Chris Norwoord is a Manchester tour guide who offers a wide variety of specialist guided walks in Greater Manchester as well as introductory walks covering the main sites in the City Centre. He designs bespoke walks for citizens and visitors with particular interests. The most commonly requested subject for a walk is Radical Manchester. You can contact him by email: chrisnorwood at hotmail.co.uk

Chris took me on an “Manchester Off the Beaten Track” walking tour during my Manchester stop on the Summer 09 UK Blogging Tour. He spoke to me outside Odd in the city’s Northern Quarter at the end of our tour.

He told me that the Northern Quarter, formerly the market district, is now an exciting, vibrant part of the city, certainly not corporate Manchester, no Starbucks or Cafe Neros here. The Northern Quarter is home to more individual, independent haunts like the 60s style Mod Pop Cafe and Cup where I bumped into local poet, Carol Batton.

Chris recommends eating a Rice and Three, a plate of rice and your choice of three different curries, costing under £5, in one of the area’s curry cafes such as Al Faisal and This & That. Chris agrees with Ian Brown of the Stone Roses who said, “Manchester has everything except a beach” to which I retorted “so something for everyone apart from sun worhshippers” to which Chris asserted that the “sun does shine sometimes in Manchester” (it had been rather a wet morning).

We both concluded that you don’t necessarily have to jet off to cities like Barcelona and Prague to have a great short break and Manchester has loads to offer in terms of culture, shopping, cafes, bars and restaurants within a compact area.

Europe a la Carte Summer 09 UK Blogging Tour sponsored by