Half the price; twice as ambitious!
Hi everyone. Ed Glinert of New Manchester Walks here. Hope everyone’s well. Given the current restrictions about going on a tour with 31 people and sitting in a restaurant with 20 friends, you’ll be very pleased to know that thanks to the wonders of new technology you can now come on a tour without leaving the comfort of your own home, simply by joining us on Zoom.
It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s fun, it’s different, it’s good, it’s modern. It’s cheaper, as you’re saving transport costs, parking fees, shoe leather and a ridiculously over-priced flat white at the end of the tour. It means you don’t have to hang around a dodgy street corner in the drizzle wondering if the guy pretentiously carrying a copy of Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths is the guide or whether he’s just a pretentious poseur carrying a copy of Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths.
It means we can now offer a virtual tour – even better than the real thing, as U2 once said – covering every one of our hundred or so walks in and around Manchester. Yes, we will be zooming all the usual tours – Ancoats, Angel Meadow, Architecture, Alan Turing, Art…and that’s just the As – as well as doing the usual walking tours on foot in person. It also offers you, the customer, a wider experience.
Here’s an example – Ancoats
Take our Ancoats Virtual Tour by Zoom, for instance. In just over an hour we can now tell you every major story and go to every location:
- Murray’s Mills
- The Daily Express building
- Abandoned Ancoats Hospital
- The Chips building
- The Roundhouse Settlement
- The site of the Henry Hunt memorial
- Avro
- Radium Street
…places that would take us four hours pacing the streets, to give the complete history of the once industrial ’hood that’s now so hip it hurts.
How it works
- You buy a ticket for £7.50 on eventbrite.
- You get a code, a number, to paste into your browser.
- You get invited into the ‘waiting room’ for a few minutes and then bingo, you’re in!
- Our guide then takes you and all the other customers on the tour via a power point presentation, with photo after photo accompanying the commentary.
- You sit back, admire the photos and soak in the history.
- To add to the authenticity, we will do the tour as if we were walking from place to place.
- After half an hour or so we have a break, so that you can make yourself a (cheaper) flat white or do um other things. We then resume for another half-hour or so.
- At the end the guide takes questions.
What could be simpler!
By the way, we won’t just be doing Manchester. There’s Knutsford, Liverpool and that London on our radar. I will be hosting and Zooming London to provide the scores of tours that can’t be done easily on foot right now, such as Secrets of MI5, Secrets of MI6, my four different Charles Dickens in London tours, and the only Jack the Ripper tour that goes to all five murder sites and the location that solves the mystery.
Here are a few of what we’ve done. More will be constantly added.
- Manchester Town Hall
While England’s greatest town hall is closed for renovations (reopening the 12th of Never), come with us on this ingenious alternative. Ed Glinert, who has conducted more actual tours of Manchester Town Hall than any other guide and is about to publish a detailed book on the building, hosts this virtual Zoom tour.
- Underground Manchester
So we can’t go down physically? Never mind. This is an amazing alternative. We will explore in detail the atomic bunker, the city’s biggest war-time bomb shelters and the underground canal (the dry bits and wet bits). Who knows what we’ll find down there.
- Manchester and Slavery
In the 18th century Manchester families such as the Hibberts and the Heywoods made a fortune from trading African slaves. By the end of the century there was a groundswell of opinion to end the abhorrent practice and Manchester led the way. In Victorian times freed slaves came to the city to tell their story, which we will relay to you. Hear the full story as we explore key Manchester locations such as the Free Trade Hall and Lincoln Square.
Private Zoom Tours
New Manchester Walks has already received order for virtual Zoom tours from Trafford Libraries, Lancaster University and various U3A/WI/Probus groups. If you’re part of such an organisation please let everyone know we can host talks on every subject imaginable.
Looking forward to Zooming you!
