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Sunday was a nice sunny day so we came home via the Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port. Being early January there were few visitors so we more or less had the place to ourselves. The museum is at the junction of the Shropshire Canal and the River Mersey / Manchester Ship Canal and was once a busy port. It is a little out on a limb of the canal network so I don't think they would get many holiday boaters passing through even in summer. It was quite interesting particularly if you are interested in the evolution of canal boat engines as they had rather a lot of them.

So now we are home after an unexpected holiday what did we think of Manchester?

There did not seem to be as much to entertain us as our trip to Liverpool last year but perhaps we did not look hard enough. We did not bother with the Lowry in Salford as we have been before and were were not particularly interested in the National Football Museum despite being football fans.

The museums are all free which is a welcome change, it encourages youngsters to visit and there were plenty of young families making the most of the opportunity. We had an interesting week but might struggle to fill another should John have to return to try again at his operation.

We didn't see any penguins but it did rain quite a lot!