Manchester fun happens thick and fast at this autumnal time of the year. First we had the Halloween Howler over at Clayton Vale. Lots and lots of people (we believe well over 2,000) and they seemed to be having a great time.

Then over here we had the Heaton Park fireworks last night. Yet again the hordes that came to watch gave us no trouble. The only slight downside was that the vast traffic jam meant I didn’t manage to make it to my first Pirates of Penzance Rehearsal of the year at UMIST (or whatever, it’s called now it’s part of the University of Manchester again).

And if bonfire night is over then it must be Remembrance Sunday closely followed by Christmas! Or at least plenty of Christmas light switching on, up and down the country.

Here in Manchester there’s going to be some fun over at Sportcity on the 19th November to celebrate the grand light switching on.

I believe there’ll be all manner of good things, including craft workshops for children to make Christmas decorations for us doting parents. A brass band (please let them be reasonable!). Of course hot drinks and mince pies(and these are free too).

Plus a 1 kilometre Santa Claus fancy dress fun run, which sounds very sweaty and beardy. For those not inclined to sweat it for Christmas you can go on some fairground rides or be entertained by a motley band of street entertainers

It kicks off at 5:15 and finishes all too soon at 6:30. I understand you can get in through Gate 11 on Rowsley street off Ashton New Road in soon to be fun-filled Beswick.

If you find the lights at Albert Square a bit too much of a crush this might be just the thing to go to. Try it out and let us know what you think!

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Clayton Hall museum looks like a great new school curriculum resource for the Victorian period. It’s about to be opened for exactly that purpose.

Volunteers with help from Manchester Leisure have been decorating and finding appropriate furniture to show how the hall might have looked during Victorian times.

They’ve even had the kitchen range re-installed so that as soon as you walk in it looks just as you’d expect a Victorian kitchen to look.

They’ve just had their open day for teachers to view before the museum’s grand opening.

All the teachers that came were enthusiastic and some have already booked one or more dates to bring classes.

I suspect it could be fun for more schools to find out about this little gem. To see the progress to date check the Friends of Clayton Park’s where there are some nice photos of people working!

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The Manchester Blog Awards steams into its 2009 competition.

See more about the Manchester Blog Awards and make your nomination.

Manchester seems to attract a fair few of the UK blogging community. Maybe it’s because we all stay inside because of the rain?

Without doubt there are some great writers out in the Mancunion Blogosphere and I’m looking forward to hearing more as the nominations start to pile up.

I notice they don’t have an award for Mancunion Twitter of 2009. Maybe they should institute that this year as a special award. Particularly as some bloggers have almost forsaken “real” blogging for life as a tweeter.

Anyway, the awards promise to be a bit of fun for those of us closeted in the attic in the stifling heat or catching the drips in the various cans, buckets and ears as the Manchester summer starts to dwindle and fade.

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Today I was helping at the Clayton Hall summer event where I was given the task of looking after, and selling, a table full of books.

The park is a nice little one set in front of the old Clayton Hall and both it and the Hall are surrounded by a moat. Although at the moment the moat remains dry. You can see the bridge across the moat going from the trees to the middle of bottom of the picture, shown to the right.

Unfortunately the crowds didn’t descend on us this year although we did get a fairly steady amount of people arriving over the few hours we were there.

The event was a little bit of fun, and had the brilliant opportunity for people to buy books too!

I think the reasons for the lack of crowds are many.

Firstly because the event was held across the moat and is concealed by trees and buses anyone casually walking past wouldn’t notice it.

Secondly, it would be interesting to see whether the day we held it (Saturday) made any difference to families with children. That is would they rather go somewhere further away or into Manchester, or to watch a football match on this sort of a day? What do you think?

Thirdly, the weather was a bit unkind early on and it bucketed down for the first half hour. After that it brightened and the blue skies made a welcome return. So maybe the weather had some effect, although other events that had rain actually seemed to make no difference to the crowd.

Fourthly, as my wife Kay pointed out, although all the schools had posters about the event, it was unlikely that the children would tell their parents about it. I mean we have 4 children and I’ve never heard of them make any mention of any posters that are up in school – and yes there are actually quite a few. So maybe a simple letter telling parents could be slipped into the bag of each primary school child, before the last day of the summer term? At least that way the parents could see it and decide for themselves whether they and other children could attend.

It does seem a bit of a shame for so much effort to go into organising an event that children would definitely enjoy and not to have the hordes we know would enjoy it. Maybe you can think of a more likely reason that people didn’t attend this year? If so let me know and I’ll pass it on to the merry band of souls who do such sterling work in Clayton Hall.

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If you want to help save Heaton Park from being slowly nibbled to a “death by development” sign up for the “Save Heaton Park petition.”

The application is for:

“Proposed sports development comprising of: detached building to form changing rooms with ancillary store, multi use rooms and cafe bar, together with the formation of 13 small-sided football pitches, six tennis and netball courts, skatepark and climbing wall with associated parking, landscaping, boundary treatments and associated floodlighting.”

In addition you can object to the planning permission.

If you live near the park you’re a neighbour and there’s plenty of reasons to put for objections – I wonder how many of the trees have preservation orders on for instance?

The problem appears to be that Manchester council wants to improve facilities at Heaton Park. A good motive!

However, they’re currently talking to an organisation that plans to put a number of different sports facilities there, including tennis courts and football pitches. And of course they’ll charge for these facilities to be used at peak times.

Firstly who defines peak times and secondly, and more to the point, why can’t they develop all these sport facilities elsewhere?

There’s plenty of land around Simister or other parts of Prestwich that could be used. There’s also plenty of land around between the M60 and Middleton that could be used, including an ex-mega car sale facility that already has massive amounts of parking.

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Yes, Manchester may not be quite as old as London, or as enormous as New York. But what we lack in size or age we make up for in easy to get to quick sights to see for the seasoned tourist.

And to help us on our way Google have invented a snazzy way for getting the recommended Manchester tourist sights. They’ve set up a way for the locals to add interesting places, it’s called Google City Tours. The sights are shown on a Google Map.

If you click on the Google City Tours link it currently shows a variety of different places to visit, including:

• Greater Manchester Museum of Transport
• Manchester Museum
• Museum of Greater Manchester Police
• Manchester Jewish Museum
• Salford Museum and Art Gallery
• Ordsall Hall
• The Gallery of Costumes
• Heaton Park Tramway Trasport Museum
• Museum of Science and Industry

and many others…

Try it, you may find something you’ve never heard of and yet is worth a visit.

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This is aimed at those who’d love to live in houseboats, own their own liveaboard, maybe run their own boat charter or have their own sea-going fishing boat.

This post is slightly unusual as a Manchester friend has asked me to see if you’re interested in his pride and joy, a 20 metre 14 berth launch.

So here goes…

The Osprey Liveaboard

The boat is an ex-RAF launch called Osprey. My friend is an ex chief engineer who loves to make things work exactly right. So he’s taken a long time making it into a comfortable liveaboard for divers and he’s run Osprey as a boat charter operation.

He got the boat approved in early 2005 and she chartered in the Western Isles, in Scotland, during that season and was due to return for the 2006 season.

Unfortunately due to serious health problems in the family he wasn’t able to take the Osprey out in 2006 and she was moved to Yoker, Glasgow where’s she’s been cared for ever since.

The family’s health issues remain unresolved and as he’s now reached retirement he and his wife are reluctantly putting the Osprey onto the market.

Some Liveaboard photos

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A Bit Of Boating History!

The boat was built in 1959 by Saunders Roe in Anglesey for the RAF as a rescue target towing launch.

She was stationed in Portrush (Northern Ireland) servicing the North Atlantic until 1968. She was then transferred to the Royal Navy as a fast despatch craft for the Commodore of the Clyde.

She was stationed in the Grand Harbour, Greenock, until 1984 when she was sold and converted into a dive vessel, with dive platform at the back and accommodation for 12 divers, plus crew and captain. You can see the layout and accommodation in the picture below:

Liveaboard Layout and Boat Accommodation

The boat is 20 metres long with a beam of 6 metres and a draft of 1.7 metres and weights 43 tons.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the boat, including equipment  email me at Osprey at acornservice dot com. Alternatively just leave me a comment!

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Well we had a beautiful day on Thursday, 4th June. Friday was great until about 4pm and then the heavens opened.

Today? Well Saturday is looking gloomier.

Basically, today’s weather has been a lot more of the same. It’s chucking it down. I can see a couple of very bedraggled marshals standing at the front of the main gates.

It has brightened a little since about 8:30am but it is still pouring down.

Luckily the concert site is up on a rise so there is reasonable drainage down into the rest of the park.

Hopefully, the weather will clear but at the moment it looks as though it wants to keep going all day.

Good luck if you’re coming to the concert today!

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Situated where we are we can’t hear the Oasis gig at all, as the concert is on the Bury Old Road side of the park.

Two of Kay’s cousins borrowed a small bit of our drive to park their car and went to the concert.

Their verdict? Fantastic!

Our verdict on the how everything seemed to work?

Traffic appeared to keep moving and there didn’t seem to be the horrific traffic jams we all expected.

There was an enormous amount of people walking around Middleton Road but the park and ride buses seemed to be working well.

Having said that the Middleton Road main gate wasn’t really the focus of foot or car traffic as most people were channeled out of the gig through the Bury Old road gates and the Sheep Foot Lane one.

I know the plan was that tram passengers should make their way to Bowker Vale to get their trams home. That is they wouldn’t be able to use the closer Heaton Park tram station, possibly because it’s smaller than Bowker Vale. All I can say is I hope Metrolink laid on special tram services with double carriages for everyone.

I suspect the traffic will be much more chaotic for the remaining Oasis dates at Heaton park if the weather continues nice, although the forecast is rather gloomy over the weekend: rain is expected.

Remember there are a vast raft of parking restrictions around the area. And as I said before the Heaton Park Sainsbury’s car park is closed to Oasis traffic and again the car park’s 8 foot high gates will close long before the gig finishes!

For those who want to see how the park is laid out check the Heaton Park map and note that there are now 2 further large gates for pedestrians to exit between the Grand Lodge entrance and the text saying Bury Old road on the left of the map at the bottom.

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I live right outside Heaton Park where the Oasis concerts are being held.

Looking around the area my advice would be to use the park and ride facilities at Prestwich and elsewhere or to come by tram, arriving either at Heaton Park or Bowker Vale tram stations.

Otherwise it will be a complete nighmare for you. Traffic is fairly nose to tail with the quite small amount of rush hour traffic we normally get on Middleton Road. So you can imagine what it’s going to be like with a vast army of concert goers.

Basically the Middleton road and Sheepfoot Lane roads are completely coned off to prevent parking. And I know that Heaton Park has some parking inside but there’s no way it’s going to be able to meet the needs of the estimated 70,000 Oasis fans. And I suspect it may be all be used up by the buses that will be running into the park anyway.

And just in case you’re thinking of coming on the motorway and parking in the big car park at the Heaton Park Sainsbury’s there’s a notice warning for you not to go in as they’re closing the gates.

Also if you’re thinking of trying to go up Victoria Avenue it’s going to be blocked to concert traffic and all the way up the road is coned off.

Finally if you’re thinking of sneaking in and parking between cones or in a spot that looks vacant the police are operating a tow-away zone.

Obviously we don’t know whether it’s really going to be a nightmare but after years of living here and seeing the arrangements normally made for concerts these go way beyond what has been done before.

So like I said before make it easy on yourself and use public transport.

And then you can enjoy the show!

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