Day Trips from Manchester

In Brief. The Thackray Museum of Medicine is a modern museum in a former Victorian Workhouse that has also served as part of St James's Hospital, which is adjacent. The museum includes a street reconstruction that reflects on the sanitary and health challenges facing Leeds during the Industrial Revolution, and a collection of displays on the history and development of medicine. The museum is trying to target quite a broad demographic, and there should be something here for most ages. The museum entrance. What's Here? The Thackray Museum of Medicine occupies two floors of an imposing Victorian building.  The lower floor includes the cafe and exhibition spaces that focus on local history, whereas the upper floor has more of an emphasis on the development of medicine. The lower floor starts on Disease Street , a reconstruction of a Victorian street in recently industrialised Leeds, highlighting the health implications of high density city life before sewers. If that wasn't of...

In Brief. Peak Wildlife Park is a compact Zoo in the countryside in Staffordshire. Featuring a variety of birds and mammals, most of which are small and unthreatening; a distinctive feature is that there are quite a few walkthroughs, for example allowing visitors to share a space with the penguins and the very tame wallabies (if not the Polar Bears!). A wallaby with joey. What's Here? The Peak Wildlife Park is a green space, traversed by paths that pass enclosures that host a variety of species, from Polar Bears to Tortoises. As many of the species are quite small, they often seem to be close by, whereas in some zoos with larger animals that need bigger enclosures, the animals can seem quite far away ... though I never saw the red squirrels even though you can walk through their enclosure. The animals and enclosures seem to be in good condition, and there is more information provided about the individual species than is sometimes the case. For me, the highlight of the day was the ...