Manchester 

After a great stay in Edinburgh, we hopped on the train down to Manchester, England. We had chosen to stay right in the old centre of town in a hotel that was built in 1815. It is situated right beside Manchester Cathedral and Manchester’s oldest standing building—it holds the Old Wellington pub and restaurant, and the first floor was built in 1552! The upper floors were added later (like the 1600’s) and at one point the entire building was moved about 300m. To do the move, they had to take apart the entire building beam-by-beam and reassemble it like a giant jigsaw puzzle at the current location.

We met up with my mother’s brother and his wife (visiting from Canada), and Mum’s cousin from Australia, so that we could all go on a tour around the countryside to see where my maternal grandmother grew up. We had a beautiful day to drive!

 




Our first stop was in the “cool old town” of Chester, where we checked out an incredible medieval cathedral—I couldn’t believe the detailed stained glass windows and mosaic work depicting scenes from the Bible, or the fine woodwork in the choir stalls!

 After that we went to Bebington and Birkenhead to see where Gran lived as a girl and where her father’s family had come from. It is pretty country in which we managed to find her actual childhood home (in spite of the best efforts of the GPS)!

After the family-members had moved on to London, we took a day trip to Skipton in Yorkshire to check out England’s oldest standing castle that still has its roofing. There was also a market on the High Street that day, so we enjoyed that as well. this picture is of the southward view from one of the castle towers down over the main gate and then the high street of Skipton in the distance: