In Manchester, Without My Car

Surely one of the stranges government initiatives (in name at least) is In Town, Without My Car!, which arrives in Manchester city centre tomorrow.

From the negative point of view, this means some streets in the city centre will be closed off - from Manchester Cathedral down to Salford via the River Irwell, to be exact. But on the plus side, it means you’ll get the chance to do this instead:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIWfNkKfMyQ]

Yes, zorbing is one of the main attractions between 11am and 4pm. There will also be a climbing wall, capoiera (’a martial arts-style dance activity’) and free-running/parkour, which I’ve mentioned before.

They’re also launching Wildabout Manchester, which aims to offer 14 ‘breathing places’ in the city centre where you can observe wildlife. Dog-sized rats on Princess Street, anyone?

Anyway, this is all part of European Mobility Week, which - if you didn’t already know - was this week. Read more about Salford and Manchester’s involvement on the council website.

4 Comments so far

Surely you mean it’s a positive thing some roads being closed off? No pollution, idiots driving along at high speed and people generally being able to talk to each other without the constant noise of traffic?

Think it’s a great idea personally.

Hey Mancubist - great site, can’t believe I haven’t stumbled across you before! I’ve added your feed to my RSS reader already.

I can’t find a email address to contact you on, and want to invite you to a night I’m running - can you mail me on kev at bestfootforward.info ? Thanks!

I’ll check it out Kev.

Andy: it depends on if you’re trying to drive between Manchester Cathedral and Salford, I guess… which I’m not.

Closing roads in the city centre is not too bad. Any further out and there will be uproar.
I have lived in Manchester all my life and used public transport for decades.
I can tell you, apart from the major routes, public transport is unreliable.

But its also dangerous, I know from experience.
My mother likes to take my kids to town, by bus for a day out shopping.
This leaves me nervous and I try to convince her to go by car.
If you use public

Trackback/Pingbacks:

Zorbing/sphering near Manchester » Mancubist: Life is good in Manchester
[...] I’ve been getting a number of hits lately for “zorbing Manchester”, something I mentioned briefly last September. [...]

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>