Community Rail Officer Sarah Muir met with fellow rail officers Sarah Morgan and John Kenny of Crewe to Manchester and Southeast Manchester rail partnerships to discuss making a potential bee garden on a shrub bed platform border at the towns` station. Lisa Magee of Avanti Northwest, who is involved with many community activities at the station was also in attendance.
The group met on platform by the potential bee garden site and tried to look beyond the cold drizzly weather to envision a colourful wild life friendly space bristling with bees.
Local volunteer, Mark, has already been doing a tremendous job planting bulbs and tending to the border so the group plan to continue working with Mark to support his efforts in making the site more pollinator friendly. They also talked about how the project could link in with the surrounding community through producing an artwork for the site. They would love to hear from Stockport based schools or community organisations who might like to be involved with an art project for the station.
The bee garden is in keeping with the stations existing support of the local bee sanctuary.
Later on Sarah and Sarah headed into Stockport to discover the many and diverse attractions it has on offer. They admired the large and impressive Stockport Central Library (Wellington Street South) and paused to take in the Stockport viaduct which spans the river Mersey-first built in 1839 by George Watson Buck and John Lowe its one of the largest brick structures in the UK and a truly breath-taking feat of engineering. The pair popped into The Hat Works the UKs only museum dedicated to head wear. Stockport was once the hat making capitol of the UK, and in the 19th century exported millions of hats around the world.
Making their way through the Mersey Way shopping centre with a wide variety of retailers, they called in to the Mersey Way Workshop found at 6 Deanery Way Stockport. There are a selection of arts and crafts workshops on offer here and they are currently hosting an appeal for plastic bottle tops for an art project by the Plastic Shed www.plasticshed.org
The Sarahs then popped into The Light a multiplex cinema which also has an arcade, virtual darts and bowling plus a bar serving a variety of refreshments.
With a wide variety of shops and amenities and with great sustainable transport links it worth a visit!
Watch this space for further news on the bee garden.
