Manchester Flower Festival 2023 – 1

The recent bank holiday weekend has seen this year’s Manchester Flower Festival taking place over four days with many colourful displays and installations situated in different locations around the city centre, and armed with a list I spent several hours trekking round to find them.

First on the list was the giant inflatable sculpture Turing’s Sunflowers in the Arndale shopping centre, paying tribute to the brilliant mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing who believed that the spiral shapes on sunflower heads followed the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical concept which appears frequently in nature.

Round in New Cathedral Street several displays ran the length of the pedestrianised area and in the open-sided floral marquee I found Baby Bloom, a pretty take on the world’s first electronic stored-programme computer, the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) otherwise known as The Baby, invented in Manchester and running its first programme in June 1948. Another display I liked was Best Day Ever, a table set for a romantic occasion with colourful blooms including roses, hydrangeas and peonies.

Towards the end of the row was the Grey Goose ‘Vive Le Spritz’ terrace with the world’s smallest spritz bar serving summer spritz cocktails, and on the nearby steps a large Vimto can planted with flowers and fresh berries celebrated Manchester’s iconic fruit cordial, while round the corner twinned mannequins looked out from one of the windows of M & S.

It’s not just any window, it’s an M & S window

Across the road and in the Royal Exchange arcade was something which made me smile – a lovely display of late spring flowers celebrating Hilda Ogden, the iconic and much-loved Coronation Street character, complete with hair curlers, mop, bucket and rubber gloves. Close to the St. Ann’s Square entrance was Suffragette City, inspired by Emmeline Pankhurst and the women’s suffrage movement which started in Manchester. The figures were made of twisted willow and the horse and rider from last year’s festival had been repurposed to represent the most infamous protest of the movement where Emily Wilding Davison threw herself in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby in June 1913.

Past the play zone and sensory garden was the Cotton Bud Fountain representing the county flower of Manchester, turned green with moss and surrounded by wild flowers, followed by The Hive, a unique construction of coloured ‘glass’ panels surrounded on three sides by plants and flowers, with the fourth side being partially open for visitors to walk in. It was the highlight of the festival for me though the photos really don’t do it justice.

Round in St. Ann’s Place were the wheelbarrow gardens with the first one displaying red and blue plants celebrating the city’s two football teams, while a pair of wheelbarrows were planted with bee-friendly flowers and plants to encourage and increase pollination, helping to bring bees back to the city. Sitting under a Canal Street sign was Queer As Flowers, a tribute to Manchester-based tv writer Russell T Davies and his ground-breaking 1999 drama Queer As Folk which was set in the city’s Gay Village. A bold wheelbarrow filled with an array of bright colours representing the Manchester Pride flag, it included an abundance of pansies as a tongue-in-cheek response to the use of the word as an insult to certain members of the LGBTQ community.

On the next corner was Mamucium, a display bringing the past and present together with the modern high rise towers of Deansgate Square contrasting with the old mosaics of the city’s Town Hall, surrounded by plants representing those first brought to the UK by the Romans including rosemary, thyme and roses.

Although not included in the official Festival list the Belvedere contemporary office block, tucked away down a side street, had a lovely cottage garden display outside the entrance. With a wishing well, miniature watering cans, butterflies and lots of colourful blooms it was worth the extra steps to find it and photograph it.

I got so many photos during the hours I spent in the city that it would be impossible to put them all in one post so I’ve split them into two lots and the next post will feature some of the fringe displays plus those in King Street, with lots more colour to come.

Lancaster canal – a walk from Bolton-le-Sands

This is a walk I wanted to do on a couple of previous occasions but the weather let me down, however last Saturday was glorious so I didn’t miss the opportunity this time. Parking in a lay-by just out of Bolton-le-Sands village a short path took me up onto the canal close to Bridge 126 where I headed in a vaguely northerly direction with my goal being Carnforth Marina.

The marina turned out to be not as far away as I’d first thought and I got there sooner than I expected. It was an attractive place with a petrol station nearby, facilities for boaters, the Canal Turn pub, and several boats moored alongside the towpath. A sign in the pub car park rather amused me – I don’t know if the management would ever actually clamp any cars but the pub was closed anyway.

As I’d only walked a mile there was no point going straight back to the van so I decided to carry on walking. After a while I came to a children’s playground separated from the path by a long metal fence then round a couple of bends and across the canal a pony grazed peacefully in an attractive paddock. A handful of boats passed by with their occupants waving or shouting a friendly greeting, pretty cow parsley lined the path and I was surrounded by the gorgeous sweet smell of hawthorn.

After a while the trees gave way to more open land where sheep and cattle grazed and across the fields to the west I could see Warton Crag hillside in the distance. Passing under the busy M6 I eventually came to Bridge 130 and having walked just short of three miles I decided to make that my turn around point, though first I wanted to see what the view was like from the top. With nothing but fields stretching into the distance there was no sign of any civilisation but just along the lane and almost hidden among the trees was a cottage where several goats and chickens wandered freely in what passed for a front garden.

Back at Carnforth Marina a newly arrived narrowboat was approaching the moorings and I spotted a rather cute design on the side of a boat already there. Further along and up ahead I could see some paddling cows although they were out of the water by the time I got there, then close to my starting point I found a mother swan with three babies almost hidden beneath her wings while another little one tagged along behind her.

By the time I got back to the van I’d walked almost six miles. With the blue sky, just enough clouds to make it interesting and a gentle breeze taking some of the heat out of the sun it had been a perfect afternoon and a walk which had been worth waiting for.

Spring comes to Gresgarth Hall

What a difference a month makes! After a rather disappointing visit to Gresgarth Hall in April my visit there last Sunday showed that the garden had burst into life during the previous four weeks and it was all starting to look rather lovely. The same couldn’t be said for the weather though – a check on the live webcam for that area before I left home showed sunshine but by the time I got there just over an hour later it was all rather dull. The sun did reappear briefly a couple of times but not enough to make a difference and without any actual grey clouds I was left with the one thing I hate when taking photos – a featureless white sky.

Exploring the hillside on the south of the river, which I hadn’t done on previous visits, I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. A mixture of grass paths and gravels tracks meandered through the trees and I came across some features which I didn’t expect to see – a cute and quirky stone building nestling among the greenery, a rustic bridge across the river, and a stone folly set back off one of the paths. A set of recently built steps took me down to the bridge so I crossed over and headed along the opposite hillside and back down to the main part of the garden.

The sweet smell of hawthorn perfumed the air in several places, rhododendrons in a variety of colours were dotted here and there, many still in bud, and wild garlic (which I can’t stand the smell of) grew in abundance beneath the trees in a shady corner.

At the stall by the entrance gate a cute little dog mooched quietly about round the table; it was called Kipper and belonged to one of the ladies on the stall. It was rather a sweet little thing and I couldn’t resist taking a couple of photos of it before I left.

Wandering round the garden for a couple of hours and discovering things I hadn’t seen before had been very enjoyable, it was just a shame that the weather couldn’t have been brighter. Blue sky and sunshine would have made so much difference to the photos so I’m keeping my fingers metaphorically crossed that’s what I’ll get if I go back next month.

Bolton & Bury Canal – Little Lever to Radcliffe

Some glorious weather last Saturday prompted me to finish the household chores early and take a walk along the upper section of the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal, a walk which I haven’t done for just over six years. The Bolton arm of the canal originally ran right into the town itself and ended near the Parish Church but the demolition of a couple of aqueducts, in 1950 and 1965 respectively, plus the late 1960s construction of the three-and-a-half-mile long dual carriageway section of the A666, almost entirely destroyed a significant section of it, meaning that the last (or first) section of canal still in water is now just off the main road through Little Lever, which is where I started my walk.

In its heyday most of the traffic along the canal transported coal from the many collieries which existed along its length at the time, and what was once a boatyard and coal depot is now an attractive backwater used for fishing and it’s that which I came to first.

Further along is an attractive row of three canalside cottages and a bungalow then the Meccano Bridge which took me over the long-disused but now excavated top flight of staircase locks which lead down to the lower canal. The Meccano Bridge was commissioned by the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal Society and constructed in 2012 to replace the old wooden footbridge which had collapsed many years previously. Designed by a Manchester artist with a love of Meccano and manufactured by two Bolton companies all the 400 parts and 700 nuts and bolts were made in the same style as a toy Meccano set but scaled up to be ten times larger, ten times thicker and a thousand times heavier. The bridge was assembled on site using the old but refurbished bridge supports and after construction the threads on all the bolts were purposely damaged to prevent it from being dismantled. It was painted in the same colours as toy Meccano and has two matching picnic benches situated nearby.

Beyond the bridge quite a long section of the canal is filled in and nature has taken over, filling the area with shrubs and bushes. Throughout its working life the canal suffered several breaches along its 15-mile length into Manchester but the most serious one occurred here in July 1936. When the canal burst its banks a gap about 100 yards long opened up and millions of gallons of water cascaded 300 feet down into the River Irwell below, taking hundreds of tons of earth and stones with it. Bricks and iron reinforcements from the side of the canal were torn away and carried down into the river and coal barges were smashed up as they too were swept down the hillside. The river rapidly became blocked on the Bury side and with nowhere to go the banked-up water flooded the surrounding land and part of a nearby paper mill.

Although the river was soon cleared of all the mess the breach itself was never repaired; a dam was created further along near Ladyshore Colliery and though the canal saw continued use between there and Bury it eventually closed for good in 1961, with the colliery being demolished some time after 1968. Today a purpose-made path leads from the towpath, across the dry bed of the canal and round the edge of the fenced off tree-filled breach to rejoin the towpath on the far side of it.

The next feature along the canal is the Mount Sion steam crane constructed by Thomas Smith & Sons of Rodley near Leeds, sometime between 1875 and 1884, and bearing the number 3184. It’s thought to be one of the earliest surviving steam cranes in the country and is one of only a small number which survive in-situ; it’s also the only example in England which still remains in an original canalside location. Grade ll listed in 2011 it was formerly used to unload coal from canal barges into the yard of the Mount Sion Bleach Works situated down below the canal bank, though it’s not known when it went out of use. Although in a derelict condition its component parts remain remarkably complete and give a reasonably clear understanding of how the crane operated.

Opposite the steam crane is the attractive area known as Dingle Reservoir. Although at one time it may well have been an enclosed body of water there’s now only a line of reeds separating it from the canal, making it look more like a large canal basin rather than an actual reservoir.

A distance along from there I came to a paddock where several ponies were grazing peacefully, then a row of six semi-detached cottages and a bungalow with their rear gardens bordering the towpath. Eventually I could see signs of civilisation up ahead – I was now on the outskirts of Radcliffe and close to where several not very attractive industrial premises bordered the canal heading into the town so I knew it would soon be time to turn round and retrace my steps.

Not far back past the paddock with the ponies I heard some rustling in the trees close to a nearby bridge and at the far side of the canal were three deer staring at me from the undergrowth. Standing completely still I lifted the camera slowly and just got the photo before a fourth deer ran through the trees, spooked the first three and they were off before I had the chance to get a second photo.

Back across the Meccano Bridge and I was on the last part of the walk along what I consider to be the most attractive section of the canal, and my last photo was of some adorably cute little swan babies. There were nine altogether but they wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to get them all in one photo and I didn’t want to annoy mother swan.

This part of the canal from Little Lever into Radcliffe may not be as pretty as the further section from Radcliffe to Elton Reservoir but it does have some interesting history attached to it, and with the sun shining, the perfume from the hawthorn trees, the sounds of nature and very few people around it made a very enjoyable Saturday afternoon walk.

Spring Fair at Bleakholt

The Sunday before last saw the first of this year’s ‘open days’ at the animal sanctuary and though I never need an excuse to go up there anyway I did have several items to donate. After dropping them off at reception I went for a browse round the stalls in the barn before taking my usual wander round to visit all the various animals.

The smallest pony at Bleakholt is Tweedle who arrived at the sanctuary in 2010 along with his friends Deedee and Jeffrey. He has a teddy bear called ‘Ralph’ for company and standing at only 7 hands he’s so tiny you have to look right over his stable door to see him.

Tweedle

A long term resident in the cat section is 6-year old Lola who arrived at Bleakholt in April 2019, given up by her owners due to her unpredictable behaviour and dislike of men. She was eventually rehomed but returned to the sanctuary for the same reason and now lives a life of luxury with a large heated pen and hideaway cabin all to herself. She was quite happy to let me stroke her nose with my finger and I spent several minutes with her; as a permanent resident she is one of several animals on the sponsorship scheme so once I’d finished looking round I went back to reception and arranged to sponsor her for the next twelve months – which of course I’ll renew in April next year.

Lola’s official photo taken by a Bleakholt staff member

It was raining when I came out of reception but the event was winding down anyway so as I’d been round everywhere twice I set off back home. Over £6,300 was raised that day, an amount they will be hoping to beat at the summer fair in July, so here’s hoping for some fantastic weather when the time comes – and my first port of call next time will be a visit to Lola.