From April to June, Combermere Abbey in South Cheshire opens its doors to the public for guided tours of its beautiful manor house. I recently joined one of those tours for a fascinating insight into the history of this remarkable estate and how the current mansion came to look the way it does. Read on for my thoughts on the…
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Wigg Island is a local nature reserve and community park in Runcorn, North Cheshire. It consists of 23 hectares of reclaimed industrial land on a little island between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal and is reached by a traffic light controlled single track bridge. Named The Old Quay Bridge, it is a Grade II listed swing bridge…
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Over Easter I had my nephew staying with me and I always give him many options of things we could do, then let him choose some. After looking at several theme parks and what rides were there, Jacob chose Southport Pleasureland, so that was that. The weather forecast was great all week, so tickets booked and off we went. Southport…
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It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that as a sculpture trail nut, who delights in nothing more than encountering art in the great outdoors, I would also be intrigued by a trail of 3D animatronic dinosaurs through a park in Manchester. Local venue (tick), the great outdoors (tick), cool moving sculptures with sound effects (tick)… Yep…
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Despite having lived within half an hour’s drive of Dunham Massey my whole life, I’d never visited in the spring. That is until now… it was literally the first place I went beyond the constraints of my local town as we emerged from the UK Covid lockdown 2.0. I soon discovered that Dunham Massey…
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Walking up Rivington Pike and Winter Hill in the snow is an experience I’ll never forget. Winter Hill will be familiar to anyone living in north west England. If you are driving north up the M6 past Warrington, Wigan and Preston, Winter Hill is the massive rounded lump of a hill to your right crowned by an enormous telecommunications…
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I think it’s safe to say we’re all glad to see the back of 2020. However I’m not going to concentrate on the sheer number of crappy things that happened during the year and rehash what we all know, because we’ve all lived it… many of us have lost loved ones and we’ve…
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2020 was the first time the Blackpool Illuminations were extended beyond their usual two month duration, which meant this free awesome spectacle carried on lighting up the Lancashire coast into early January, bringing a bit of extra Christmas cheer to the festive period. The decision was made this year (2022) to extend the illuminations for the third consecutive year to…
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One thing I think we all did in 2020 is to get outside more and explore the area near to where we live. For me, this area is Warrington in Cheshire, situated half way between the big northern cities of Manchester and Liverpool. Surrounding Warrington are some lovely landscapes and excellent opportunities to explore the great outdoors. One of those…
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As a child, there was nothing I loved more than a game of crazy golf. On our annual family summer holiday, my parents would allow my brother and me to each decide the itinerary for a day. This has lead to some interesting experiences, the most memorable being a highly entertaining horse riding trek in Crete where I’ve never…
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Set against the beautiful backdrop of Hutton-in-the-Forest on the edge on the Lake District National Park, I finally got to experience the exciting creative event of ‘Potfest in the Park’ back in 2020. This fabulous annual ceramics festival has been going since 2001 and it had been on my radar ever since doing ceramics as part of…
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It’s not often that I venture into my old home town of Macclesfield since moving away 8 years ago. I mean – my parents live in the area so I’m always back and forth, but I don’t have much call to visit the town centre. Until that is: August 2020 came round, and I found myself in Macclesfield…
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