Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
TRAFFORD & SALFORD QUAYS
A short hop west of the center, the metropolitan borough of Trafford—part of Greater
Manchester—will be familiar to most visitors as home to the “Theatre of Dreams,”
Manchester United's home stadium of Old Trafford. Tickets to see the world's biggest
team are notoriously scarce and expensive, but the
Manchester United Museum
& Tour Centre
(
&
0161/868-8000;
www.manutd.com) offers displays on
130 years of football (soccer), plus the option to see the stadium through the eyes of
its players on a tour. The center is open daily (except match days) 9am to 5pm, with
tours running up to every 10 minutes (9:40am-6:30pm). Adults pay £14 for the
museum and tour, children £10 age 5 to 15. Not far away lies the
Imperial War
Museum North
and the Lowry (or Millennium) Bridge over the canal to the regen-
erated docklands area of
Salford Quays,
now home to The Lowry cultural center
and MediaCityUK, site of several departments of the BBC (from 2011) and for ITV
production, including the famous and long-running TV soap
Coronation Street
sets
(from 2012).
Or stay in Trafford, where the
Trafford Centre
(
&
0161/749-1717;
www.
traffordcentre.co.uk) mall offers ample scope for retail therapy and dining but much
more besides—there's also the
Legoland Discovery Centre
(
&
0871/222-
2662;
www.legolanddiscoverycentre.co.uk) for ages 3 to 12 (including Miniland with
Lego models of northern English attractions such as the Peak District and the Black-
pool Illuminations), a high-ropes adventure course (
&
0845/652-1736;
www.aerial
extreme.co.uk), and the
Museum of Museums
(
&
0844/478-0898;
www.
museumofmuseums.org.uk), showcasing seemingly random items from various other
museums and private collections, from vintage transport to Egyptology. Also by the
mall is
Chill Factore
(
&
0161/749-2222;
www.chillfactore.com), a year-round
indoor real snow center.
Trafford is also home to the affluent market town of
Altrincham,
historically a
part of Chester (p. 574), about 8 miles southwest of the center of Manchester. Home
to many professional footballers (including Manchester United and Manchester City
players),
Coronation Street
and other TV actors and music-industry celebrities, it's
centered on its Old Market Place with part timber-framed buildings.
Dunham Massey Hall
HISTORIC SITE Located within a vast deer park
on the outskirts of Altrincham, this early Georgian house was home to the 7th Earl
of Stamford, who caused a scandal by marrying a former bareback circus rider. Visi-
tors get to learn about him and other inhabitants, explore the interiors, and stroll in
Britain's biggest winter garden and around the estate (kids get free quizzes and trails).
Altrincham.
&
0161/941-1025.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Admission £10 adults, £5 children. Park daily
9am-5pm; garden 11am-5:30pm depending on time of year; house Mar-Oct Sat-Wed 11am-5pm.
Imperial War Museum North
MUSEUM Like its counterpart in Lon-
don (p. 107), the museum aims to show in a vivid fashion “how war shapes lives.”
Open since 2002 in an award-winning and symbolic building by Daniel Libeskind, it
has both permanent displays and temporary exhibitions, some of them aimed at chil-
dren, plus hourly audio-visual presentations projected onto the very walls of the gal-
leries, to evoke in visitors the dread and panic experienced by those who lived through
the Blitz. The museum overlooks an area of Manchester that was heavily bombed in
1940—the Manchester Ship Canal, then a key industrial zone.
The Quays, Trafford Wharf Rd.
&
0161/836-4000.
www.north.iwm.org.uk. Free admission. Daily
10am-5pm.
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