Chasing Cars

It’s been more like chasing trams today - an RTC in the centre of Manchester had severely disrupted schedules so we had to get inventive to make our way out to Co-op Live to see Snow Patrol in concert. We made it, but at the expense of having to settle for a Maccy D’s tea instead of the more leisurely pub meal we had planned.
I can’t remember when we first saw Snow Patrol - early 2000s? - but I caught them at Radio 2 In The Park last year and was impressed enough to get tickets for this tour. Thought we’d make a weekend of it and booked a hotel overnight as well. Which was a good thing because if we’d just come down for the concert, we would have found there were no trams running from the Park & Ride due to engineering works! Every cloud and all that.
The concert was excellent - a good mix of old and new tunes played to a capacity audience. Great support act in the form of Scottish singer-songwriter Nina Nesbitt, who had a great voice and played a lovely little set of self penned songs with her band.
Whilst it was a really enjoyable concert, I’m still not sure about attending gigs at Co-op Live - it’s just too big, the seats are too cramped and the food and drink prices are extortionate. Fortunately, we’d learned from a previous visit and brought a collapsible bottle to use at the few water refill points in the arena. The one redeeming feature of the venue is that the acoustics are excellent, but that is outweighed by the hassle of getting to and from the place. There’s an efficient system to get you back on a tram to the city centre but, with the best will in the world, moving 14,000 odd people is never going to be a quick process no matter how slickly it’s done.
Got back to the hotel eventually after a few more tram changes. But we could probably have driven back to Kendal in the time it’s taken. I think we’ll stick to events at the AO Arena in future…