Greater Manchester - Poynton, Cheshire and Manchester Proper

18th August - the last full day of our trip.  Tomorrow we wake up and drive ourselves to the airport.

Today is devoted to Poynton, Stockport, Cheshire, England -- where my great-great aunt Amy ran an off-license (package store - liquor store) on Park Lane, and where my great-great uncle Billy and aunt Ethel lived.  I met Ethel, Billy and Amy back in 1988, and I stayed with Ethel and Billy during my month in Europe with my Nana and my cousin Jonathan.  Ethel, Billy and Amy were all childless and my Nana was an only child, so we have no living relatives left in England.

My dad's plan was simple -- try to find where the off-license was, and try to find Lindau -- which was Ethel and Bill's home for many years.

The roads to the tiny town of Poynton are equally tiny, and my dad was challenged by them -- judging the sides of the car and dealing with the oncoming traffic is stressful, even in a little Fiat!  We ended up driving up and down the same narrow road through the woods three times, trying to find Lindau.  Lindau's address didn't have a street number -- it was simply Lindau, Middlewood Road, Poynton.  A Google search today reveals that many of the homes on Middlewood Road still lack street numbers, though digits have crept onto the street for other properties.  Couldn't bullseye Lindau with the internet, and my dad just couldn't spot it on the road.

We looked for the location of the off-license on Park Lane, too.  We narrowed-down the area using maps and memory, but no building was specifically recognizable to dad as the off-license.

Our next intended stop was the High Lane Chippy -- a mythical place like Avalon where I had the best fish and chips -- and mushy peas -- in my life back in 1988.  We had a couple of contenders from an internet search, and we were off to find a great lunch!

Along the way I did spy the community centre in Poynton where Jonathan and I had filled-in for the day in a rehearsal for a production of Sleeping Beauty being put on by the local youth group back in the Summer of 1988.  We took turns playing the role of the Prince and we endeared ourselves to the local lassies.

My Dad and I reached High Lane and found a place to park.  We found the fish and chips place we thought might be the right one.  It wasn't, and it was closed on Sundays, anyway.  Instead, we lunched at the nearby Horseshoe Pub, a Robinson's House.

We had a good and filling lunch, then walked around for a bit.  Not too far away, we spotted a canal narrowboat plying one of the local canals.

Quaint Cheshire Canal Boat

If you look closely, there is a dog wearing an orange tabard on the left bank.  The dog belonged to the boat, and as the canal boat passed under the bridge on which we were standing the dog leapt from the bank back onto the boat to continue his journey with his boat and human companions.  Sometimes it's the little things you see on your trip that are just so cool.

We returned to Manchester and our hotel shortly after our walk along High Lane.  We decided to take a public bus into the heart of Manchester to see how we could spend our afternoon hours.  My dad had looked into a tour of the Robinson's brewery before we left for our trip, but he hadn't reserved spots for the tour and the only tour of the day was fully-booked when we inquired from the hotel.  Too bad.

Instead, we went to the Brew Dog microbrewery which has good marks on TripAdvisor.  We weren't disappointed.  We bought two samplers - each sampler had four 1/3-pint glasses of four varieties of their beers -- eight different beers in all.  About 5 of them were quite decent, and my Dad and I each ordered a full pint of our favorites after finishing the sampler trays.  We also had an early dinner at the Brew Dog -- my dad had brisket and I had BBQ pork ribs and burnt (deliberately) spicy baked beans. Yum!  We were frankly camera-weary and neither of us whipped out our camera to shoot a picture of the place.

We returned to the hotel as the sun was setting and we unwound from our day in the lounge.  We reviewed our list of things we wanted to do on the trip, and we found that we had ticked-off nearly every item.  One item we missed -- having some real Cheshire cheese.  Is that enough of an excuse to come back and tour the UK again??

I'm really proud of my Dad.  We had a great trip and experienced a lot of quality father-son time, even when we had a little tiff over the quality of my Dad's initial driving skills way back in Inverness.  We realized that you can never really go home again, as the famous author quipped, but that the reward comes from the attempt and not in reaching the destination.  That's really a metaphor for one of the reasons behind our trip to the UK -- we can never have my Mom back, but we can keep her memories with us as we continue on our journeys, enjoying the experiences of our travels regardless of our ultimate destinations.  The reward is cherishing the past while applying it as a filter to our present and to our future endeavors.  It has been a healthy and fulfilling trip.

It has also been a tiring trip!  We fly home tomorrow, early, so I think I'll knock-off and get some sleep.  Probably one more post for this trip -- the long promised food and lodging special!  You'll get to see where we slept and what we ate ... you won't want to miss it!