Every tour in pictures and some words

Sunday 12 September's Heaton Hall and Park tour ended at the lovely Temple. Thanks goes to my little helpmate standing in front of his mother. He was mustard on all the Greek mythology. The group are stood at the balustrade of the Temple with the tall buildings of the city centre behind them. I told them the mad story that had happened up there a couple of weeks ago and the 'lost kingdom of Tartaria'. You can read all about that here if you are one of my patrons.

A good afternoon for the Secrets of Ancoats and New Islington tour on Saturday 11 September. A special mention must be made of Eric (back row, almost directly under the sinister hook). Eric, in his eighties, told the lovely story of Whit Walks, when he would join the procession from St Peter's Church, which is now the Halle St Peter's in Ancoats. His son Clive was with him on a trip back from his home in Switzerland. They came on this tour as they'd been on the tour the day before and were part of the disappointed cricketer fraternity, see below. When guiding, the rich memories of people such as Eric really enhance the tour, give it a resonance that adds immeasurably to the experience. 

This was a curious one. I picked up a group for the regular 11am Discover Manchester tour which Manchester Guided Tours put on every day. The date was Friday 10 September and there were some guest extras - in two places. First off the group was bolstered by the dubious decision of the Indian Cricket Team to pull the last Test Match of the summer at Old Trafford due to backroom staff testing positive for Covid. Some of the group had come hundreds of miles to watch the first day of the Test, one gent setting off from north of Glasgow at 5.30am, only to learn, not far from Old Trafford shortly before 9am that the game was cancelled. Anyway, despite their frustration the cricket fans put on a brave face and we had a good time, so much so I forgot to take a picture of the group but did catch my second set of 'extras' on camera. These werer lots and lots of construction workers clumped around the statue of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. I joshed on social media that every Friday builders gather in Manchester to praise Pankhurst's work in fighting for the female franchise. I fear some people believed me.   

Simon Stone, Catherine and Anna from Manchester International Festival and Steffi, Simon's Partner, frame the Adrift sculpture at the back of Central Library. Simon was fabulously ebullient and incredibly enthusiastic. He directs films, theatre and much else as well as being a writer. He was the director of The Dig which was on Netflix recently starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fienes. The plot revolved around the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial boat at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk on the eve of World War II. It was a lovely film. He's now plotting the Manchester procession for the Amal walk highlighting the plight of young refugees.   

The FletcherRae architectural practice group on a tour with pubs and a daft quiz at the end in the Town Hall Tavern. Well done to Richard and Rachel for winning the prizes by coming last - I like to invert things occasionally. And thanks to Ben, flowery shirt on the right, for hiring me. This was a very cheerful group.  

Dan Jones, historian and broadcaster, relaxing before I chaired a question and answer session with him at Blackwell's Manchester. I was stood outside the next door pub with a pint and his book. I saw him walking towards me so I hailed him. He decided to have a pint with me and then we had another, the shop staff were a little anxious about his arrival but cheered up when they saw him outside with me. "How do you want to play this?" asked Paul, the manager of the shop. "We've sorted it," said Dan. "Yes, dead straightforward, I'll ask him questions and he'll answer them," I said. I reckon the evening was all the better for being unrehearsed, far more natural, and Dan answered the questions with verve but also with a very welcome forthright approach, swerving nothing. The book we were talking about, Power and Thrones, A New History of the Middle Ages is big in scope and beautifully written. 

A group outside the main entrance of Heaton Hall which is actually the back entrance too. Very confusing. Very apt for this startlingly beautiful building though. The picture includes my colleague guide, Emma Fox, second from the left, take a look at her tours by clicking on her name.

A fine and merry trip around Rochdale from the station to the Cooperative museum and here standing in front of St Mary's in the Baum. ​Baum (Rochdale dialect for 'balm') refers to the wild flowers which grew in the meadows where the church was built, variously thought to be Lemon Balm (Melissa Officinalis) or White Mint.

This is the St George's Community Centre walking group. the centre is based in Collyhurst. We had a right laugh touring Angel Meadow. The dogs seemed to enjoy it as well. 

Most tours are not just an individual game of research and delivery but ultimately a team effort. My Heaton Hall and Park tours have been a tremendous success but they could not have been delivered without the indefatigable Friends of Heaton Hall. This volunteer group have unlocked the property for me prior to tours, offered encouragement and huge amounts of knowledge and expertise. Special mention must go to Val, Colette and the two Daves, Clegg and Blood. Dave Blood was one of the fire service team who extinguished a catastrophic fire in the early 1980s in the house that could have led to its demolition. Dave Blood is shown here with an original miniature I bought for the Friends of Heaton Hall of the second countess. It's from circa 1830 and is a watercolour, artist unknown. It's exquisite and shows off the beautiful and fashionable Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton to perfection, almost offering a window into her colourful character.  

There are several pictures above of the Heaton Hall and Park tours in August. Most of the pictures are from the extravagantly decorated Saloon although the panoramic picture is taken on the main staircase. 

The weirdest tour I do is the Secret Tunnels tour wading through the River Medlock. Waders are absolutely necessary and guests have to be nimble, fit and not too heavy to fit down a cat ladder into the river. The tunnel to the former Shooter's Brook is exceptional as we move from London Road to Oxford Road. The guests here are under the eighteenth century bridge across the latter which has been built out in subsequent centuries but still largely carries the weight of thousands and thousands of bus journeys every year on the busiest bus route in Europe. 

Thanks to Jon Drape of Freight Island, Kieran Faulkner of Broadwick Live and Danny Williams of U+I plus Mo in security I was able to take a tour around Mayfield Station on Sunday 1 August. I loved the dramatic lighting coming through Freight Island screen. The whole of Mayfield is about drama and this rainbow of light highlighted that. 

The Sterlini family group patrolling Manchester with me and getting the lowdown from The Factory, via St John's Gardens and Castlefield, through Deansgate Square to HOME and First Street. The father-in-law in purple on the right loved the industrial heritage stuff and was full of questions, as was everybody. Peter, who'd hired me, in grey in the centre of the picture, wanted to know the location of the secret manhole to the cat ladder that leads to the Great Northern tunnels. Of course I told him. Living in Stretford they were amused by Stretford's nineteenth century nicknames of 'Swineopolis' and 'Porkhamton'. You'll have to come on a tour to find out why it used to be called that. 

Naughty omission here. I was doing a tour of Prestwich and I forgot to take a picture of my group so's here's a picture of Mark E Smith up there on the chippy wall in the suburb. You even get a wheelie bin included. Smith was a truculent so and so but he could deliver loads of funny lines and some memorable tunes. My guests were far more tolerant and easy-going even though we spent so much time standing on the dead. St Mary's church is the real marvel on the western side of Prestwich and the graves tell a rich Manchester story. Some of my local heroes lie there, the pioneering Artisan Botanists and also William Fairbairn, one of the greatest British engineers. 

I don't normally feature in these tour pictures but true-gent Jonathon Nolan, from RPS Group, over my shoulder in the cream, zip-top, arranged for one of the staff at the Sir Ralph Abercromby to take a pic with all the group in. Jonathon had organised the whole occasion and also printed off the cutest little drinks vouchers with a picture of each pub. I've been back in using them ever since. That's a joke by the way. The whole pub tour was a right laugh with the daft quiz a proper giggle. The prize winners looked happy. 

Here's a family group on an adventure around Manchester. The organiser was Christina Newton who's in the pink, so to speak, holding little boy blue and sporting the broadest of smiles. The two lads in this pic were hilarious, if there was a wall or indeed anything to climb on they did. The group are standing in the Briton's Protection pub garden and when I returned to do the pub tour above, they were still there, indeed they'd bought me a pint on the tab. I think they were supposed to be in Spain but because of certain things that have been happening in the world which you may be aware of they'd decided, very sensibly, to make a day of it in Manchester instead. 

I took the German Ambassador and his wife (the first of the four pics here) on a tour on Wednesday 28 July. Their surname was Michaelis and they'd had an interesting career including being the ambassadorial couple to Israel. They were were charming company, full of insight and wit. We had, of course, to visit the desk at Chetham's Library where Engels and Marx had studied in the 1840s. Ambassador Michaelis pretended to be serious, given the subject matter under discussion, but he couldn't help himself and at some quip collapsed in laughter. Before then Fergus, the librarian of Chetham's, and I had been wondering how we would recognise the German Ambassador's car as it approached Chetham's. "That's probably it, " we both exclaimed as it nosed round Todd Street into Long Millgate. The ambassador's car's number plate was '1 Ger'. 

A small but sweet group taking on Platt Fields area, with the wonderful 'Toast-rack' building popping up behind. 

The rather excellent pair of groups from Arndale based company OneFile featuring boss Susanna Lawson who was kind enough to comment: 'Thank you so much so @JonathSchofield for 2 wonderful tours for the @OneFileUK team today around #Manchester City centre during our strategy away day. Lived here for 28yrs and learnt so much. Would definitely recommend Jonathan's tours.' I completely agree. 

Buttress Architects tour on 15 July with lots of guests. We ventured into parts of Ancoats not usually visited on guided tours and then we ate and drank deep at Jane Eyre bar in Cutting Room Square and had a proper laugh. There was a pioneering use of QR codes for some of the schemes Buttress are involved with in the area. Jenna Johnston who buries herself in the minutiae of heritage reports for the practice and shown here in the foreground with a sheet of A4 in her hand, is presently trying to bring the world's attention and even better, investment, to the Cheshire town of Runcorn. It has a castle you know. 

The 11 photographs below and one above are all from Manchester International Festival Tours between 2-18 July, 2021. For some reason I didn't take pictures of two of them. There were four themes: The Manchester Guardian and the city; Manchester and the power of the new; We built this city and Manchester at play. The guests were lovely and the weather generally played its part. A fine festival in many ways and I loved the gangs on the tours. 

So Sunday 27 June's Discover Manchester tour consisted of a single postgraduate student studying at York University and hailing from Chicago. She was an affable young woman reading medieval history who is a Comic-con fan and is called Capri. “Italian ancestry?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “well, Italian, Polish, Greek, mainly, but with also some French, Czech, Romanian and Irish, and you?” Mainly Rochdale,” I said, “Actually, just Rochdale.” She was trying to see more of Britain as people could travel a little more now and had been meeting fellow Comic-con fans from Mcr. Apparently you can travel the globe and meet new Comic-con ‘friends’ as part of the ‘community’. Yesterday she’d spent four hours with them dressed as an anime character from ‘Ace of Diamond’. During the UK winter lockdown Capri had kept active ‘by fostering hamsters’ (who knew?). So despite a completely unprofitable if delightful hour and a half tour I did get another guiding story. Tour guiding is a crazy funny job - best in the world. ​

The Whalley Range and Alexandra Park tour on Sat 26 June and a lovely day with a couple of pints in the Hilary Step bar later. The guests are stood where Whalley House was once been sited which was Samuel Brooks’ home, the man who laid out the the suburb of Whalley Range following his purchase of 39 acres in 1834. I had been five minutes late meeting in the park because I usually meet at the south western entrance and had forgotten I was due to meet at the north eastern entrance. I wondered where everybody was and then decided to check my own website and realised I was on the wrong side of the park. Websites can be really useful in the absence of memory. Worrying for a guide though, forgetfulness.

I played a lot of music associated with the area, The Buzzcocks, Thin Lizzy and The Smiths. I talked about how the Smiths are good for tours because they name checked so many Manchester locations. As I was describing this the gentleman with the white shirt on the extreme right in the picture said out loud, "Under the iron bridge we kissed". "I don't remember that," I quipped.

Hey, it got a laugh. He was, of course, referring to a line in the Smiths' song 'Still Ill' which mentions the iron bridge over the railway (now tram) line that runs parallel to Kings Road, Stretford, where Morrissey had grown up. There are loads more Manchester and Salford suburb tours coming up such as: Chapel Street, Salford; Kersal, Salford; Platt Fields, Manchester; Fairfield, Tameside; The Quays; Prestwich and so on. ​

The second of my mini-Altrincham series of tours with another large group of enthusiasts wanting to know something of the food and drink focused town. They were mostly local and surprised by the great stories from Altrincham. It was a quick change after the cycle ride below to get ready for and to the Altrincham group. 

We did about fifteen miles on this cycling tour from the city through Peel Park, Kersal Wetlands, Kersal Moor, Heaton Park, Clowes Park and back. Of course we had a pint at the former of home of Edward Holt, the son of Joseph Holt who'd created the eponymous brewery, although some people had a coffee instead. A person on Twitter complained when I posted the picture, writing: 'Should you be advocating for cycling under the influence'? Advocating? Well I could start a pro-drinking and cycling campaign I suppose. Seriously it can be a such sanctimonious world on social media, people delighting in telling others how to live their lives. We had one pint but more to the point we had a great time, good for body and soul. This was on the morning of 15 June. 

The first of a new series of Altrincham tours with the happy group close to the market. A fine day for a stroll telling crazy tales of the early market, of brutal whippings, of suffragettes, of musicians and a man who could eat an awful lot, did so and won a bet. That was on 5 June. 

The second of the groups on the same training course as the one below. This time the tour finished in the exotic distant reaches of Piccadilly Gardens. There were at least 11 different nationalities on this one. 

A group on a training course of Manchester from many parts of the globe. They were looking at how the city centre had developed in the last few years, so we went from Piccadilly along the Rochdale Canal to New Islington, Ancoats and back through the Northern Quarter to Exchange Square. We had a great time, lots of laughs as well as lots of facts and some great questions. 18 May 2021.

The Chorlton tour on 15 May, 2021, with a fine group taking in Hough End Hall then down to the Green and back up to the Library. A tour decrying the ruination of Chorlton's finest building, the anecdotes of Beech Road, bits of St Ambrose Barlow everywhere, sixth formers drinking in the Horse and Jockey many years ago, the Bee Gees of course, temperance halls, footballers and the wonderful Thomas Walker and his re-discovered grave. 

Every tour in pictures

Saturday 1 May, 2021 and guests on the Engels and Marx in Manchester tour. The two lads on the left come from Sheffield and Chesterfield. Not a staycation as such but good to start to learn more about the nation. The chap third in from the left has a pop art t-shirt with Karl Marx represented four times. At the end of the tour he said: "I wish I'd got one with four Engels on now." Friedrich Engels is a far more appealing character than Karl Marx.

Saturday 24 April and the second public walk of the season. This time exploring Castlefield with seven fine people and one tiny dachshund. After most of us enjoyed a mini-bottle of wine each in sunny St John's Gardens.

The six photographs here, one above and five below, are from the Halloween tours which marked the end of the physical tours before another lockdown came into force. These were great fun and thanks to KSMCR for letting me use 35 King Street. This was a great location and we had tremendous fun amusing people and making them jump. Apologies for the blurred picture below but this small group deserved to be included. The couple on the left were dressed as characters from Scooby Doo and the couple on the right had just moved to Manchester for work from Berlin and were loving the city even as it closed down once more.
I should call these pictures 'The Facemask Series'. I sincerely hope that in a year (or please, less) there will be no need to corral our mushes into these legal impositions.

The 5th Pan-African Congress, Manchester and Slavery tour ends up in a cellar for a slide show. 24 October.

The Georgian Tour on Saturday 24 October. A small tour with loads of questions asked. 

Waiting for a train that won't arrive at the abandoned station tour of Mayfield. Sunday 18 October tour looking through the broken windows to Piccadilly Station before visiting the magnificent set of buffers. 

Saturday's 5pm ghost tour at 35 King Street. This picture taken just before we descend to the dark depths. 

The Tour of Uninteresting Objects at St John's Gardens at the upturned cannon that act as bollards. 

The 35 King Street and Georgian Manchester tour on Saturday 17 October. This taken just after an image show explaining the life and times although we didn't dance like Shakers. 

Ghost hunters on the tour in the evening of Friday 16 October after listening to singing in the dark. 

Suffragettes, significant women and Manchester tour on Saturday 10 October at the former Free Trade Hall where the Suffragettes raised their banner on 13 October, 2013.

35 King Street and Georgian Manchester Tour on 10 October, 2020 wearing the masks that mark the period we're living in.

The Discover Manchester Tour on Saturday 10 October with on the left two young people from London who thought they would come to Manchester and sample other cities in the UK rather than always go to Europe. 

Delightful guests from, India Kirthi and Dharmesh with Paul and Joseph from MIDAS, Greater Manchester's inward investment agency. The optimism and positivity of the guests was a pure tonic. Thursday 8 October.

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35 King Street: The Georgian Town House tour on Saturday 3 October. A tour around fruity Georgian Manchester finishing in the shelter of a house first built in 1736. The guests assured me they were smiling behind their masks.

The Halle St Peters tour on Saturday 3 October. A tour through the elegant interior of the 2019 extension and the 1859 church: by Stephenson Studio and Isaac Holden respectively. Then there was an excursion around Ancoats. It was wet and cold but the stories were warm. 

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An alternative view of the Kersal tour through a sketch app

Kersal tour on Sunday 13 September. There are no places to stop for refreshments so to end we had a camper van waiting with water, bubbly or wine. 

The Secret Tunnels Tour, 12 September 2020

Mayfield abandoned station tour in August 2020

Timing is everything. I took this lively and large group of Alliance Business School students around on 1 February, just prior to the rededication of the cross in St Peter's Square. The stepped plinth made a fine stage for the photo. The cross marks the site of the former St Peter's Church. The site has a rich and important history as explained here.

 A Gothic tour of Manchester with students studying Gothic forms in the city centre from Manchester Metropolitan University. We went to the Gothic-revival Town Hall, passed similar revival Gothic buildings in the streets and finished in the real-deal medieval Gothic of the Cathedral choir. I'm hoping the students can now spot those pointed arches and vaults with ease. Joan Crawford, their lecturer, took the picture below because my phone was playing up. Below the picture of the group is the stunning stalls of the choir. 

Graham, Kevin and David from Allied London on a personal tour of London Road Fire Station. They are standing under Night and Day figures, representing the 24 hour readiness of the former station. Below are two of the wallpapers that still exist in the building. One looks original from the 1906 construction date, the other is from the 1970s. It isn't hard to tell them apart. 

Delta Airlines Group over from America with Marketing Manchester and Emma Gordon in the red coat. The Cuban woman in the tan jacket loved the Northern English accents. "They are so clear," she said. She hasn't been to Newcastle yet.

Uruguayan guests on a tour of Manchester and really enjoying Britain generally. "Manchester is a really beautiful city," the gent said. The two on the left were staying at a B&B in Crumpsall, and although they thought it a little far out of town were enjoying that normally unregarded suburb. "Some people have said Crumpsall has problems," said our man, "but they should see some parts of Montevideo."

The Gibson family on a private tour of the Principal Hotel. The reason was Chrissie Gibson's birthday (the lady on the right). With her are Mike Gibson, over her shoulder, their daughter Beccy and son, Paul, with Paul's girlfriend on the left. When people are genuinely interested in what you are saying it makes the tour so very easy. 

Grant and Kath flank Mark Jorgensen on a private tour of the city visiting the Royal Exchange, John Rylands Library, the Town Hall and Extension and Manchester Central Library. Lovely folk all with Mark being one of the great wits of the city. He once wore a latex pig's head to scare guests for me in a deep underworld in Manchester. It worked despite the fact he fell over. Then again it was very dark. 

Alan Beswick's wonderful and very funny group of gents from car dealerships around Manchester and into Yorkshire. We did a Friday afternoon pub tour and it was hilarious. The pubs we visited were Beermoth, Sam's Chop House, The Town Hall Tavern and, pictured here, the Bridge Street Tavern. We finished around 4pm and the men were off to San Carlo restaurant. I wonder how much was left of it by the end of the evening. 

Lots more pictures of London Road Fire Station tours here including Neil Bohanna's group from the RNCM and two very special guests from other tours. Pictured with his wife below is Gordon Price who was well-known throughout his service years and was the fireman who had a slate from Strangeways Prison roof thrown at him during the 1990 riot. The slate ended up wedged in his helmet. Also below is a picture of Louise Bayliss who is the great granddaughter of the very first Chief Fire Office at the station in 1906, Frederic Bayliss. Apparently Bayliss began life, in Louise's words, as a 'tinker's son' in Malmesbury in Wiltshire. A friend or relation got a job in Manchester, he came up and eventually became the boss of the Manchester Fire Brigade. Nine children were brought up in his flat at the Fire Station. Louise is shown below holding a picture of her long-ago relation. 

This was a cracking occasion. I was at Astra Zeneca in Macclesfield before Christmas talking to about 300 people on the achievement of the North West, the Nobels, the science, the art and the ridiculousness. Lots of laughs and lots of questions.. 

Here are some more London Road Fire Station tour pics in December. Poignant memories from Bob, Val and Harvey as they toured the lower floors of the soon to restored giant building. These tours took place on 9, 10, 11, 14, 15,17, 29 December and the pictures appear in reverse order. 

London Road Fire Station tour with the group in the Coroner's Court (note to self, take some pictures when people aren't in the Coroner's Court). The gent in the third row of seats on the right is Steve Parkinson who trained in the Fire Station in the eighties. He remembered so much of his time on the site. And some of the pranks too, such as the occasion when the trainee in the next bed snored so loudly Steve tipped his bed out of the window when the man was out. The bed was left hanging elevated on the external wall over Whitworth Street. When Mr Snorer came back he couldn't find the bed so he found somewhere else to sleep. Problem solved. On the back row is Amy, a colleague from Manchester Confidential. This tour took place on Wednesday 7 December. 

Two tours of the Fire Station from Sunday 4 December. The man in the witness stand of the Coroner's Court and demonstrating how to use a fireman's pole is Alan Russell who worked at the fire station in the late seventies until it closed. Going to be getting in touch with Alan as he has a whole raft of stories and the stories make this building leap back to life. 

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The Chetham's :Library tour from Saturday 3 December. Michael Powell, the librarian, has pulled from the shelves a missal from the mid-1300s to show guests. This is beautifully illuminated and all in Latin. A missal is what the priest would read to an uncomprehending congregation at mass and is arranged in sections across the year. “There is one bit in English,” says Michael Powell. This turns out to be the marriage vows which people had to understand even if they didn't understand the liturgical Latin because they were taking an oath and had to know what they were entering into. The male side of of the vow is identical to that today - almost. The female’s is similar except it doesn’t have ‘to honour and obey’, instead women vow to be ‘boner and buxom in bed’. This means to be sprightly and enthusiastic during love-making and thus help the man increase the flock for the Church. The expression became a bit too direct for more sensitive Ages. It was funny to note the slightly shocked expression of the guests around the table and then the shy giggles. 

Two Saturday tours at London Road Fire Station. Saturday 3 December.

A few of the guests couldn't make the tour so it was just two people on Saturday 3 December's Principal Hotel tour but they were fine company and hugely interested in the story of the former Refuge Assurance building and its astounding tilework.

A group in the dark during a tour of the city on Thursday 1 December. I hope the tour was illuminating even if the light wasn't.

Tuesday 29 November and the Bonnie Prince Charlie tour of Manchester. This was the 271st anniversary of when the rebel Stuart army entered Manchester in 1745. The chap on the right was an authority on the occasion and has been studying the subject for twenty years. One day he might do a book. Here we are warming up in the fabulous bar of Beermoth on Brown Street. 

A lovely group from the Heywood, Middleton and Circle Club gathered on the stairs at the Principal Hotel. The second lady from the left it turns out was a friend of my mother's years and years ago and worked at the Nat West Bank with her. Tuesday 29 November.

The Friedrich Engels birthday tour and people singing Happy Birthday to the man who was born 196 years earlier. The tour took place on Saturday 26 November rather than the actual date of 28 November but we didn't think he would mind. Engels and Karl Marx studied in Chetham's Library and the books they read are on the desk in the bay window behind. Engels would smile to think of us singing Happy Birthday in a place he knew so well, he was a man who like jolification. 

This was a tour across the city finishing at Chetham's organised by my long-lost now recently found relation Georgina Schofield, she's the first woman on the left clutching some of my books. My brother, Charles, is next to her on the right. This was a fine tour that began and ended in the Abel Heywood pub. I mention Heywood in this article and this one. I adore this quote from Abel Heywood to justify the expense of building Manchester Town Hall: ''We cleared a vast area, and Mr Waterhouse’s beautiful design rose, stone on stone and pillar on pillar. We spared no expense. Every detail we desired to have perfect. To have been parsimonious, to have neglected corners or recesses which were obscure, to have allowed ornamentation which was tawdry, would have been for ever to brand Manchester as a city given up to no higher thought than the quickest accumulation of wealth.'

Some interesting and important creatives and influencers here with Liz Pugh from Walk the Plank. They include Lotte Van de Berg, Jeanefer Jean-Charles, 'Cycling Tsar' Chris Paul, Nathan Jackson and Billie Klinger. We're sampling the delights of the Sir Ralph Abercromby after a Peterloo Massacre tour. Plans are being hatched maybe for something big on the 200th anniversary of the massacre on 16 August, 2019. Outside the window, it seems, a blue van is spying on us. Sneaky.

Two groups from the Forward Institute enjoying 8am-9am tours on Monday and Tuesday 21/22 November. Lots of good questions from these fine folk although I must be careful with jokes. As we walked through Albert Square, one woman said, "These Christmas Markets are huge." "They're the only ones that can be seen from space," I said. "Wow, who'd have thought that?" she said. "Er, forgive me, I was only joking," I hastily added.

​A odd occurrence happened during this meal with enthusiastic Dutch guests on Saturday at Albert’s Chop House. They were over for the United v Arsenal game and they were great fun. The meal had been pre-booked for them by the organiser. To start with we had sourdough with a dip. Everybody loved it, especially the Dutch chap opposite. “This is a lovely oil,” he said. I raised an eyebrow, “Oil? That’s beef dripping.” There was a crisis over the table, “Oh no I’m a vegetarian, I’ve never eaten meat all my life.” The man was wiping at his mouth with his napkin. “I thought it was a really good balsamic,” he said. The organiser looked suitably embarrassed as he hadn't asked if there were any vegetarians. Later, though, I saw our vegetarian friend pick up the sourdough, as though in a trance, and make to dip it once more. Can’t blame him, good stuff that beef dripping. It’d turn anybody. The gentleman in question is the one in the second picture, wearing the paper crown, blowing a whistle and reading a joke from a cracker. Saturday 19 November.

Big group takes on the Incredible Interiors tour and finishes in the Directors Suite of the Principal Hotel. Third from the right is Tony Lloyd, the acting mayor of Greater Manchester. Saturday 19 November.

Night time tour of the city and taking in the Victoria Station area.

Four interesting people taking a real interest in Manchester on Tuesday 15 November. Here they are in the Cathedral. This was the first tour in twenty years during which my shoes were complimented. So thanks to the lady, second from left below. 

Seven very funny mates from Holland who chose Manchester as a fun place to visit. They wanted a pub tour so we went to Pilcrow, The Angel, The Marble Arch and finished at the Briton's Protection. Saturday 12 December.

My blurry and busy public tour pic of Chetham's visit on Saturday 12 November. Some excellent phone pictures from Mark Payne.

Turley Planning group on the Incredible Interiors tour on Friday 10 November. They've gained scary eyes.

Personal tour for two delightful and incredibly well-read ladies on Thursday 10 November.

The strategy team from Transport for Greater Manchester. They're a bit blurred. I blame the speed of the world spinning underneath us. Actually it's my dodgy camera technique but since this a picture of every group then it has to be included. Thursday 9 November.

Blue Badge and Green Badge Guides from the North West Tourist Guides loving a Chetham's tour on Monday 7 November.

After dinner speech at Manchester Architects (formerly Manchester Society of Architects) dinner at the Imperial War Museum North on Friday 4 November.

Eric Grossman, USA Today journalist and his partner, working out Manchester in the sunshine in close harmony with a woman's passing head and a black cab. Wednesday 2 November, 2016. 

Stretford Grammar School group on a tour of the area close to their school including Longford Park and Great Stone Road on Tuesday 1 November...and a cat.

The three pictures below were taken of the groups on the Halloween tours Monday 31 October, 2016.

General tour of the city centre with perceptive guests on Saturday 29 October.

Gallery Of Guests
I have 26 tours and one talk in 16 days between 2-19 July 2015, 16 of these tours are for Manchester International Festival. Here's a picture of every tour and the talk.