Tag : Bolivia

Obsession would be a reasonable description of Finding Manchester. And of course, where there is obsession, the obsessive can also be found. I’m not sure that the term obsessive is an entirely favourable one in normal conversation but it would be fair to say that Finding Manchester constantly preoccupies our minds. How did we arrive here, methodically planning an adventure to search out so many places linked by a single name.

“So………. why do you have a bus shelter?” I hadn’t even stepped foot into Manchester yet and I was already asking stupid questions. I had to ask though, or I’d be wondering for the rest of my life.
“There are no buses here. Its just to keep the sun off us.” Ivan was polite enough to omit the word ‘stupid’ from the end of his reply, but it was there in his voice. Liz sniggered.

The feeling of actually sitting in our little blue canoe and feeling the first few moments of the brown waters coursing under the boat as our paddles cut into the water for the first time was something neither of us will ever forget. Months and months of planning, fumbling around in the dark learning all that we needed to know to make this trip a success was now behind us.

It was around 11.00 o’clock in the morning and as we rounded yet another endless bend in the river and had come across one of Don Willi´s daughter-in-laws washing clothes in a dugout canoe moored up to the far bank with her two sons in tow.

The trip has been twelve months in the planning and yet it still feels like it hasn’t been planned at all. With a little over 48 hours to go there’s equipment strewn about the house and for some reason we’re currently left with a lot of round things that don’t fit in the square things we need them to.

I wrote my book after I retired and had I been younger and in better health I would have tried to visit every Manchester. However, by letter, email and telephone I made contact with Manchesters throughout the world, gaining not only information but making many new friendships.

Research in the name of adventure is generally less adventurous than the adventure itself. That may seem a little obvious but every day spent having the adventure seems to need at least four days leafing through old books, studying even older maps and going off down Google-blind-allies.

If anyone was to ask us the question, and people do, “how did the idea of trying to find Manchester come about,” we have to say its one of those things that just evolved.