Day Trips from Manchester

In Brief. This visit was to the heart of Sheffield, where the Peace Gardens occupy the square beside the Town Hall, Plants fill a modern Winter Garden and Pictures are among the objects on show in the Millennium Gallery . In fact, the Millennium Gallery more strongly features craft items, and the nearby Graves Gallery is the place to go for paintings. All of these are deserving of attention, and the compact town centre seems to have emerged strongly from a series of development initiatives. Sheffield Town Hall from the Peace Gardens What's Here? Perhaps the Peace Gardens are the definition of the centre of Sheffield, occupying the public space in front of the town hall. It won't take long to visit them, but the combination of lawns, water features and levels, from the late 1990s, manages to be be both stately and calming in the middle of the bustling town centre. The Winter Gardens The Millennium Gallery and adjacent Winter Gardens were the original focus for my visit. Neither...

In Brief. The East Lancashire Railway is a heritage railway running over 12 miles of track with 7 stations, one of which is a hub at Bury, where there is also a transport museum. The railway, which is kept going at least in part by an army of volunteers, has a large collection of engines and rolling stock, and runs a wide variety of events; my visit was to one day of a Steam Gala that runs over three days with a variety of impressive and compact engines pulling the trains.  A London-Midland-Scottish Locomotive from 1936. What's Here? At the risk of stating the obvious, there are stations, trains and tracks: The stations include a sizeable hub at Bury that provides a bar, a cafe and shops, and there are also catering facilities at either end of the line, at Heywood and Rawtenstall. This regular supply of catering reflects the fact that a visit is expected to include a certain amount of pottering about, the occasional visit to places that travellers might not otherwise visit, and s...