Strolling in Spinningfields
Sunday. I had a really great sleep: the incredibly comfy bed plus air conditioning sealed the deal; got up around six for a walk along the river and the nearby streets, taking a few photographs as I went. There were several revellers still out and about, approaching the end of their football celebrations, staggering happily home or searching forlornly for kebab shops long since closed.
The River Irwell has been Manchester’s western edge for centuries, quietly marking the line between the city and its twin across the water, Salford. It rises on the moors above Bacup and drifts down through Lancashire before squeezing between the two city centres, eventually joining the Mersey at Irlam – a working river long before anyone thought of it as a scenic backdrop.
In the nineteenth century this stretch was more “industrial drain” than riverside amenity, choked with mill waste and dyes, described by one Victorian writer as closer to liquid manure than anything you’d want to stand beside with a camera. The cleanup over the last few decades has been slow but real, and now fish, birds and people have reclaimed the banks; the Irwell runs through a canyon of apartments, hotels and offices rather than factories and printworks.
After leaving the hotel, I crossed one of the most distinctive pieces of engineering on the river – Trinity Bridge. Built in 1995 and designed by Santiago Calatrava, it’s his only completed project in the UK, an asymmetric cable‑stayed footbridge in bright white steel, with a 41‑metre pylon leaning towards Salford and a forked walkway that splits in mid‑air.
It was put here very deliberately as part of the wider regeneration push, intended as both a landmark and an invitation: a way to attract investment and people from the Manchester side and signal that this stretch of river was changing. At that early hour it does a quieter job, just carrying the odd walker over the border between cities while its cables hum gently against the morning breeze.
On the Manchester side, my route took me down past St Mary’s Parsonage, a pocket of older street pattern tucked between the river and Deansgate, then across Trinity Square and out onto Bridge Street. This has long been one of the routes that bled the old commercial core down towards the water; Victorian tour boats once departed nearby, and for years the Irwell here was lined with assorted offices, warehouses and government buildings rather than bars and glass.
Albert Bridge House sits in the middle of it, a post‑war government office block that’s now semi‑empty and facing redevelopment – there are current plans on the table to replace it with new mixed‑use towers, another chapter in the area’s constant rebuild.
Further along, the streets start to pick up the newer names: Dolefield, Gartside Street, Leftbank and, across the river, Spinningfields. Spinningfields itself is a product of the 2000s, a big Allied London development filling the gap between Deansgate and the Irwell with offices, bars, restaurants and a dense thicket of glass and steel that now reads as Manchester’s modern business district.
The riverside here is all walkways, pocket parks and stepped edges, and the plant‑covered building you can see in the photo above from the bridge, is part of a more recent wave of “greened” architecture that’s crept in alongside the hard lines – a deliberate attempt to soften the canyon of development and nod back, in a small way, to the river’s natural edge.
It’s a strange but satisfying mix: old service blocks like Albert Bridge House, brand‑new towers, and structures being eaten slowly by ivy and planted balconies, all sharing the same strip of water that once carried dyes, coal and prisoners out of the city.
We met Gubs & Kadience for breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 07:30. Once again, The Lowry did not disappoint. First stop: the buffet, loading up a plate with pickled herring, brie, stilton, and ham; mango yoghurt with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and pecans; bacon, sausage, and hash browns. After that, I ordered Eggs Royale, and washed the whole lot down with a kiwi & spinach smoothie and copious amounts of coffee.
After that, it was time to hit the road. We dropped Kadience off at home in Walkden, then joined the motorway for the long slog south. Smooth going at first, but from Stoke down to Birmingham and beyond, the regular waves of congestion returned, briefly halting traffic every few miles before evaporating. The weather was not kind either, and for most of the journey it hovered around 32°C, so we sweltered for six hours before finally reaching Kent in the middle of the afternoon.
It was wonderful to settle in at home: the air was about ten degrees cooler, with a nice cool breeze straight off the North Sea. Comfy clothes and a cool drink, followed by a nap, chilli con carne for supper, and a little bit of gaming before bed.
