Being back in Manchester

Just over a week ago we moved into our new house and moved back to Manchester. With only two of us moving in at first for the first two weeks we’ve had to find ways to keep us entertained, mostly by watching Gossip Girl. Here are some of our favourite things we have done since being back.

In lockdown I started running more as something to do and to give myself structure to the day and Anna began to do home works. However, since we moved back we decided to start running together, as we know some nice parks around the area and felt safer together because previously we’ve only been to the gym in Manchester, not for runs. This has allowed us to discover new places around the area, different parks and to be able to create new routes.

The view of Manchester from one of our runs.

Spending four months away from the Quays made us realise how much we like going to university there and we decided to take advantage of the rare nice Manchester weather and go for a walk around there. We never really got to explore it properly as when we’ve been to Uni it’s been winter or we haven’t felt like it after lectures. This is definitely a spot that we will be going a lot more over summer since we didn’t get to experience a summer on campus.

The Quays at Media City in Salford.

Since I’m from the countryside and not the coast, unlike Anna, I wanted to go to the beach and Anna wanted to experience a beach up North. We decided after watching many tiktoks we wanted to go watch the sunset so we drove to Formby on the outskirts of Liverpool. We had to walk through a forest to get there and got lost over the sand dunes, but when we finally got to the sand we sat and watched the sunset and went for a paddle in the sea. We’re planning on going back in the day when our other friends move in.

Formby Beach at Sunset.

We wanted to take advantage of the pubs reopening and save ourselves cooking so we went to Wetherspoons in central Manchester and then also went to see one of our friends who lives nearby and went to her local. This gave us something to do to fill our days and fulfilled our craving for pub food.

One evening when we had nothing to do we went for a walk around Manchester at sunset. We walked through Spinningfields, Deansgate, Castlefield and around the centre after having a stressful time parking because the app wouldn’t work properly for us.

Printworks in Manchester.

More of our housemates are moving in over the next couple of weeks and more of our other friends are moving back to Manchester giving us more things to do.