Just to clarify what I was getting at with Manchester. It has a great tram system and an all day ticket doesn't cost an arm and a leg. There must be a great crawl to be done from one end of the tram system to the centre. I don't know Manchester well enough to come up with a plan. To me the centre of Manchester has gone the same way as Leeds.
Last time I was there I had a fair bit of spare time so I ended up at Eccles with a robust JDW and a couple of Holt's pubs.
Some very good points have been made about giving lots of time to book time off work,get advanced train tickets and secure good deals on hotel accomodation.Looking back we always seem to choose a date in November,so we may need to settle on a day by something like the end of July.
At this stage I'm free apart from Saturday Nov. 10th and Friday Nov.30th
"Good people drink good beer" Hunter S Thompson
It's the north in autumn again*: the furthest north we've been in summer was Wellington last year! Next year can we do the north in summer, please?
I would like to propose that we do the autumn crawl a little earlier this year. We always go for November because of the pressure on train tickets with the school half terms in the final week of October. But that means it's dark around 5pm and potentially pretty cold and wet too. So what about Friday, 12th October? (Sunset 2nd November is 16:31; on 12th October it's 18:16.) Train tickets for this date will go on sale around the middle of July, I reckon. Surely we can make a decision by then...
*Liverpool - March 2012
Leeds - November 2013
York - March 2015
Hull - March 2016
Huddersfield - November 2016
Stockport - November 2017
Come On You Hatters!
I think that makes a lot of sense, it's before the clock change which makes the evenings an hour longer regardless of how far the sun has gone away. At the moment I've got a visit to Wales booked for early October and another unconfirmed one for the week after your proposed date so the 12th of October looks good to me. I don't think weather should be a constraint as it can throw a spanner in the works at any time of the year as I discovered last March. Even last Thursday when I travelled to Wolverhampton all the Scotland trains were ending at Preston. So, who can and can't make the 12th of October? I'm in!
I'm ok with that date (so far), I suppose west of the Pennines needs to catch up with the drier side, what previous suggestions might be worth looking at again? And we've never done Scotland (or Wales).
However a Manchester tram crawl appeals to my inner anorak, a quick look at the GBG and tram map suggests the following may be the places we are looking for (number of GBG pubs in brackets). An all day off peak (after 9:30) ticket is £5.40.
Altrincham (4)
Bury (7)
Chorlton cum Hardy (6)
Oldham (3)
Rochdale (5) (if we must)
Salford (3)
Didsbury (2)
Audenshaw (1)