Visiting Manchester
Manchester has quite a compact city centre, has good public transport
(by UK standards) and is suprisingly car-friendly if you pick your route
carefully. This page is the 60 second guide to visiting the city...
Buses, Trains and Trams
The GMPTE website has information and
maps about public transport routes in Greater Manchester.
In particular, the free
Metroshuttle
runs every 5-10 minutes, and connects the stations and city centre locations.
When finding your way around the city, there are invaluable street maps
on the back of a hundred or so JCDecaux billboards dotted around the city
centre. Look out for them if you've not got an A-Z with you!
For long distance rail travel,
see National
Rail's journey planner for help using this country's sometimes chaotic
rail system.
Central Manchester has three main stations. The largest is Piccadilly, where
West Coast mainline trains from London (2hr 6mins) and Birmingham
(1hr 45 mins) terminate.
The Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations are also on the Liverpool to Hull
transpennine line which also goes through Huddersfield, Leeds and
York (on the East Coast mainline.) Both Piccadilly and Oxford Road are
near the city centre.
The third station is Victoria, which serves some lines to the North and East.
Manchester also has a few suburban railway services (including local services
running on the long distance routes) and
Metro Link tram system
(which runs on disused railway routes outside the city centre.) If you get a
rail ticket into Manchester marked "CTLZ" you can use this for
trams in the city centre.
By car
Manchester is ringed by the
M60
orbital motorway, which joins the M62, M66,
M61 and M56 motorways. Long distance routes are the M62 on the north side of
the city, going west to Liverpool, and east to Leeds, York and Hull; and
the M6 to the west of the city, which connects to the M62 and M56, and links
Manchester to Birmingham and the south.
Getting into the city is easiest from the west (follow the M602 from the
M60/M62 junction and use the A57(M)) and south sides (follow the M56 as it
turns into the A5103 dual carriageway.) The major routes from the north and
east sites are well sign-posted but involve a lot of single carriageways.
There are many NCP style multistorey car parks in the city centre.
Hotels
There are budget priced
Ibis
(Portland
Street and
Charles
Street) and
Travel Inn
(Portland
Street) hotels in the city centre.
More up market are the
Malmaison and
Radisson
Edwardian.
More hotels:
Monroe's Hotel/Bar - 38 London Road, Manchester, M1, Tel: 07090 420816
(virtually opposite picadilly train station is also gay / TV friendly)
Days Inn,
Manchester Conference Centre.
(Central Location. Located on the edge of village opposite the retro bar)
Novotel Hotel
Britannia Hotel
Best Western
Rembrandt Hotel - Pub/Hotel - 33 Sackville Street, Manchester, M1 3LZ Tel:
0161 236 1311. Fax: 0161 236 4257 (Very busy and popular gay pub and hotel
in the heart of Manchester's gay village)
New Union Hotel - 111 Princess Street, Manchester, M1Tel: 07090 420 805
(Situated on Canal Street with en suite rooms, above the popular gay pub.)
Maps
As well as the
obligatory Google
Map of central Manchester, we
have an interactive BDSM/Fetish map based on
Kinklusive's printed Manchester Fetish Map.
Other things to see
Manchester City
Council's Attractions page has links to things like museums, art
galleries and famous buildings.
BBC Manchester has
The Village pages,
with news, club, bar and event listings for the Gay Village. (They even
list Club Lash - although the details are out of date.)
The Manchester Evening News runs
Manchester Online with
more general news and listings for Greater Manchester.
