Meeting John, Sharon & Smuggler in Manchester

Tuesday 9^th August

We are off to Manchester by train today to meet our friends John, Sharon and Smuggler the dog who are doing the Cheshire Ring and are currently moored outside the Museum of Science and Industry near Castlefield in Manchester.

Smuggler greeting us!

John & Sharon moored in Manchester

We got the train from Congleton, the station is very near to the canal.  It was £12.30 return for both of us, a bargain!  When we got to Manchester, there is a free shuttle bus which runs all around the city so we hopped on that and got off near the Museum and walked down to where they were moored.

Smuggler was really pleased to see us, especially Kev, he loves him and he gave us such a welcome!  It was lovely to see John and Sharon as well.  We had a coffee on their boat and then we walked up the road to find somewhere for lunch.  We came across a café/bar called Per Tutti serving European food, a lot of it was Italian so we decided to have lunch there.  They did a two course lunch for £10!

Having Lunch

My lovely dessert

It was a really nice place and the food was excellent and we had a leisurely lunch chatting and catching up.

When we were on the bus from the station, we saw a Gin Saloon not far away so after lunch we decided to go and have a look.

Well, what a place they had 285 gins from all over the world, so we were really spoilt for choice.  They even had a Gin Bible!

Their Gin Selection

We all chose one and then tried each others.  It was a hard choice with so many to choose from. The barman was really helpful though and really knew his gins!  I had Brockmans, Kev had Forest Gin which is the local gin from Macclesfield, John had Pink Gin and Sharon had Malfy Gin.   

Cheers!

We then decided to have one more and I had Daffys, Kev had Steam Punk, John had Dublin City and Sharon had Masons Lavender.  Unfortunately none of these gins were in our Gin Book so we can’t tick any off but we can add them to our extras list.

Gins we had!

It was then time for us to catch our train back so we said goodbye to Sharon and John and caught the free bus back to the station then got our train back to Congleton.

We had such a lovely day with them, it was great to meet up and spend time together.  Hopefully our paths will cross again before we all get back to the Gloucester & Sharpness canal so we will look forward to that.