Marsh-Mel-O's Adventures: UK Roadtrip Take Two - Conference Day One and Manchester

12th September

Guideline International Network (G-I-N) Manchester 2018 Day One

This morning we left Nan at home to head into the City for Mum's conference. Being held at the Principal Hotel Manchester, the conference is a three day event co-hosted by NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and SIGN (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network) themed around "Why we do what we do: the purpose and impact of guidelines".

This morning I attended the Welcome and opening presentation before leaving Mum by herself to meet Victoria for morning tea at the Midland Hotel up the road. It was a lovely place to have a pot of tea, tea leaf tea served in a tea pot with cups and saucers and a strainer! Victoria's fun fact about the Midland Hotel is that it was where the original meeting between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce occurred, leading to the formation of Rolls-Royce Limited in 1904.

Once finishing our tea, we wandered out onto St Peter's Square and to the Manchester Central Library.

St Peter's Square derives its name from St Peter's Church which was built in 1788-94. The church was built in the neoclassical style by the architect James Wyatt and was once famous for its church music. It was demolished in 1907 and the Cenotaph replaced it in 1924. A stone cross (1908) now commemorates the church. The Square was also the site of the Peterloo Massacre on the 16th August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

A Brief History Lesson! The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819, the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, organised a demonstration to be addressed by the well-known radical orator Henry Hunt. Shortly after the meeting began, local magistrates called on the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him. The Yeomanry charged into the crowd, knocking down a woman and killing a child, and finally apprehending Hunt. However in the midst of the throng they became separated into small groups and halted in disorder. The 15th Hussars were then summoned by the magistrate, Mr Hulton, to disperse the crowd. They charged with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.

From here we wandered into the Manchester Central Library, another beautiful building in the centre of Manchester. It was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934, opening on the 17th July 1934. It has recently undergone a four-year project to renovate and refurbish the library commenced in 2010.Central Library re-opened on 22 March 2014.

Next door is the Manchester Town Hall. We were able to see and enter the back and newer section of the Town Hall, however the main building is currently closed until 2024 for restorations. Judging by the front of the building and the areas we saw, it would be gorgeous inside!

From here I said my farewells to Victoria, as she was off to catch her train, and I headed back to the Principal Hotel. Here I hung out in the hotel lobby and coffee lounge for the early afternoon waiting for Mum to finish. When she finished, we both jumped back into the car and headed home to collect Nanny before heading out for the afternoon and evening.

The afternoon's plan was based off a recommendation from one of the hotel waitresses. She suggested we head up to Blackpool to see the sea side and the lights and an hours drive is nothing to us! So we picked up Nan and headed off, stopping for a couple of spots of shopping along the way.

Blackpool was not at all what I expected! We arrived about 5:30pm, and was able to watch the sunset over the low tide. The beach and sea side was exactly like every British movie depiction of the sea side ever, but on the other side of the road was a completely commercialised amusement parks and arcades! We picked up some fish and chips for dinner and ate in the car (it was too blustery by the sea side!!) waiting for 8pm when the lights switched on.

At 10 kilometers long and using over one million bulbs, the Blackpool Illuminations are an awesome spectacle. They consist of almost every kind of light display you can imagine: lasers, neon, light bulbs, fibre optics, searchlights and floodlighting. There are set pieces made out of wood studded with light bulbs: the characters and objects portrayed seem to “move” by way of winking lights. There are over 500 road features attached to lamp posts linked together with festoon lighting. Strings of lights along the structure of buildings pick out landmarks in luminous detail – you can definitely make out the Tower and the Pleasure Beach rides in this way. Some of the hotels on the east side of the Promenade are floodlit in colour sequence. Even the trams on which you can tour the lights are illuminated and decorated with specific themes.