Heaton Park, Manchester
Since it was such lovely weather today we went out for a bit of a walk in the sunshine. Mark suggested that we should go to Heaton Park. I had always just assumed that it was a big load of fields with some woods and lots of druggies laying around or intimidating people. Turns out I was wrong. I can’t believe I’ve never been! It’s lovely, if a little run down.
First off were the Highland cattle - you don’t see many of them in the middle of Manchester. But there they are as ginger as you like.
There is an animal park/farm in the centre of the park where they have a range of domestic goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese and the such like. Mostly they are ornamental or old fashioned breeds that you wouldn’t normally see. There are signs everywhere saying not to pet the animals in case they bite, but I don’t think they really mean it. All the kids were petting away to their hearts content and the animals didn’t seem to mind the attention. The pygmy goats and the donkeys seemed especially friendly.
Perhaps most unexpected were the alpacas. They have some fantastic facial expressions and live with the peacocks in a little field with a nice warm looking hut.
We only spent a couple of hours in the park in all and probably only saw about a third of it. The park was really busy with families and there seems to be plenty for them to do. As well as the farm there is a little land train for the kiddies and parents to ride on - sometimes it’s really frustrating that we don’t have kids - it’s just not socially acceptable for two fully grown adults to go on these without at least one child. We also saw two adventure playgrounds - again with the childhood envy. Why don’t they make adventure playgrounds where it’s OK for adults (who don’t yet have kids) to play on the slides and swing on the ropes?
While I was waiting for Mark to come out of the loos (yuk, I’ve been in worse but they are really pretty grim) I found the communications tower interesting so I took a photo of it.
I was whinging about him never taking photos of me (you have to take hundreds to get one decent one). He thought it would be funny to snap one of me in full scolding mode. He says he likes realism in photos, so here I am in action.
I made him have another go. Not too bad for once.
Anyway, we’ll definitely be going back to look around the rest of the park and maybe hire a couple of bikes or a rowing boat for some proper exercise. Apparently there’s a tramway as well that will be open later in the summer. I genuinely had no idea all this was available and just a stones throw from the metrolink. Manchester never ceases to amaze me.