Things to do in Greater Manchester

Stretford Meadows is a linear riverside park following the banks of the River Mersey through the Trafford borough in Greater Manchester, providing one of the most pleasant green corridors in the metropolitan area and a valuable example of how urban green spaces can be managed to support both biodiversity and community recreation. The meadow landscape, stretching along the river between Stretford and Urmston, forms part of the wider network of Mersey Valley green spaces that connects urban communities in south Manchester with the open countryside beyond. The meadow environment encompasses a variety of habitats that together support a surprisingly rich diversity of wildlife within a predominantly urban setting. The river corridor itself, with its alder-lined banks and seasonally flooded water meadows, provides nesting and feeding habitat for kingfishers, grey herons, little grebes and numerous duck species. The open meadow grassland, maintained through seasonal cutting to encourage wildflower diversity, supports butterflies, bumblebees and other invertebrates that have become scarce in the surrounding built environment. Restoration work carried out in recent years as part of the Trafford Council's biodiversity improvement programme has improved the quality of the habitat significantly, creating new pond habitats, planting native trees and shrubs along the riverbank and restoring sections of the meadow that had been degraded by recreational pressure and invasive plant species. The results of this work are visible in the increased diversity of plant species now growing in the meadow sections and the return of species that had been absent from the site for some years. The site is connected to the wider Mersey Valley linear park by footpaths and cycle routes that allow walkers and cyclists to travel considerable distances along the river corridor without encountering significant traffic. The Bridgewater Canal, running parallel to the Mersey Valley a short distance to the south, provides an alternative towpath route and adds historical interest to the recreational network. The meadows form part of the Biodiversity Opportunity Areas identified in Trafford's Local Plan, areas where targeted investment in habitat management is expected to produce the most significant improvements in local nature recovery.

The Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester is one of the largest shopping centres in the United Kingdom, a vast retail and entertainment complex covering approximately 150,000 square metres of retail floor space that was opened in 1998 and has become one of the most visited destinations in the north of England. The centre is notable not only for its commercial scale but for the extraordinary architectural excess of its interior design, which applies a succession of themed environments of baroque and classical ornament, painted ceilings, domed spaces and elaborate decorative schemes to what is fundamentally a very large regional shopping centre. The interior theming of the Trafford Centre, designed by the American firm Chapman Taylor, draws on a range of historical and cultural references applied with what might charitably be called uninhibited enthusiasm. The food court in the Orient section is housed under a domed ceiling painted with clouds and classical figures, the surrounding facades suggesting New Orleans, Rome and various other historical environments simultaneously. The overall effect is simultaneously absurd and impressive, and the scale and consistency of the decorative programme make the Trafford Centre an unusual cultural artefact as well as a retail destination. The centre contains over two hundred shops across a range of retail categories, a large cinema complex, a food court seating several thousand, the Legoland Discovery Centre and Sea Life Manchester aquarium. The Barton Square extension added a further significant retail area focused on home and lifestyle brands. The Trafford Centre occupies a site adjacent to the Manchester Ship Canal in the former industrial landscape between Manchester and Salford, and the development of the surrounding Trafford Quays area has created an extensive leisure and commercial district in what was previously disused industrial land.