Day 427: Little Devils

25/09/2022

This morning was “new home day”, we surprisngly made good time, cleaning our cabin, feeding our babies and feeding our babies babies. Eloise was not sure, of all the “homes” we have stayed in, this one had been Eloise’s favourite. Luckily Eloise was still entertained by her Derwent pencil collection and we set off with no fuss.

After a short drive and the usual manic large English city highways we arrived at Travelodge Manchester Trafford Park.

It was finally time to release the Brompton Bros, Eloise was quick to jump into Emma’s bike, she will be sad when we have to return it. After touring the heavily industrialised area of Old Trafford, we weaved our way through shipping containers and dodgey roads until we arrived right in the heart of the enemy, the Theatre of Dreams. After telling the security guard that Harry Maguire is a fantastic defender the Brompton Bros slipped through the gates on their red Trojan Brompton completely under the radar.

Old Trafford is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,310 it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after Wembley Stadium) in the United Kingdom… Nicknamed “The Theatre of Dreams” by Bobby Charlton, Old Trafford has been United’s home ground since 1910, although from 1941 to 1949 the club shared Maine Road with local rivals Manchester City as a result of Second World War bomb damage.

It was a quick bike swap before we fled the scene and returned to our scenic tour of industrialised Old Trafford.

Manchester United Football Club, commonly referred to as Man United (often stylised as Man Utd), or simply United, is a professional football club based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top division in the English football league system. Nicknamed the Red Devils, it was founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, but changed its name to Manchester United in 1902. The club moved from Newton Heath to its current stadium, Old Trafford, in 1910. Manchester United have won a record 20 League titles, 12 FA Cups, five League Cups, and a record 21 FA Community Shields. They have won the European Cup/UEFA Champions League three times, and the UEFA Europa League, the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, the Intercontinental Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup once each… Alex Ferguson is the club’s longest-serving and most successful manager, winning 38 trophies, including 13 league titles, 5 FA Cups, and 2 UEFA Champions League titles between 1986 and 2013… Manchester United is one of the most widely supported football clubs in the world.

For lunch we headed to the glitzy Trafford Centre which was enormous. We inevitably got lost and spent the afternoon trying to escape.

We walked back to our “new home”, we were all pretty tried by this stage. Both the kids were about to fall asleep when all of a sudden a magical bunny appeared, great, the kids would not be napping this afternoon.

After putting our legs up while watching Lachlan burn out the carpet in our hotel room we had to set him free. Convinently across the road was Trafford Golf Centre, made famous by ol’ mate, sadly we were a few weeks late.

Both of the kids were jumping up and down at the idea of Dino Golf. To be fair, it was impressive, the best putt-putt golf we have ever played. It had large moving, roaring, animatronic dinasours plus waterfalls, rivers and an impressive cave.

Travelling with kids can be tricky at times, but we seem to have a good system in place. However, putt-putt with kids was utter chaos, fun, but utter chaos. Between stopping Lachlan trying to belly flop into the river and Eloise smacking everything that moved we managed some good shots.

If the golf was not hard enough, Lachlan was having a tricky time navigating the course, there were some impressive stacks, but he always bounces up as fast as he tumbles.

Halfway through the course, we realised that you could actually use the water streams. This was a game changer for Eloise.

Dinner tonight was next to Chill Factore, the kids were desperate for a shot on the snow, there is a similar facility in Glasgow, we will need to check it out soon.