Floods....

I went down to the River Irwell, the normally benign, if murky, watercourse that runs through the city separating Manchester from Salford. On Boxing Day, following record amounts of rain in the hills north of the city, it burst its banks flooding parts of the city. I can’t remember it ever doing that before in my life time and records show it was 1947 when it last did this. On the day I took the photographs it was back within its confines.

It did flood the terrace in front of the 5 * Lowry Hotel around the Caltrava Bridge. It didn’t get into the hotel itself though as far as I know. The flood dumped hundreds of tonnes of dirty looking sand in the area creating a beach. Someone famous once said that ‘Manchester has everything except a beach.’ Well, when the Boxing Day floods receded we did have one here. And the force of the water tore up some of the paving. But not for long. In these pictures all the sand has been washed away, the paving had almost entirely been repaired. And jet washed by the looks of things.