Manchester Is a Perfect Gateway to London

Once the industrial capital of the north, with textile mills and factories belching out billows of blue- black smoke into the stark landscape, Manchester is undergoing a multimillion-dollar face lift that promises to put this city on the map in a way unsurpassed in its long history.

Situated at the very heart of England, Manchester is some 200 miles north of London and 40 miles from Liverpool.

It is surrounded by some of England’s most impressive cities: Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Cumbria with its spectacular Lake District. From here it’s easy to get to London or Scotland.

A perfect, but different, English holiday would make Manchester an alternate gateway, thus avoiding the overcrowding and hassles at Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Here are several excellent hotels, all within a 12-mile radius of Manchester Airport.

I suggest one of two Cheshire country hotels: The Belfry Hotel or Mottram Hall. The Belfry has one of the finest restaurants anywhere, with some prices half as much as in London.

Efficient Rooms

Hotel rooms are small and efficient, and a suite is about $125 U.S. (half on the weekend). Andrew Beech, one of the owners, gives American guests a complimentary bottle of champagne and a basket of fruit.

Mottram Hall is a large and stately manor house in the heart of Cheshire’s magnificent countryside and farm land. Streams, hills and weeping willow trees abound. The building dates from 1721, but the hotel offers modern amenities: squash and tennis courts, steam room, sauna, gym and a massage and beauty salon.

The restaurant also is excellent. After a brisk walk around the grounds, with sheep, cattle and horses grazing amid misty English splendor, try a dinner of medallions of beef fillet smothered with crushed black peppers, pan fried and flamed with brandy, and topped with a little English mustard wine sauce and cream for $15.

Vegetarians can order a brochette de legumes --a banquet of vegetables and herbs with a coconut sauce, aubergine and courgette marinated in olive oil with mushrooms grilled on skewers. Various other exotic delights go for $10.

Full Breakfast

Modern, airy rooms are $130 for a double or twin standard room, $232 for the executive suite. Prices include a full English breakfast, service and value-added tax.

Several places are worth exploring in the area. Visit Alderley Edge, where it is said there still exists a wizard who appears every now and then under a full moon by a stone wishing well halfway up a mossy, tree-laden hillside overlooking the Cheshire plains.

Go to Prestbury village, a mile or so from Alderley Edge as the crow flies, and order a pub lunch at the Admiral Rodney. Admiral Alan, the portly proprietor, will hospitably regale you with a tale of two.

You’ll find the Cheshire set here gathered round the grog barrels and ship’s timbers, knocking back the warm beer and discussing anything and everything.

The White House, in this village of venerable antiquity, is a lovely place to have lunch, as is the Leigh Arms across the road. The Church of St. Peter dates to 1220.

Afterward, you can check into one of Manchester’s oldest and most venerated hotels, where the first meeting took place between the Honorable Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce, which led to the formation of Rolls-Royce Limited.

The old Midland Hotel, now the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, offers a weekend special for $135 per person double occupancy. The price includes a welcome party, full English breakfasts, dinner specials, a walking tour of the hotel and city center, plus dinner and tickets to one of Manchester’s thriving theaters.

On Sunday, after a swim or a workout in the club and a hearty English breakfast, you could delve into Manchester’s past, from Roman times, when it was known as Mamucium, through the middle centuries of the Jacobites to the 19th-Century Industrial Revolution.

Many Hiking Trails

Tour the Granada Television Studios, follow the Jewish Heritage Trails, and visit the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.

One morning I drove for just over an hour from Manchester to Cumbria, past Blackpool and Morecambe Bay off the motorway, through the Lake District and into some of the most enchanting scenery on earth.

Giant cumulus clouds were pierced intermittently by shafts of sun gold, revealing the blue yonder and crisscrossing rainbows over a landscape of rolling hills, tiny villages and farmhouses.

While driving along one stretch of road, I saw a woman and child walking hand in hand. The woman stopped, then stooped to pick up something from the ground.

At that moment, the sun appeared from behind a dark cloud and poured down a brilliant, vivid spectacle of light and color that froze the landscape into a beautiful painting. It was as if time stood still for a second or two.

Turn another bend in the road and there’s more enchantment in the form of the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway, where you can board a fabulous old steam train for a 3 1/2-mile journey through the countryside, connecting with a cruise boat that plies the 10 1/2-mile length of Lake Windermere.

Visit the Cumbria Crystal glass factory in Ulverston, where special commemorative pieces are requisitioned for the Royal Family and where traditional glassware is produced for use by the British government for all state and formal occasions at 10 Downing Street and Houses of Parliament. Tours of the factory are popular.

Toward the end of my trip, I took the train to London. From the gray, quiet gloom of an early English autumn morning, I stepped off the platform and into the luxury of a British Rail Pullman dining car.

A menu offered freshly brewed coffee and hot porridge with honey, sausage, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried kippers.

The silver dew was still in the fields and on the wooden fences as we sped over bridges, rivers and streams, past factories and farm carts stacked with bales of hay, over the motorway packed with cars, trucks and motor coaches.

We crossed over canals with wooden barges and past flat-mirrored ponds in fields of green. Along one section of the track, I caught a glimpse of two black crows sitting side by side on one of the pylons.

We reached London’s Euston station in just over two hours. I took a taxi to my favorite hotel, Brown’s, for a couple of days of shopping, sightseeing and dining.

There is a superb little restaurant, the English Garden, at 10 Lincoln Street, London SW 3. Emphasis is on service and quality. The bill for five came to under $400, and we didn’t spare the wine.

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The Belfry Hotel, Handforth, Wilmslow, Cheshire, England, SK9 3LD.

Mottram Hall, Wilmslow Road, Mottram Street, Andrew, Prestbury, Cheshire, England SK10 4QT.

Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Midland, Peter Street, Manchester, England M60 2DS.

Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway Co. LTD. Haverthwaite Station, Near Ulverston, Cumbria, England LA12 8AL.

Cumbria Crystal Limited. Lightburn Road, Ulverston, Cumbria, England LA12 ODA.

For more information on travel in England by rail, contact BritRail Travel International, 800 S. Hope St., Suite 603, Los Angeles 90017, (213) 624-8787.

For general travel information on Great Britain: the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-3525.