Should I be posting a travelogue this week? I'm in Manchester for 3 days to run a training course; drove up here along roads getting progessively busier. I started so early that I picked up a fox in my headlights near home, and arrived sandwiched between commuter cars to my left and right, head and tail.
Manchester grew in Victorian times as an inland port, with cotton from around the world arriving for working in the mills, and it was as late as 1900 (I think) that it became a city. And what a city - magnificent buildings (though many sadly lost and replaced) including the great arch of the aptly named Victoria station, just across the road from the building I'm in.
I'm probably not going to get a chance to sightsee this week, but I recall running a course near here last year and taking in the docks in Salford, the new art gallery down there, the original London Road station (where the first mainline steam passenger railway in the world, to Liverpool, ran from), Chinatown, and on spec walking in (and getting seats for) Miss Saigon. We sometimes forget what magnificence and beauty we have close to home - I expect that some of you reading this may be doing so from within 50 miles of me, yet you might not have seen all the sights I talk about.
