Classical elegance....

After an early start at work I found myself with a large gap in the day until my next meeting at 4. So I had a wander about the city centre to see what had changed. After the recession, Manchester seems to be getting into another building boom with projects starting all over the city. Great for the building trade and even better for the people who will have got jobs. Hopefully it's all sustainable this time...

My wander took me down by the River Irwell where a kind of waterside promenade has been developed. While it may not be Le Promenade d' Anglais in Nice or even Blackpool Prom, it's a nice place to walk.

The view isn't great, you are walking in a canyon between the tall buildings that hem in the river. There's a lot of modern development and the Victorian buildings along this stretch have their impressive facades facing the city, revealing their duller rears to the river. Obviously those Victorians could not have conceived of the Irwell as a place where people might want to promenade.

I was taken by the elegant bridge, Blackfriar's Bridge that spans the river at the bottom of Market Street. I liked the Doric pilasters that you can't appreciate from the bridge itself and have only been revealed to Manchester recently with the construction of the promenade. It has three elegant arches but the third has been partially hidden by a later development.

I spotted a heron under one of the arches. I got close enough to take a picture but it took off down the river. I followed it to its new perch by scrambling about in the ugly multi-storey car park under the ugly 60s Radisson Hotel building. I was just focussing on it again and off it went further along the river. At that point I gave up on it...