Days Out

Manchester Beer Festival 2014

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Manchester Velodrome Panorama

On Saturday we went to the Manchester Beer & Cider Festival, one of the largest beer festivals in the UK. It took place at the Manchester Velodrome, which is part of the National Cycling Centre and was a major venue for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

The beer festival was the largest I’ve been to. Admittedly I haven’t been to many beer festivals, but with 300 beers and 75 ciders and perries (pear ciders), this was an order of magnitude bigger than anything I’d seen before.

Except, we went on Saturday, which was the last day – the festival ran over four days. The previous three days had been ‘unexpectedly popular’ and so by the time we arrived, around three quarters of the beers had been drunk and were sold out. Still, with 70-odd beers to try, there was still much to drink. At least until 3:30pm, by which point all of the beer had been consumed, leaving just a handful of ciders and perries to try in the half hour before time was called at 4pm – three hours earlier than planned.

Still, it was a really good day out, and it was good to visit the Velodrome, which will be 20 years old this year. Admittedly it wasn’t the best venue for a beer festival – the main festival floor with the bars was in the centre of the track, and most of the seating was around the edges of the track. To get between the two, you were required to descend three flights of stairs, pass through a subway and then ascend another flight of stairs. But it offered some great panoramic photo opportunities, as shown above.

I think it will be a while before I visit such a big beer festival again. The ‘big daddy’ of beer festivals is The Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in London, which usually coincides with a very busy period at work, although it’s earlier this year so perhaps not.

We also popped in to The Moon Under Water pub in Manchester, a Wetherspoons pub which holds the Guinness World Record for being Britain’s’ biggest pub (and rumoured to be the biggest in Europe). It can hold 1700 people and is even important enough to have its own Wikipedia article, which explains the origin of its name.

Armley Mills Industrial Museum

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Photo of the inside of Armley Mills Industrial Museum

Yesterday Christine and I, along with a few friends, went to the Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills.

Regular readers will note that this is the third industrial museum in the area that I’ve visited recently. Last year we went to the Bradford Industrial Museum, which is open regularly. And in August this year we went to the Calderdale Industrial Museum, which is only open select weekends throughout the year. The Leeds Industrial Museum is housed at Armley Mills, towards Kirkstall, and straddling a patch of land between the River Aire and Leeds Liverpool Canal.

Our reason for visiting was for the twice-annual Leeds Steampunk Market. It had moved to Armley Mills from its usual venue of Left Bank near Burley Park. Rather than being arranged in one place in a main hall, this time the market was spread out across the museum and over the four floors, including outside. This made it seem less busy, but well over 600 people had come through the door on Saturday, and the numbers were looking similarly healthy on Sunday when we visited. A 50% discount for those who came dressed in costume may well have helped, and indeed Christine and I took advantage of this.

#steampunk

This was our third visit to the Steampunk market and we have now both amassed the basic Steampunk outfit. Sadly we didn’t take any photos this time (bar the Instagram image above) but my spray-painted gold goggles attached to a top hat made an outing. I suppose over time we’ll be able to come closer to some of the outfits that the more committed followers of the Steampunk subculture have. As usual there were some excellent costumes on show by other attendees.

As for the actual museum at Armley Mills, I managed to take a few photos (uploaded to Flickr of course) but to be honest we will need to go back and actually look at the exhibits properly next time. Especially as in some cases it was difficult to tell if something was a museum artefact or a piece of Steampunk art.

The next Steampunk market in Leeds will be at the White Cloth Gallery on November 30th and December 1st. I may be there.

Assorted notes on London

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The Thames, from Blackfriars
  • Normally we take a rolling case with us to London. This time we packed lightly and ensured that all of our clothes fitted into a rucksack (for me) and a shoulder bag (for Christine). This meant that we could use lockers and cloakrooms in the various museums that we visited, which were free or cost considerably less than the Left Luggage facilities at stations.
  • For a nice view of the River Thames, go to Blackfriars station. It has recently been rebuilt, and now spans the Thames with entrances on both the north and south banks, however more importantly big glass windows have been provided. The photo taken above was taken from Platform 1, looking east, and frames Tower Bridge really well.
  • We saw a pair of urban foxes. They didn’t make any of these noises. It’s not the first time I’ve seen an urban fox but I hadn’t been so close to one before.
  • On our second night in London we stayed at the Pullman Hotel on Euston Road – roughly halfway between St Pancras and Euston stations. It’s not a hotel we’d normally be able to afford but it was definitely worth staying at (certainly better than our Friday night hotel). You also get brilliant views of London from the upper floors, and you don’t need to have a room there to use the lifts.
  • We had a mosey out to the Thames Barrier, which as of 2005 is much easier to get to thanks to the Docklands Light Railway. Alight at Pontoon Dock, and then have a nice stroll through Thames Barrier Park which is in itself quite a nice place.
  • The Museum of London is well worth visiting. It’s free and offers an interesting history of the city, from early settlers to the present day. There’s even a small collection of items from last year’s Olympic Games. We didn’t have chance to visit the Museum of London Docklands this time though.
  • The Wellcome Collection looked interesting but most of it is closed until the spring, so we didn’t spend much time there. The bookshop is excellent though.
  • The British Library also has an exhibition of interesting texts in its archives, including two of the four surviving copies of Magna Carta, which will be 800 years old in a couple of years’ time. There’s enough there to kill time for an hour or so.

Calderdale Industrial Museum

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Calderdale Industrial Museum

A few weeks ago Christine and I went to the Calderdale Industrial Museum in Halifax. The museum opened in 1985, but sadly closed only a few years later and has been mothballed ever since. A group of volunteers called CIMA are working to get the museum open again, and the 10th August was one of their regular open days where visitors could have a look around. I’ve uploaded the photos of my visit to Flickr.

Not all of the museum is accessible; the volunteers have been working for a couple of years but some parts are still out of bounds. However, there are three floors of exhibits, which include stationary engines like the one pictured, weaving machines and histories of some of the major companies that were founded in Halifax. These include Percy Shaw’s catseyes company, Mackintosh – maker of Quality Street and now a part of Nestlé, and the Halifax Bank.

A lot of the windows are still boarded up and not all of the light bulbs had been replaced, so the museum is quite dark. The paintwork on the walls needs some attention as well, as shown in some of my photos.

It was my first visit, but Christine had been as a child, back when the museum was open properly in the 1980s. I think she was disappointed at how the museum had been left to rot for so long. The volunteers have done well but will have their work cut out to get the museum back to where it was when it was closed, never mind taking it forward. I also got the feeling that the local council, which still owns the museum, isn’t being 100% co-operative.

There are also question marks hanging over the museum’s future. It backs on to The Piece Hall, which in January will under-go a 15-month modernisation, and it is next to the proposed site for Halifax’s new central library. The plans may see the museum building being cut down somewhat, although the artists’ impressions do at least show it so hopefully it’ll still be around in future.

There are two more open days planned for 2013, on the 14th and 15th September as part of the national Heritage Open Days events. If you’re in the area I would definitely recommend a visit – it’s easy to get to as it’s just around the corner from Halifax station. Entry is free, but I’m sure CIMA would be delighted if you were able to donate some money to help them get the museum open again more often.

A day out in Saltaire

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Salts Mill

On Friday both Christine and I had the day off work, and as it was a warm, sunny day, we went to visit the Victorian model village of Saltaire. I probably end up here at least once a year for some reason or other.Mostly to visit Salts Mill – home of many of David Hockney‘s paintings and photographs, as well as some quirky shops. But the village itself is worthy of a stroll around. Saltaire was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, and despite being built by Sir Titus Salt, an avid follower of the temperance movement, it now has several nice bars to spend time in.

There’s also Roberts Park, on the other side of the River Aire from the village, which is one of my favourite parks. A major restoration project was completed three years ago and the park now boasts a nice café. When the weather is like it was on Friday, it makes for a great place to sit with a cold drink.In a rare example of organisation, I’ve already uploaded the photos that I took to Flickr for your perusal. At some point, I’ll get around to uploading the rest of the photos from Paris as well…

Visiting Harrogate

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Harrogate Royal Pump Rooms Museum

Today Christine and I took advantage of the fact that we both had annual leave and went on a day trip to Harrogate. Unfortunately it was rather cold, wet and very windy, so it wasn’t the most enjoyable visit.

We visited the Royal Pump Room Museum, which is built above two of Harrogate’s famous wells and charts the history of the town. It’s a nice little museum in an interesting building, which takes around an hour to get around. Oddly there’s also a small exhibition of Egyptian artefacts there as well.

No visit to Harrogate would be complete without a visit to Betty’s. Admittedly Betty’s isn’t unique to Harrogate; there’s two in York, one in Ilkley one in Northallerton and a second tea room and tea house at RHS Harlow Carr, but unlike the team rooms in York the queue for lunch isn’t usually snaking out of the door and around the block. In fact, we could pretty much walk straight in when we visited at midday today, although it was, of course, a Monday in February – not exactly peak tourist season.

I like Harrogate because it has character, and many of its Edwardian and Victorian buildings have been well-preserved. We don’t go there very often, as it takes a good two hours to get there by train from Sowerby Bridge, but it’s a nice day out.

Some of the photos that I took are already on Flickr. I also uploaded several from our last visit in May 2010, as apparently I didn’t upload those at the time. Which makes me wonder what else I haven’t uploaded to Flickr over the years.

People’s History Museum

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People's History Museum

Today we took the time to visit the People’s History Museum in Manchester. I actually hadn’t heard of it until yesterday, when we were looking for something to do as a couple having spent all of yesterday playing games (me, World of Warcraft; Christine, Guild Wars) and not really spending much quality time together.

The museum has been around since 1990, and was originally called the National Museum of Labour History. Indeed, there is a large focus on the history of workers’ rights, the rise of trade unions and the foundations of the Parliamentary Labour Party. That being said, it covers a wide range of subjects, especially the history of democracy in the UK. And Manchester is an ideal place for it, as it was the scene of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, and the historic home of the Co-operative movement is nearby in Rochdale.

It sits in two buildings: the first is a modern extension, opened in 2010 and housing the main body of the museum. The other is the older Pump House building which was one of the three pump houses for Manchester’s Hydraulic Power system, for which there is an exhibition at MOSI about it. The Pump House holds the two temporary exhibition spaces, and when we visited there was a photography exhibition about the Oldham Road, and a special exhibition about the Temperance movement – again, a political ideology with strong northern roots. Pleasingly, the museum’s café stocks a range of temperance drinks, albeit alongside beer.

I found it really interesting, although it does have a rather left-wing political agenda. To me that’s not a bad thing but I could imagine some Tories feeling uncomfortable there. I actually learned a surprising amount of things that I wish I’d been taught at school, about this country’s history.

The museum is free to enter (donations welcomed) and is open most days of the year, although I’d advise against visiting next week as one of the permanent galleries is closed to rotate some of the exhibits. For once, I’ve already uploaded the photos to Flickr, as well as others that I took elsewhere in Manchester today.

Bicester Village

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Bicester Village

Today we went to Bicester Village, an outlet shopping centre in Bicester, Oxfordshire, whilst visiting relatives. It’s one of a number of outlet shopping centres, where shops sell off old, excess or seconds stock at discount prices. However, Bicester Village is somewhat posher than others.

By this, I mean it has shops from the likes of Gucci, Alexander McQueen, D&G, various Saville Row tailors, and other luxury brands that are normally the preserve of the ’1%’ who can actually afford these. If you’re happy with buying something that isn’t quite perfect, or from last season, then you can bag a significant discount.

Of course, despite these discounts, pretty much everything was still well out of our price range. Hooded jumpers for over £300 for example – and that’s a reduced price. In the end, we just bought some cheese and pasta from Carluccio’s and retreated to Starbucks for a coffee to warm up.

Visiting on a Sunday in the run up to Christmas meant it was very, very busy, although we got there before 11am so there were still a few parking spaces (top tip – use the car park next to Bicester Town railway station as it’s quieter). Sunday trading laws meant that some of the larger shops couldn’t open until 12pm, and when we went past just before then there was a queue of at least 100 people waiting to get into the Polo Ralph Lauren shop. This is despite it being one of three shops in the centre, and not the only brand to have multiple outlets – there were a couple of Calvin Klein shops as well, amongst others.

Also notable was that many of the signs were both in English and Chinese, and that UnionPay, a major card system in China akin to Visa and MasterCard, was accepted by many of the shops there. Hence there were many Chinese tourists shopping when we visited, although we heard a number of other foreign languages being spoken, and there was a wide variety of left hand drive luxury cars in the car park.

As a Northerner who doesn’t have a huge disposable income, coming to a place like this was profoundly weird, and from a social anthropology perspective it shows just how wide the gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is in this country. Many shops did not have anything for sale under £100 per item, and yet neither me nor most people I know would pay those sorts of prices, even though they’re already discounted. Whilst this sort of place isn’t quite for the ’1%’, it’s certainly aimed at those in the 99th percentile. I’ll stick with my Marks & Spencers clothes.

Rushbearing in Sowerby Bridge

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Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing 2012

This weekend, like every first weekend in September, is the annual Rushbearing festival in my adopted home town of Sowerby Bridge. It’s a modern revival of a tradition which originally saw freshly harvested rushes being delivered to churches in the area to cover the floors. Although it died out in the 19th century, it was revived in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. 35 years later, in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year, it is still going.

The modern event takes place over two days – the Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend in September. It involves local men pulling a one (imperial) ton cart around the town to deliver a token rush to each of the town’s churches. The cart also calls at most of the town’s pubs, of which there are a lot – 14 just in the town centre itself. Essentially, this makes the rushbearing a large and very glorified pub crawl, and indeed many of the participants carry a tankard. In fact, there are even several tankards attached to the cart itself.

The same cart is used every year, and this one was built in 1984. A ‘cart maiden’, usually an 18-year-old girl, sits atop the cart and waves at people. Behind the cart is usually a marching brass band and several traditional British dancing groups – usually Morris Dancers, but in various different forms.

Last year we missed the Rushbearing as it was the same weekend as Bingley Music Live. But with the somewhat lacklustre line-up, increased ticket prices, and the need to save money for our forthcoming nuptials, we decided not to go this year. This gave us chance to experience a rather different festival closer to home. Although I’m sure the nice weather helped, it was well-attended with many people turning out to line the streets, and patronise the various drinking establishments that the cart called at en route.

Modern-day rushbearing isn’t unique to Sowerby Bridge and it does take place at other northern towns and villages, although these are all in Greater Manchester, Lancashire or Cumbria; Sowerby Bridge is the only Yorkshire town to retain this custom. For a town that is home to yuppie commuters like ourselves, it’s nice to see it keeping in touch with some traditions.

There’s more about the tradition of rushbearing on Wikipedia, and a more detailed history of Sowerby Bridge’s festival on the official web site. And you can view my photos of the event on Flickr.

Creswell Crags

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Photo by branestawm2002, released under a Creative Commons License. My own photos will follow later…

Last weekend Christine and I visited Creswell Crags on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It is a limestone gorge with various caves along the sides, in which evidence for occupation by human ancestors during the ice age has been found. They are also the only caves in the UK to have cave art on the walls, which was only formally discovered in 2003.

The gorge itself was a beauty spot in Victorian times, and various archaeological excavations have taken place since then. Many of the finds are now in a museum and visitor centre, to the north of the site, which we also visited, and this organises tours of two of the more interesting caves. The caves are normally closed to the public, so it is only by going on the tours that you can see the cave art, which are simple animal depictions carved into the rocky walls of the caves. There’s possible evidence that these were painted at one time, like in other caves in continental Europe (I visited Lascaux, or rather the mock-up at Lascaux II, back in the 1990s), but nowadays just the carvings are visible.

It’s a very interesting site, and the museum explains how the area was in different periods in time – before the last ice age, there would have been hippos in the water and hyenas hunting. The museum was opened in 2009 and is an interesting piece of architecture in itself, and has the ubiquitous café and gift shop.

It’s worth a visit – you can wander around the gorge itself for free, but the tours inside the caves and the museum cost money – up to £13 for adults to do both tours, although this is valid for a year for any repeat visits. There’s a picnic area if it’s a nice day, and the gorge is very pretty.