Salford Quays Basin

Image: © Alan Pennington Taken: 31 Dec 2004

A photo taken from the top of the Imperial War Museum Manchester. Across the Manchester Ship Canal you can see the Lowry Theatre and in the foreground the lifting walkway bridge. This bridge is raised and lowered when ships need to access the basin, sadly the massive ships that used to bring goods into Manchester from all over the world now offload their cargo in Liverpool rather than come the 35 miles from the river Mersey. Most modern container ships would be too large anyway to negotiate the canal today. Thankfully some of the smaller vessels still come up the canal with goods such as grain, wood and small oil tankers. The canal system needs to be constantly dredged to keep it in working order, sometimes you will see the dredger at work especially in the basins of this area. The Holiday Inn Express Hotel Salford Quays, is barely visible in the centre of the photo close to the bridge upright, it is the red bricked building.

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0