Mick's 60th - October

As it was Mick's 60th birthday back in August I've been arranging little surprises throughout the year to celebrate the occasion. I'd been hoping to organise something each month and so far so good, although the surprise this month had to be changed.

Storm Boelo hit Yorkshire last weekend and along with the devastation it caused in it's wake, it left my plans in tatters. It was too late to sort something else out for the weekend, though we didn't really want to leave the house anyway with the storm raging, and unfortunately, I couldn't move what I'd arranged to another day so I had to think of something else fast as the end of the month was approaching. We're also rather busy this week with one thing or another but Mick managed to move some work engagements to other days and took yesterday off. Meanwhile, I started wracking my brains as to something fun I could book at short notice and came up with The Crystal Maze Experience.

You may remember this television programme from the 90s where teams had to solve a series of challenges in the Crystal Maze in order to win time for the final challenge in the Crystal Dome. Years ago, when we used to visit St Anne's for weekends away with our extended family, we always used to have a trip into Blackpool to visit the Crystal Maze attraction there, it was something we all looked forward to. It's a long time now since it was in Blackpool but since then, new Crystal Maze Experiences have sprung up in London and Manchester so I thought it would be fun to cross the Pennines and give it a go. 

We were put into a team with six other people and the whole experience lasted over an hour. It was exactly like the TV show, we had a guide who came round with us, just as Richard O'Brien did in the programme, and the maze was split into four zones: Aztec, Medieval, Industrial and Futuristic, and four task categories: Mental, Physical, Skill and Mystery.

It was brilliant fun, the theme music played as we raced from zone to zone, trying to complete the timed challenges and earn crystals. Each member of the team had a go at two challenges each, Mick won crystals on each of his, his tasks were physical and skill, I earned only one, my tasks were mystery and mental, and the team together earned eight crystals in total. I would have liked to have taken some photos inside but unfortunately this wasn't allowed.

Salford Quays is just a couple of miles from where the Crystal Maze is situated so afterwards, we drove there to take a river cruise.

The Princess Katherine took us through Salford Quays and the Manchester Ship Canal onto the River Irwell. The onboard commentary was very informative telling us about the buildings we could see and Manchester's industrial past. It was really interesting.

We've never visited Salford Quays before but it's the home of the BBC and ITV, including sets like the Coronation Street tour. The Imperial War Museum North is here, along with The Lowry Theatre and Quayside Media City, leisure, shopping, restaurants and bars. It's definitely somewhere we'd like to visit again as we just didn't get to explore it all as the time we had was limited.

Mick had to be home for a prior engagement but in the evening, we went for a pizza at a fabulous restaurant within walking distance of our home. They serve authentic Neapolitan pizza made by chefs from Naples. It was a good job I'd made a booking as the only vacant table when we arrived was ours, a testament to how good the food is here. We'd never been to this particular restaurant before but we shall definitely go again. Having recently visited Italy we can say that the food was as good as anything we'd had there. It was a lovely way to round off the day, and though my plans for October changed at short notice, we had a thoroughly enjoyable day.