Jonathan Schofield Manchester Tours
  • HOME
  • Calendar
  • CONTACT DETAILS AND BIOGRAPHY
  • EXCLUSIVE: Chetham's Library and College House
  • EXCLUSIVE: Mayfield Station tours
  • EXCLUSIVE: Kampus tours, the abandoned warehouses
  • Valentine's Day tour 14 February
  • Tour Diary: Confessions of a guide
  • EXCLUSIVE: The Haunted Underworld, Overworld and a Pub
  • EXCLUSIVE: The Principal Hotel
  • Bombed & Besieged: Manchester at War
  • Some Published Articles On Manchester's Present, its Heritage and Tourism
  • Gift Vouchers
  • The Northern Quarter & Ancoats Tour
  • Suffragettes, Women & Manchester
  • Friedrich Engels And Karl Marx Tours
  • ​Chorlton tour
  • Irk Valley Tour. Sweet Air, Scuttlers, Lost Churches and Hidden Stories
  • The Rollicking Pub Tour
  • New Guidebook by Jonathan Schofield
  • The Surprising Manchester Series: Old Trafford
  • The Surprising Manchester Series: Bradford & Clayton
  • Whalley Range & Alexandra Park
  • EXCLUSIVE: The 100m High Tour: Manchester’s Best View
  • Incredible Interiors
  • Chapel Street and The Irwell: The Tour
  • The Tour of Uninteresting Objects
  • Shock, Surprise, Prose & Verse: Manchester and Literature
  • April Fool's Day Tour - The Incredibly Serious Tour
  • Secret Tunnels Tour 2019
  • Ford Madox Brown and Pre-Raphaelite Manchester
  • The Day The World Got Smaller Tour
  • Platt Fields, Birch Fields and Rusholme Tour
  • Podcasts
  • Peterloo Massacre: The Reality & The Drama
  • Lost Graveyards and the Dead
  • Truly Madly Brutal
  • The Impossible Bridge and the Improbable Hill - River Irk Valley
  • TESTIMONIALS
  • Return to 1421: The Old Towne and Medieval Manchester
  • City of Science Tours July 2016
  • Suggested Private Tours
  • The River at Dusk - Friday 18 May
  • Manchester books by Jonathan Schofield
  • Literary Manchester: A city in words
  • Anthony Burgess and Literary Manchester Tour
  • Great Northern Tunnel Tour
  • 1840s Manchester: The Key Decade, talk and tour
  • Burns Night Tour Monday 25 January
  • Gothic Manchester Sunday 23 October
  • Fire Station Tours: Calling Photographers & Sketchers
  • Calendar of public walks
  • Manchester City of Art Tour
  • Every tour in pictures and some words
  • Gift Vouchers
  • Blog
  • Booking page

Gaskell Groupies and Didsbury Diners

30/4/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Multi-facted group of globetrotters
ON the tour on Saturday 24 April there was a big group of people from all over the place, near and far, Japan, Switzerland, Preston, Bury, Chorlton and so on. 

Brainy as they come as well, asking interesting questions, getting involved. The young women on the right in the picture above - green cardigan and dark coat open - had come especially to Manchester as Elizabeth Gaskell groupies. 

The pioneering nineteenth century novelist was long associated with Manchester and was one of the first from the 1840s to write about the new class of urban working poor while recording their relations with the new middle classes.

"We're big North and South fans," green cardigan had said, when I'd asked what had brought them to Manchester.

"The North/South divide," I'd said alarmed, "or the Gaskell novel?"

Turned out it was the latter. 

As it happens, in the refurbished Central Library there's a first edition of Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, on display with hand-written notes by Elizabeth Gaskell in the margin. 

After the tour the overjoyed ladies almost charged off there when I told them. I believe they went "woo-hoo". 

Tourism is as diverse as individuals that enjoy it. Paranormal addicts one day, Gaskell groupies the next. 

Has a first edition of Mary Barton been 'woo-hooed' before? 
Picture
Elizabeth Gaskell's own annotated Mary Barton
Picture
On the same Saturday I took my second group of Didsbury Diners out, this time on a Haunted Underworld tour. 

This is a social group with several hundred members who use the meetup.com site to get together, plan and join events. 

A lot of people new to the city seem to be using it plus single people and those who generally want to explore the city and cultural, gastromic and other activities. In other words people who don't just want to sit on their arse and trawl through season three of whatever's the latest DVD hit.

Good screamers too. The stories in the dark and the occasional 'incident' made them very jumpy. Thanks to Elaine, on the right in the foreground, for organising the group. 

I think the picture shows a rare photographic ability. I've managed to compose it with a large No Entry sign coming out of the group's heads.   
Picture
Didsbury Diners in the Kings Arms after a tour into Salford
The first group of Didsbury Diners I met had come on the Uninteresting Objects tour on 12 April - along with lots of other people.

We'd met at John Rylands Library and scooted through St John's Gardens, down past Granada and over the river at Prince's Bridge and along the banks of the Irwell on the Salford side to finish up at the Kings Arms on Bloom Street. 

As we scrambled down a muddy bank I feared for some of the heels involved. They took it in good part.

Again it was a large group, mixed age, male and female, but it was mainly the women from Didsbury Diners who carried on the tour with a drink in the Kings Arms. 

A lively bunch, full of laughter and wit, they skipped off to Knott Bar for food after the pub. I wish they'd told me this at the beginning because the tour finished about three quarters of mile away and I could have varied the route to give them less of walk - especially since the heaven's opened shortly after we'd arrived at the pub.

The lady third down the table on its right side in the picture above, brought something on the tour I'd never encountered before: a chihuahua in a handbag. You can see it - just - on her lap in the picture above.

She hadn't told me this at the start of the tour, so it was a surprise to look down at one point during commentary and see big brown eyes staring at me from an elegant accessory. 

The uninteresting object we'd viewed at the Kings Arms is the country's worst royal coat of arms crammed uncomfortably under a gable too small to accommodate it. Look at the poor lion's face. It's in pain. It nowhere near fits as well as a chihuahua in a bag.
Next tour: 1 May. The Original Pub Tour. 6pm. Click here to view.
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    June 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2011
    October 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    February 2010

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly