The Wayfaring Path

We have two wonderful friends – Steph is from Sheffield, and Derek is from Manchester. They live near us in New Zealand, and happened to be in Manchester at the same time as us, so offered to give us a tour of the city last Thursday arvo. I can highly recommend getting a tour from these two, we felt really privileged! I’m really not great in very big cities, my sense of direction goes haywire and the sounds overwhelm me, but walking around with them helped me relax into it.

We started off at the Old Wellington Inn (well, actually at Sinclair’s Oyster Bar next door, as the menu had more options), which is a mid 16th century pub that was damaged in the Manchester bombing in 1996, and was moved to its current position in 1999 (as was Sinclair’s). Lovely food in the sunshine, great people-watching, brilliant hearing the history of the area – from “Hanging Ditch” (shudder) to the really lively square we saw before us.

We walked into the Royal Exchange Theatre, which is a space-ship-looking theater housed inside one of the old trading exchange buildings. Manchester was a huge centre of trade and manufacturing in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has the huge and beautiful trading exchanges and warehouses to prove it! This one still has it’s old trading board up, frozen in time from the last day the market closed here.

An absolute highlight was the John Ryland’s library, built by his wife Enriqueta in his memory, and opened in 1900. Glorious, Neo-Gothic, atmospheric… everything I could ask for in a building! It’s popular, and they don’t over-crowd it, so we had to queue to get in – the first time I’ve ever had to queue to get into a library! Their collection of books is really great, and they had some on display. I was excited to see Elizabeth I’s signature, amongst other treasures. There is a gorgeous, just GORGEOUS reading room, complete with real life students studying in the alcoves, doing their best to ignore us tourists wandering about filming everything. Makes me want to study again! (Speaking of which, I’ve fallen in love with an MA programme at York university – Stained Glass Conservation and Heritage Management which looks amazing but requires a Lotto win!).

We visited the main gallery, and I got super excited when I found some Pre-Raphaelite paintings in a room and was spending ages mooching around in front of them… then Regan was like “follow me!” and took me to ANOTHER room that had EVEN MORE PRBs! So dang exciting, and one picture which I had a print of in my bathroom for years and years (see top of page) – amazing to see it for real.

We walked through some amazing streets, down the beautifully-decorated Canal street, which was gearing up for the massive Pride festival that weekend, and had a nice pot of tea at an Alice in Wonderland-themed teahouse!

The next day we took the tram up to Prestwich, to meet our lovely homeowner of the house we are sitting for two weeks. It’s a lovely cosy home and we are so stoked to be here! Just a house with plants and no animals, so it’s very relaxing, lol. Prestwich is a cool area, about half an hour north of Manchester CBD. Some good charity shops and and a lively town centre (with an M&S Food Hall, yuss) and easy to get into the city for a spot of church-bothering after work.

Had a really quiet first weekend, resting and getting to know the local streets a bit. Monday was a Bank Holiday and was hot and sunny, so we went into the city and I started filming for my video “Medieval Manchester”. There’s not much left of the very old buildings in Manchester, as most of them were destroyed in WWII bombing raids, but there’s two old pubs, the cathedral, and the amazing Chetham’s Library in the Medieval Quarter.

I love making the little ‘Shorts’ videos as they are pretty simple to put together, but making a long form video is a different matter entirely; requiring research, a script, a shot list, editing, choosing music, making the thumbnail, and uploading to YouTube. It took many hours of work for just 6 minutes of final video but it was super fun! Nerdy fun, but that’s the best kind, in my opinion! Here it is, enjoy! Regan has a few cameos, so keep an eye out for him 👀

For various reasons I had to return to the Medieval Quarter on Tuesday and Thursday, and it was really nice as it started to feel familiar to me and I needed my phone’s map less and less. On Thursday I also visited the AMAZING Fred Aldous craft store – if I lived here I think I’d just get my salary direct credited to them and would start a new hobby every week! Hands down the best craft store I’ve seen in aaages.

Regan was away from Wednesday to Saturday, in a forest near(ish) Leeds, learning how to make a bow from scratch with only hand-tools. As I type I’m eagerly awaiting his return and I can’t wait to hear all his stories! Hopefully he writes a blog post about it, as it sounds like there were a few characters on the course with him.

After 3 months of sunshine and heatwaves the weather finally seems to be turning. We’ve had a few days of rain and the nights are drawing in too. I’m secretly delighted because I love autumn and also I want to start wearing my new gumboots and raincoat! I’m sure I’ll regret those words when I’m digging in a muddy trench for two days, so I’ll keep you posted on that 🙂 I’ve been hitting the charity shops here and have picked up some amazing bargains! We’ll be able to send the camping gear and summer clothes home next week, which will free up suitcase space for more charity shop finds and beautiful books!

As I type this, this time next week I’ll be on Lindisfarne, and getting ready for my first night sleeping in the hostel. I’m sure it’ll feel weird and first-day-of-school-ish at first, and I’m not really looking forward to sleeping in a dorm room with three other people and sharing a bathroom with maybe dozens of them, but nothing worth anything is easy, right? I really dreaded the communal living when we were prepping for the Camino, but in the end I quite liked sharing a meal with 20 new friends every evening. I’m sure it’ll be the same with this – a few days of “oh feck, what have I DONE” and then I by the end I won’t want to leave!

On Saturday I took the bus up to Bury, about half an hour north of here. The bus system in Manchester is easily the best of anywhere we’ve been. All the buses are now run by the local authority, rather than having multiple companies running different areas, and it is so much better. A great example for the benefits of moving away from the private ownership model which, as far as we can tell, has not worked out well for England and her buses. You just tap on with your phone or card, you don’t need to tap off, and then it cleverly works out the cheapest fare for you, based on your taps. Trips are capped at two pounds and the network is HUGE, so you can go all over the place with one tap. I’m so used to every bus having a different system (and being a bit of a nightmare to work out) that it’s taken me days to realise this, but it’s just brilliant. I hope every area does the same thing.

Bury has an indoor market which was huge and really busy but a bit much for me. I did a quick blast around and then high-tailed it out of there! Smashed some charity shops (a nice blue top, a grey jumper and a cool necklace for around two quid each!) and then went to the Bury Art Museum.

I love small town gallery/museum combos, you get all sorts jumbled in together. This had a huge sculpture installation, the local art club’s exhibition, a J.M.W. Turner, a pretty nice mix of art from the 19th century, some Ancient Egyptian artefacts, stone tools, a display of video games from the 1980s, and some cool miniature looms, which I think were used to make fine silk borders – no idea, just guessing. All a bit bonkers and I loved it! Wonderful old building with nice stained glass too, which always helps.

On Sunday we went to Festwich – a festival of cover bands at a nearby park. Concerts and festivals always seem to involve walking far longer than is fun or comfortable, or waiting for aaaages to get a taxi or bus. So a 20 minute walk home was an absolute dream! I found it a struggle to get into it at first – now that I don’t really drink I find such events totally over-stimulating and intense and just want to run away. Competing sounds, too many people, too much going on, it really is a lot to take in, and I felt very “homesick” for the Chalke History Festival which had so many different things to do, but with a super chill vibe. But anyway, I loved the INXS cover band and we had a proper boogie as the sun went down. We also had ice-cream and hot chips for dinner (in that order!) so it felt like a real event! And then home for a cuppa and an episode of The Great British Sewing Bee 🙂

So now my thoughts turn to the next big adventure – Lindisfarne! It’s what this whole trip is built around, and is the culmination of years of daydreaming about archaeology, my two years studying, the excitement of booking my place, and the organising to get us here… it’s finally happening in less than a week! Not sure how we’ll enjoy being apart for so long, but at least Regan is coming up to Northumberland with me for the first few days, so he’ll get to see the island and meet the people I’ll be working with. I’m excited and terrified in equal measure.