Canals and Waterways
Lost Rivers & Canals
Next tour: No dates yet. Meet: Victoria Station wallmap (within spitting distance of three ancient waterways). What’s lost?: The Tib: gone; the Dene: nowhere to be seen (if it ever existed); Hanging Ditch: dried up. These are just some of the lost rivers and canals of Manchester. We will stay dry, or as dry as we …
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Along the Ashton Canal to the Portland Basin (long tour!)
Next tour: No dates yet. Meet: Malmaison Hotel, No. 3 Piccadilly, time tbc. This is a big one, aimed at all you trekkers. We follow the Ashton Canal, from the city centre, past the steepest street in the world, the oldest skewed bridge in the country, Piccadilly Village, the Chips Building in Ancoats, the old …
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Bridgewater Canal
Next tour: Sunday 16 July 2023. Meet: entrance Beetham Tower, Deansgate, 2pm. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. About the tour Join Ed Glinert, Manchester’s leading canal historian, to explore the waters, banks and history of the Bridgewater Canal, Britain’s first man-made waterway, which saw Manchester launch the industrial revolution in the 1760s. …
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Cruise the Manchester Waterways – with Historic Commentary
Next sailings: Please Google “princess-katherine – Manchester River Cruises” Expert commentary provided: Our popular canal cruise glides along the local waterways to see the stunning sights of Salford Quays and Media City. Illuminating one way commentary by the queen of canal guides, Salford born Sue Grimditch and the usual great service from crew of the Princess …
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The Grand Canals of Manchester (West to Castlefield)
Next free tour: Saturday 28 October 2023, 11am. Meet: Outside the Malmaison Hotel, Piccadilly. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. This is a spectacular stroll along the waterways of Manchester, invoking a host of stories industrial and architectural, anecdotal and incidental, as we head west from Piccadilly, …
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Grand Canals East (to Sportcity)
Next tour: Saturday 26 September 2020. Meet: Malmaison Hotel, No. 3 Piccadilly, 2,30pm. Booking: Please press here to book with eventbrite. On the eastern edge of the city centre two canals (the Ashton and Rochdale) and one river (the Medlock) lead through the old industrial heartland. Here are the parts that gentrification hasn’t reached: tumbledown …
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Salford Quays…Old Docks…Media City
Next free tour: Saturday 15 April 2023. Meet: At Salford Quays Metrolink stop, 1 p.m. Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite. Huge docks which once harboured the world’s ocean-going liners. Gleaming museums of the modern age. A world famous canal, as deep as Suez, as powerful as the Panama. Here a new city …
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Mapping The Medlock – The River That Manchester Forgot
There are three visible rivers in city centre Manchester: the Irwell, the Irk and the Medlock. And it’s the Medlock that we investigate on this tour. The river that Manchester has almost forgotten rises near Oldham and flows westwards through Daisy Nook Country Park (as painted lucratively by L. S. Lowry), past Man City’s ground, …
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River Irwell
It’s the river that divides Manchester from Salford, snaking its way through the centre of the metropolis and almost meeting itself near Salford Crescent. Never a picturesque centrepiece like the Thames or Seine, it was a conduit for goods and products, an outlet for industry, a black, inky artery between factories and mills. But that …
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Along the Manchester Ship Canal
Next tour: 2021, but not sure when yet. Meet: Entrance to the Science & Industry Museum, time tbc. Booking: It’s the world’s greatest waterway, as deep as Suez, as wide as Panama, and it brought the sea into Manchester – almost as far as the city centre. The Manchester Ship Canal was the last great …
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Manchester News
- Oppenheimer – the Manchester atomic connection
The atom bomb is hot news right now, thanks to this summer’s big blockbuster film, Oppenheimer, named after J. Robert Oppenheimer, organiser of the Manhattan Project which dropped the bombs on Japan in 1945.
Ed Glinert of New Manchester Walks, who has hosted countless local tours that include stopping at the atomic bunker on Chinatown’s George Street, and gives talks on the story of the atom bomb on cruise ships, relates the full atomic story to coincide with the release of the film and as the 78th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs in August 1945 to end the Second World War approaches.
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