Victoria Baths workday on Sunday 18th November

Five of us spent today at the Victoria Baths in Chorlton doing housekeeping jobs with staff members Neil and Martin.  This was our first visit to the Baths in 2012 and a year after our last visit.  The jobs we did were:

- Fitting rubber feet to 100 fold-up chairs

- Scraping whitewash off the floors around the sides of the Second Class Males pool

- Power washing said floors and the ramp at the rear of the building

- Removing builders’ rubble from the heating pipes beneath the Turkish Baths

 

Gala/First Class Males Pool

Over lunch and at the coffee breaks we heard from Neil about recent developments at the Baths. Of note in 2012:

- All three pool halls and the Turkish Baths Rest Room have been granted marriages licences and eight marriages/civil partnerships took place this year plus several more receptions

- £13,000 has been collected to restore the “Aqua” stained-glass window in the Gala Pool and a local stained-glass maker has been commissioned

After we'd finished work Neil took us on a tour of the Turkish Baths.  They have discovered recently how all the plumbing worked to get the hot air and steam from room to room.  Next we visited the Superintendent’s flat at the top of the building and ended by climbing the clock tower. The views from up there across Manchester were fantastic as the light faded.  We had no sooner finished than the bell noisily struck the 4 o’clock chimes!

 

 

 

Hayfield an unplanned walk - or a day not gully blocking

For the first time in living memory we failed to find our work. The weather forecast suggested that the mist would lift from the landscape by about 10am - which was about when we got more or less to the top.

If it had it would have been a simple task to spot the shed and bags of stone that had been helicoptered onto the top of Kinder Scout - a extensive gullied  peat and grit stone plateau that we have worked on previously......

In the event visibility was poor - we went up, we had a walk around, we gave up, we came down - then the cloud lifted - but too late for our work.

It has been suggested that GPS could have been used to find the work site - but in practice that wouldn't have been safe as in that visibility or lack of it we wouldn't have been able to see enough to keep track of the safety of the individual volunteers.  So the descision to come down again was the correct one.

Guided Walk around Manchester - Saturday 10th Nov 2012

We were lucky enough to persuade Liz to take us on a walking tour of another part of Manchester this time.
The walk was advertised as 'Back Street Bohemia to Big Bucks and Big Books' to loosely describe the area's we were visiting.

We met at the The Mayfield in the Piccadilly station concourse at 11am and headed off towards the Northern Quarter, stopping at places of interest and even going into the foyer of the Abode hotel to admire the tiling and the fabulous staircase of the original warehouse that it was.

Liz also took us into the atrium of an office complex in the Northern Quarter which was originally a warehouse and you could still see where the carts would have driven up full of cotton to be unloaded and the hoists used to get it to the upper levels - it's incredible that it is still possible to see such a fabulous example of the 'King Cotton' Victorian era, when Manchester was a thriving city turning raw cotton into cloth.
Continuing our way through the Northern Quarter we found out, amongst other things, why some of the road signs have white writing on blue backgrounds and other blue on white, and why some of the pavements have metal edges.

We then visited the old Fish Market which is now the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. After admiring the stalls and shops, we stopped for a photo! 

As we left the Norther Quarter, we started to walk through the old Banking district and had a coffee break at Browns Restuarant, which was originally Parrs Bank, one of the city's former opulent banking halls. The building was designed by Charles Heathcote in 1902 and is a superb example of Edwardian baroque with some increasingly fashionable art nouveau detailing, particularly in the wrought ironwork.
Sitting in such spendour having a coffee was a real treat. Afterwards we continued through the old Banking disctrict, ending up on King Street and admiring various architectural features. We continued towards John Rylands library and into Spinningfields where the walk 'officially' finished. Most of the group then headed off for lunch at a local pub.

It was a fantastic tour of parts of Manchester that some of us didn't even know existed!

Our thanks go to Liz for making it such an interesting morning:-)

Quarry Bank Gardens (Styal) on Sunday 4th Nov 2012

Nine of us worked on the grassy slope by the side of the drive to Quarry Bank House, digging up tree saplings, cutting back brambles and generally clearing away all the 'unwanted' vegetation from the area.

 

While we were there, we were lucky enough to see some wildlife when we 'surprised' a frog which had set up home under our pile of unwanted vegetation! It must have got under there quite quickly as it hadn't been there when we'd started to make the pile of samplings and brambles, in fact we only saw it when we were shifting the pile to the bottom of the slope to enable the wardens to get to it and clear it away during the week. However, once we'd spotted the frog, Mick moved it away so it was safe while we continued with our work (see photo). A little later a large fox ran across the lawn in front of Quarry Bank House:-)

 

It was a lovely crisp, dry day - a brilliant day to be outdoors and the sun even shone on us at times:-)

Snowdonia Marathon weekend - 27/28 October

Five of us travelled over to north Wales on Friday for the 30th Snowdonia Marathon on Saturday.  We reckoned the five of us have been to 60 Snowdonia Marathons!!  Adrian and Hazel have been every year since the mid-90s.  Only Daniel was foolhardy enough to run this year and Ally, Adrian, Hazel and Sue manned the feed station at Bryn Gwynant at the 8.5 mile marker.

The weather for the race was ideal for once - no wind, cool and high cloud.  All the summits, including Snowdon itself, were out of the cloud all day and the autumn colours were beautiful.  Daniel stopped at several points on the course to take photos.

After all the runners had passed Bryn Gwynant the four returned to Llanberis and after parking in the volunteers spot behind the Electric Mountain Visitors Centre spent a couple of hours on the finish funnel, handing slate coasters to finishers, wrapping them in foil blankets and directing them to the Army Cadets hut for hot drinks, biscuits and massages.

Daniel met the others back at the basecamp at 6 o'clock and an hour and a half later we were tucking into a delicious supper of spiced lentil & tomato moussaka (watch out for the recipe in the next newsletter!) and Eve's pudding.  The evening was spent chatting, reading the papers and trying to solve two 1000 piece jigsaws (both very difficult because of acres of blue sky).

The wet weather arrived overnight and after an extra hour in bed and bacon butties for breakfast we packed, did a few more pieces of the jigsaws and went home at lunchtime.

Alderley Edge 21 October 2012

I hadn't got organised enough after my holiday for this one - so thanks to Tim the volunteer for most of the words and the pictures.  This work is on the same path that we visited on 16 September though I get the impression from Tim that on previous trips we may have ended up carrying the tools far further than we needed to!

Just a brief note to let you know what we got up to on Sunday 21st.  Four volunteers met up at the car park at 9.30 where we met Tim the ranger.

The main task was the installation of a path extending from the raised path already there for about 25 to 30 meters up the track thus bypassing a very muddy hollow. First we installed an edge consisting of holly logs felled previously about 1.25meters from the sandstone cliff face,then by scrapping the accumulated soil and sand from the cliff we filled in the area from its base to the log border.

After compaction, aided by the numerous walkers and some enthusiastic stamping by their kids, the resulting path looked very impressive with the red sand contrasting with the black mud and the silvery holly log edging.  We also dug a meter wide drainage ditch along the side of the path to help drain the track farther up. 

The second part of the task was great fun chopping down some fair sized trees and piling them up to form a barrier to stop people straying on to the adjacent farmland. The feed back from the public was great and they all seemed really appreciative of our hard work.

Sunday 14th October - holly fencing at Styal

Today had been advertised as a "mystery workday" in the programme.  It became a workday in the southern woods at Styal.  Eight of us worked with ranger John building "dead" holly hedges to demarcate a footpath. We cut down holly saplings/trees in the nearby wood and then cut suitable trunks in to four-feet stakes. The stakes were hammered in to the ground either side of the path and the rest of the holly cuttings were woven in between the stakes.

After the workday we walked over to the Apprentice House and had a look round the Apple Fair on the lawn at the back.  There were a lot of English apple varieties on display with free sampling.