Next tours: Wed 16 May (6pm), Jubilee Special Tue 5 June (2pm), Sat 16 June (11.30am), Thu 28 June (6pm),  Worsley cruise Fri 13 July (11am), Tue 17 July (11.30am), Wed 18 July (11.30am), Olympic Special Fri 27 July (11.30am), Fri 3 Aug (6pm), Worsley Cruise Sun 5 Aug (11am), Wed 15 Aug (11.30am), Fri 24 Aug (2pm).

Cost: £15, except Tue 5 June (Jubilee Special with champagne and chocolates, £22.50), Fri 27 July (Olympic Special with champagne, £21).

Meet: By the water outside the Castlefield Hotel, Liverpool Road.

Just to say: The cruise is unsuitable for children. Tea and coffee available but please bring your own refreshments.

New Manchester Walks on water during this 3-hour canal trip with historic commentary on the L. S. Lowry or Emmeline Pankhurst boat. We cruise along the Bridgewater Canal, Manchester Ship Canal and River Irwell, waterways filled with a thousand stories of lockside lore – of deep docks that could hold a dozen ships, of Pomona Pleasure Gardens, of boats laden with Guinness, fish and Scandinavian timber.

From Castlefield, birthplace of Roman Manchester, industrial Manchester, and setting for Britain’s first canal and first railway station, we venture up the Bridgewater Canal, past grand old mills and funky new waterside apartments until we get to Pomona. Here we go through the lock, transferring to the Manchester Ship Canal, the great waterway, as wide as Panama as deep as Suez. Once it was thronged with the world’s ocean-going liners. Now it is the gateway to Salford Quays, the new city on the old canal.

At the Quays we explore the old docks, no longer lined with warehouses filled with cotton but dotted with glass-and-granite skyscrapers, epic museums such as the Lowry Centre and Imperial War Museum North, and the gleaming towers of Media City, the most exciting new building project north of the Olympic stadium.

We then venture back – by water – replete with seafaring Salfordian satisfaction.
(Pre-booking essential with www.quaytickets.com)