Day Trip to Madchestar

Antony Gormley

A kiwi friend is visiting her family in Southport, we live in North Derbyshire...where to meet? Manchester! What to do in Manchester? Need a place to chat, need a bit of walking around, need cake...the Art Gallery of course.

Kate Malone, Pineapple [detail]

We bundle ourselves into the car to Grindleford and hop on the train that used to be a bus (I kid you not) and trundle very slowly Manchester bound. It's an old train, and has a certain smell that should you wish to reproduce, get your old running trainers very wet, leave them in a plastic bag for about a month, then retrieve them and dry them out on a radiator.

After stopping at every village in the Hope Valley, and every lamp post we arrive in a soggy Manchester. 

Very lovely to greet old friend, and she has kiwi chocolate and biscuits, we set off in an art galleryish direction. A little confused with all the roads and traffic, we are beeped at by a bus, we reach our destination. (we are country bumpkins after all).

Rebecca Lawton, Roll'em Girls '16

Straight to the cafe of course, need to catch up and obviously need to eat a giant chocolate croissant to fortify ourselves for the day. Taken in by the Kate Malone ceramic pineapple on the way, the exhibition we came to see was really excellent. Fashion and Freedom "New fashion and film inspired by the women of the First World War"

We learnt things (who knew Emmeline Pankhurst's 'guards' were trained in martial arts in order to protect her) we really enjoyed the designs and the films accompanying the exhibition were well worth a watch - go see it. 

Favourites were the knee embroidery with an embroidery frame, a commentary on women being able to display parts of their body previously frowned upon. Women - now allowed to expose their knees, would actually decorate their knees!  I liked the use of embroidery to portray this and the frame of the hoop - brining a traditional female occupation into the public eye. 

Time for lunch, that chocolate croissant couldn't possibly be expected to keep us going all day. Back to the cafe, a lovely lunch, more chat of course. We  felt fortified to view more art.

The obligatory photo of the Gormley and onto some Japanese design via traditional paintings. Some lovely organic ceramics. 

One plate, four forks

Feeling inspired, onto an art shop. Sheffield's art supply shops I often find are not great. Fred Aldous beckoned. OMG - I'd never been in before. Things just seemed to leap into my basket, lovely lovely things, lovely thinks that smelt of creativity and pencils, things that will help improve my creativity. I want to live there, apparently it's not allowed.

Ey up duck

Original duck face

Time for cake before the train back to Grindleford. A minty (yes minty) brownie, kinda nice, kinda weird. More chat and a selfie - we forgot to do the duck face as seen earlier. 

  

Right up our street

Warning, this blog post contains low flying ducks

Having both grown up with Coronation Street, on hearing the studio tours were going to close as the sets have moved to a new location, me and my little swamp duck felt it our duty to visit. So popular are the tours, that we could only manage to book for a Sunday evening. Oh well, off we set in the car through the backstreets of Manchester, past all the betting shops, takeaways and pubs with Weatherfield beckoning. No worries for us if we had any car troubles, I happen to know there's a very fine mechanic resident on the street. I'm sure Kev, a heartthrob (for some) when I was at school, would give it the once over.

We arrive, we sort out our tickets and spend an extortionate amount on a hot chocolate and ham and cheese sandwich, we receive our backstage passes.

Inside we find the green room, the costume and make up, actual costumes and studio sets. So small! The trickery of camerawork and wide angle lenses is amazing. Also - the stairs in the Platt household don't go anywhere. Apparently when a cast member goes upstairs, they just have to stay at the top of the stairs until the filming finishes. David Platt's character said (so the guide told us) he spent most of his childhood waiting at the top. You can sometimes spot a foot, I'm going to look out for feet from now on.

It was pretty cool, and and, we got to see a pair of Deirdre Barlow's spectacles - legend.

No photos allowed inside, although we did sneak a selfie in the Rovers. When called for our photo behind the bar, two shots - one pulling a pint, the other a quick kiss! I pulled the best barmaid! Unfortunately that photo came out blurry so we didn't purchase it. When we kissed, all the other people on the tour went  "Ahhh" very sweet! We were very careful for the rest of the tour though, Corrie being renowned for bumping off lesbian characters.

Then we were out on the cobbles, in the actual street. All the doors, all the shop fronts, even the bus stop. Loved that the bus




destination was 'Eccles'.

We saw it all, the Chippy, the salon, the pub, the Bistro, the Kebab shop, everything. It was a great night on the cobbles. The gift shop was in the medical centre, where you could even buy  - yes you guessed it, flying duck fridge magnets.

Duck or canard?

Part deux of the French experience

What could top celebrating Burns night for a French teenage experience of Derbyshire life? A trip down a dark cave and scrambling into a boat might not be everyone's cup of tea…but that was what we did.

We drive though the pretty villages of the Hope Valley to the destination of Castleton, famous for it’s Blue John, stalactites and stalagmites. OK, who can tell me how you tell the difference? I was taught stalactites need to hang on tight to the ceiling, and stalagmites need to be mighty strong to build up from the ground. Oh yes - Blue John is actually blue…I’ll be testing you later.

I find a guidebook to the speedwell cavern in French…result. I give this to Clara and the French contingent gather round and read about what was to be expected for the next hour. I find the guide to ask if he knows any French…he doesn’t (except bon-jaw N.B. his accent was way worse than mine.)

We don protective headgear and stumble en masse down the 900 steps to the awaiting boat. In which we are treated to a ride in the cold dark tunnel, accompanied by the guide telling us about the history of mining in a fairly strong Derbyshire accent. Not sure our French students will have covered coal mining, child exploitation and controlled explosions in their English lessons; at least they have the book. There was a particularly low bit of the tunnel and we were encouraged to ‘duck’. I shouted ‘canard’ to alert the French. Apparently its not the same! Amused my fellow English passengers though.

We get out of the boat, we admire the cavern, we take photos, we stare at our shoes, we take a few more photos having convinced ourselves that there is definitely no 3G signal and clamber into the next boat with relief. The tour guide has some funny stories about previous questions from tourists - for example “How many undiscovered caverns are there?” and “Can I take my hat off, I keep banging my head” And I thought the duck joke sank!

Back on the surface, we decide to go for a hot chocolate and perhaps some cake, we felt we deserved it. However, there were eight adults and 10 children in our party. So the Castleton carnival begins. I’m not sure why we ALL felt the need to traipse into every cafe, establish that the remaining one table and three chairs was not sufficient for our party, cause a log jam in the doorway then tramp to the next establishment, but that was what we did. I am sure we are still the talk of the village. At last, a restaurant agreed to make us a hot drink and feed us cake - phew!

We didn’t go to Sheffield Pride, although I may have taken similar photos if we had

Yes, it’s that time of year...Pride or a carnival, Pride or a carnival...well this year, a Carnival won out  - Bakewell Carnival to be precise. Maisie and I had been to Bakewell earlier in the week, heard the fair music, seen the very end of the raft race and that was it - we were hooked into the carnival festivities and the all the candy floss of the fair, like a duck!

We squash into the little car (easier to park) pick up a friend of Maisie’s and head off in the sweltering heat to find the fun. First we have to find a car park. Dodging shopping trolleys full of novelty items and oompaloompas wandering around in the streets we head for the large, just out of town car park in Bakewell. Huzzah for the little car, we squeeze quite nicely in-between a car and a camper van. Nice. However, in that Great British tradition, the occupants of the camper van are picnicking inside the van - in the car park. They lean out of the window and say "don't park there, how on earth are we going to get out?" We thought they could maybe get out by simply driving straight forward and driving through the bloody great camper-van-sized gap. Not wanting to cause an argument, we found a lovely spot next to the river. 

Tempting though it was to stay in the car and take refreshments there, we headed out to seek entertainment in carnival and fair form.

We were not disappointed. Child and friend head straight for the candy floss, I head straight for the weapons and attempt to win Leanne a ridiculous stuffed Unicorn. The girls were successful, I was not. All I won was a piece of card with two holes in - only one through the star. Leanne was polite in accepting what I’d ‘won’ and managed to hide her disappointment well. On to the carnival.

It was soooo hot, we wandered through the carnival entrants, we were impressed by the variety of vehicles and avoided the bouncy castles, rodeo bull experience and random toilet queue. When we got to the classic cars we knew we were at the end of the display. I’m sure Leanne liked my suggestion of buying a classic car which would mean we would always get a good parking space at such events. Next year, I may just roll up in my Citroen C2, pop the bonnet and stick a random number and rosette on the front - sorted.

People had been lining the streets for hours to get a good view of the procession. We arrived just at the allocated start time. The Police closed the road as we walked up, so we just wandered along the road, and stood right next to the start, in the road, choice.

We were amazed and delighted by the carnival procession. Men with cans of beer dressed as Mary Poppins, girls (Carnival queens) in frilly dresses stuffed into the back of cars waving (what is that all about?) Men dressed as women, women dressed as gnomes, yep just like Pride.

Leanne and I wandered about hand in hand without a care that we might be stared at strangely or challenged. There was so much weird stuff going on around that no one noticed or minded. So my advise to all, if you are the only gay in the village, just go to the carnival to recreate the Pride experience. There maybe fewer moustaches (and they're mainly on the girls) but that’s all.

Back to the car via a little bit of thrill seeking and a proud sunny day was had. Happy Carnival/Pride one and all.