Day Trips from Manchester

In Brief. Named after the person it was initially produced for, the Dorothy Clive Garden was originally developed in the 1940s, and is now a garden of two halves. The original garden is a wooded area built into an old quarry, which will be most colourful in the spring, and the more recent area includes a collection of themed spaces including grand herbaceous borders and a distinctive edible woodland.  In my visit in September there was still a lot of colour in the more recent garden, and the cafe provides a pleasant area to pass the time when the sun shines. The Waterfall in the Quarry Garden What's Here? The Dorothy Clive Garden occupies a hillside near Stoke-on-Trent, and, other than the sound of cars heading along the adjacent A51, this is a peaceful and relaxing garden.  After a pleasant tea and lemon drizzle cake the outdoor space of the cafe, I headed for the Quarry Garden. This provides meandering paths around and into a largely wooded area that occupies a disused quarr...

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...