Greater Manchester - Stalybridge, Cheshire

We packed up our things in Llandudno and headed to the train station early this morning, Saturday 17th August.  Needed to get out of Dodge before the old-folks cornered us and made us play dominoes -- or shuffleboard....

We arrived at Manchester Piccadilly rail station after a 2-hour train ride, at just shy of Noon.  We located and collected our rental car -- a neat little Fiat 500 like the ones they're selling now in the States.  The car rental agent gave us a little bit of a hard time -- our reservation was for 11 AM but we didn't arrive at the counter until just after Noon -- the rental place was open until 1 PM.  We think the guy wanted to leave early, but we were the last to collect our car.

  Dad's turn to drive, and he did much better than his inaugural drive with a much larger car back in Inverness.  I only cringed twice.

We located our hotel on the outskirts of Manchester-proper, the Diamond Lodge, with little difficulty in only about a half-hour.  We were able to check in early and we got settled into our room.  We decided it was high-time to head out in search of a pineapple, or more properly THE Pineapple, my great-grandfather's pub and the place where my Dad lived until relocating permanently to the States when he was about 12 years old.  A half-hour drive from the hotel and we were in the small Cheshire town of Stalybridge.

We already knew that the pub was closed -- my Dad's pre-trip research had disclosed that the pub had been sold less than a year ago.  We found it nonetheless, just so he could physically touch the walls and see what the old neighborhood looked like.

The old neighborhood didn't really exist anymore.  When my Dad lived there, there were small row-houses to the left of the pub, arranged around a central courtyard where the outhouses were -- only the pub had indoor plumbing at that point in time (yes, my Dad is THAT old!)  The row-houses and courtyard don't exist anymore.  My Dad's room -- he thinks -- was the one shown in the first picture on the second floor at the right end of the building.  The entrance used to be on the right-hand corner, but had been relocated sometime after the pub left the family's hands.

Less than a quarter mile away, on a "main" street in "downtown" Stalybridge - Grosvenor Street, was the Grosvenor Hotel (just a pub - no rooms to rent), which my Grampy ran for a few years when my Dad was even younger, before the family moved back to the States for the first time (my Dad was born in the US, the family relocated to England for a few years when my Grampy ran the Grosvenor, returned to the States after a few years, and then came back to England shortly after my great-grandfather died to help my great-grandmother run the Pineapple.)  There is no Grosvenor Hotel anymore, and Dad wasn't even certain which building it had been.

Grosvenor Street itself is no longer a street, either -- it has been turned into a pedestrian zone with shops on either side.

We located a pub for a late lunch.  The first pub we tried, full of pre-gaming football hooligans (Manchester United was to play its season-opener later in the afternoon against Swansea), didn't actually serve food, so we found another one 100 yards away -- part of the JD Wetherspoon chain of pseudo-pubs with cheap but decent eats (we have eaten at one or two others during our trip).  This particular pub had the single best men's room either of us have ever had the pleasure to experience -- the decor, cleanliness, lighting and layout are sublime.  It's hard to explain, but you need to pee in the men's room of the JD Wetherspoon pub in Stalybridge if you ever have the chance.

After lunch we sought out Dad's old School -- West Hill Primary.  It still exists, but is now some sort of science-focused junior college and no longer what we would consider a grade school.  The gates to the grounds were locked, so we took the opportunity for a photo-op at the school's sign:

We returned to the hotel shortly thereafter, after walking through the extensive and beautiful park which abuts the West Hill School.  It started to rain pretty hard and continued to rain through the evening.  Dad and I braved the rain to walk around the neighborhood of the hotel, but there was nothing really to recommend the area -- and no pubs or food places to speak of.  Fortunately, our hotel has a full bar and a restaurant so we were able to relax, have dinner and a few drinks, watch some of the Manchester United game, and take it a little easy.  We both frankly needed a little down-time.

Tomorrow we visit the town of Poynton, where my great-great uncle and aunts (Billy, Ethel and Amy) lived, and where I stayed for two weeks in the summer of 1988 with my Nana and my cousin Jonathan, who celebrates his nuptials in California in just about a week!

Stay tuned!

Interesting VacaKen Sidebar, Entry Seven:

Lots of luggage looks alike.  That’s why lots of people try to personalize their luggage with “unique” marks, tags or dangles.  Unfortunately for lots of people, their “unique” embellishments are similar to those of many other people.  My Grandmother came up with a truly unique bag marker, which adorns my rolling bag:  You know the plastic mesh bags that onions come in from the supermarket?  Yup – I tie part of an onion bag to my luggage handle – NO ONE else uses that as a bag indentifier!!  Even rarer, mine is yellow rather than the more ordinary red!