Manchester Day 2

I am way, way behind responding to lovely comments and dipping into blippers’ journals.  I’ll catch up as and when I can.

We woke to another beautiful sunny morning and after breakfast headed to Manchester Piccadilly Station to travel to Bolton.  The station was packed, presumably because it’s a Bank Holiday Weekend and people were heading to Blackpool to get some sea air.  It didn’t take long and we were soon in Bolton.  MrMacD was upset to see that the main shopping area was quite dilapidated and run down, although he had half expected it.  But it used to be a thriving town centre and now there are lots of empty shops.  We went into the Market Place Shopping Centre, which was reasonably busy but, again, there were empty shops.  There are still lots of lovely old buildings, though, although there were also some that are in disrepair with weeds growing out of them, which is very sad to see.

We visited the Art Gallery, Library and Museum building, as MrMacD wanted to look at a Lowry painting that he’d been told was on display there. It’s titled “Going to the Match” and it brings back memories for MrMacD of going to Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park ground when he was a boy.  It was part of an interesting exhibition called Going to the Match. 

We then hopped on a bus that took us past Bolton School and out to Horwich, where we disembarked and went for a walk in Lever Park.  It was lovely and green with beautiful groves of trees and we managed to find the ruined Liverpool Castle, which was built as a folly by Mr Lever.  From the castle we could see Rivington Pike, but we didn’t have time to walk up to the top.  We returned to Horwich and caught a bus to Markland Hill, where we had lunch at the Victoria Inn Free House.  MrMacD used to go there when he was a teenager, so this was another piece of nostalgia for him.  He enjoyed his second pint of beer since we arrived in Manchester and I had a G&T.  Lunch was excellent - pan fried sea bass for me, a steak and kidney pudding for MrMacD.  After lunch we walked back down to Chorley New Road via the road that MrMacD, his parents and siblings used to live on, and caught a bus to the Bolton Bus Interchange, from where we could walk to the station.  The train to Manchester Piccadilly was cancelled, so we caught a train to Manchester Oxford Road and walked  back to the hotel from there.  We did go out shortly afterwards for a drink and some people watching, which was rather entertaining.  It was the end of another most enjoyable and successful day.
 
The blips show views from Bolton and Manchester.