City centre Manchester and visiting the Castlefield Viaduct.

Manchester really is a great city to visit, whether it’s to see something specific or just to wander round. The last time I posted was back in December when we had taken the bus into the centre and enjoyed a wander and a bite to eat (you can read that post at this link)

On this occasion it was a short visit arranged at short notice with the plan being to meet my daughter and her children at one of the Metrolink stops before taking the tram into the centre and visiting the Castlefield Viaduct.

The Metrolink is an ideal way to travel. It’s a quick, easy and popular way to get about and has annual passenger journeys exceeding 36 million.

Car parking at the tram stops is free and services are frequent (I think most run to about 12 minute intervals)

You can read more about it’s origin along with facts and figures over at the Wickipedia page at this link.

Castlefield viaduct

The Castlefield viaduct is well worth visiting.

It doesn’t have to be a long visit but it is interesting and different.  The  steel viaduct is a product of the Victorian era and was built in 1892.

In its heyday it was used to move heavy rail traffic into and out of the Great Northern Warehouse, located in the Castlefield area, which is the oldest part of the city.

The viaduct closed in 1969 and the Grade II listed construction remained unused (but maintained) for many years.

More recently it has been transformed into a temporary sky garden and is operated by the National Trust. It is hoped to make the sky garden a permanent feature of central Manchester but as yet those plans are not fully formed.

We plan to go back

We plan to visit again, perhaps in summer when the flowers are in full bloom and everywhere is looking much greener.

It’s certainly easy enough to get to and I expect will make for an ideal start to a summers day wandering round ‘town’

Picture gallery

Clicking on any of the images below will open a picture gallery that can be clicked or scrolled through. After a wander along the viaduct and its sky garden we took a walk around Castlefield before heading to Central library for refreshments – all in a short but pleasant trip into central Manchester.