for the A666.  I wouldn’t recommend the route we took as there was football on at Blackburn Rovers and this route takes you right past the grounds.  However I can recommend that the train is definitely the best way to get to Blackburn from Manchester. We parked up on the edge of town at a pay and display car park on the corner of Weir Street and Mincing Lane.  Whilst there were not many spaces, it was a pleasant surprise to find out that this car...

Every year we find an excuse to go down to London: sometimes for a mini break; other times to meet friends and relations; but this year we were very fortunate to get tickets for the blessed KATE BUSH ! I put this down to adopting the strategy of choosing a date not released to the fan club, hitting the refresh button from 9:29am onwards and not using Ticketmaster.  The strategy worked and it meant we were in London for 22 hours. This time we stayed in Travelodge by Euston Station – small room, noisy air con and on street level next to a road junction.  In its defence it was cheap and clean, but I think Ibis or Premier Inn will be taking our business next time. As we had a few hours to spare we decided to head down to Berwick Street just off Oxford Street.  We decided to walk so we could check out the Fopp in the Waterstones branch on the corner of Gower Street.  Shock horror, Fopp had gone! We continued onto Tottenham Court Road and window shopped past H...