Coming into Manchester's airport, flying a Boeing 777 can be a little tricky, especially when you are flying it from seat 18A in the Economy Section, and Emirates Air only give you a little screen to do the business! A quick look out the window to confirm the bearing and that you have the runway in sight. Below, all is lush and green, trees and pasture, with not a hint of suburbia. Flaps now fully extended, eyes on the key, engines hushed, falling, falling, runway clear. My, my, it is awfully short! "Keep your hair on" I think, as my brain zanily sings the hit from Hair, "Manchester, England, England, Across the Atlantic Sea", in that manner whereby I can’t ignore it, no matter how hard I try. Wheels down, reverse thrust, hard on brakes as the end of the runway comes up very fast, and we are still going very fast! But wait a minute, there is more loop in the runway than the curve of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, something I hadn’t seen on my screen, and in the end it is an easy roll-out. Welcome to Manchester! We taxi to the terminal past, a Trident, a BAE 146, a Nimrod and even a Concorde, all now permanently parked on static display, and everywhere there are ‘plane spotters’ with cameras and little notebooks to record our aircraft’s call sign. Our arrival does not go unnoticed! Almost seven hours after leaving Dubai, we were thankfully in England's green and pleasant land, and comfortably seated in the sleek black Jaguar loaned to our professional cricketer son in law, as part of his Lancashire cricket contract, and driving through farmland and quaint villages to Wilmslow, some twenty minutes south of Manchester.

Now as a schoolboy, I remembered from my Industrial Revolution teachings, that ‘everything’ in Manchester was industrial, and driving from the airport to Wilmslow, the lack of mills, smokestacks, factories and canals gave rise to mild disappointment! In my youthful Australia, major stores all had “Manchester Departments”, places full of bed-sheets and table cottons. Manchester was still the processed cotton capital of the world. Despite their industrial acumen and eminence, there was nothing so named after Sheffield or Birmingham, Leeds or Derby. But now, even as the road dipped and there only trees to the horizon, it was as though the industrial landscape of Manchester had simply disappeared! “Of course, you fool, we are only on the outskirts, we are still in Cheshire”, and suddenly I grinned my knowing grin. We were in the place of the Cheshire Cat! And as everyone knows, a Cheshire Cat could disappear at a whim, and no doubt take all that industrialization with him! The cool cat had done the trick, and simply left Wilmslow leafy, serene, and highly desirable to the well-heeled.

Farm on outskirts of Wilmslow

Although there has been a settlement at Wilmslow for centuries, it was the coming of the railway that marked it as a desirable place of dwelling amid rural beauty, just far enough away from Manchester’s sewers and smoke. And together with its fashionable cousins, Prestbury and Alderly Edge, Wilmslow has managed to retain its exclusivity and upper-crusty demeanour. Outside the area of Central London, it is now the most affluent area of the United Kingdom, full of sought-after houses, designer and coffee shops, where every third car seems to be a Bentley! Indeed, neither shaken, nor stirred, the Wilmslow Aston Martin dealership sells more of its cars than anywhere else in the UK, and if you drive through the village’s Bank Square or Water Lane in a Merc or a Beamer, you are probably just ‘slumming it’. Here, behind buzzing gates with Berlin Wall-type camera pillars, live bankers, stock-brokers, football stars, and managers like Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson, all in tranquil privacy. Stories are legion of wannabe babes, usually blonde and revealingly buxom, who come and sit in the hair salons or the coffee shops, in the hope of snaring a millionaire. People here are either alabaster white, or have acres of orange-brown skin on display, signifying an abundance of time spent on the Costa del Sol. In Alderly Edge, there are not “butchers”, but “purveyors of fine meats”, there are “bespoke” furniture shops and real estate is “Inspection by appointment only”. It is wonderful English uppity-ness on display in a concourse d’elegance manner! For me, simply watching the watchers, and the passing motors, made for a very pleasant interlude in the sun, even though the cup did cost me the equivalent of an Austin Reed shirt! Little wonder that Wilmslow falls in the constituency of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, The Hon George Osborne, MP, and is one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.

In the early morning, while everyone still slept, I crept downstairs and into the crisp air outside. Birds trilled and sang, and for the first time in my life, I really understood how you could make a pie out of pigeons because those that fluttered around were large and fat. In the hazy bluish sky, which looked in need of another rinse cycle, the aircraft contrails were like a celestial game of noughts and crosses. Coming from the desert in Bahrain, I was instantly rejuvenated by the wonderful shades of green and as I walked into the centre of the village, I marvelled at the canopy of oak and larch, yew and elm, my head swivelling from side to side and up and down, like a missile radar dish. Everywhere there were planter boxes of bright red geraniums and gushing petunias, neatly bordering cottage garden beds displaying all measure of English flowers that Rolf Harris once put together in a song. Houses with Tudor style windows and roofs of slate, with two or three cars in the driveway, all had solid stone fences with just a lick of moss here and there. It was all so tidy and orderly, and with just the faintest lingering whiff of British Gas! Even the graveyard looked inviting, although I hurried past.

In a dip to carry the River Bollin on its way to the Mersey, there was sited the Sixteenth Century church of St Bartholomew, with its picturesque turreted Norman tower, and opposite was an immaculate garden with a small war memorial at one end. As I always do, I looked at the names of lads from the district who had died, and thought there would still be much of Wilmslow they would recognize. I wandered up to the deserted village square, past the beautifully appointed Rectory pub, and the less salubrious looking Swan, past fancy shops displaying fancy goods, and found only a Tesco Express open. Later, I sat on a park bench and read the paper while rabbits came to peek briefly at me before scurrying away into the lush grass, although a little grey squirrel was much more inquisitive and twitched as though annoyed after reading the headline about England’s demise in the World Cup. Then, like the rest of England, he too put his head down and was off. England was in mourning.

St Bartholomew’s Church, Wilmslow

I wandered along a path by the Bollin and through The Carrs Recreational Field, a bountiful place of trees and grass, where people wandered with dogs, plastic gloves very evident in their belts for “the call of Rover”, and said a brisk “Good Morning” to their fellow early riser. There were enchanting little dells beside the coppery coloured waters, and here the rollin’ Bollin gurgled over various stones as though engrossed in conversation. I followed the pathway through deep, dark woods, chancing a meeting with a Gruffalo or Troll, till I came to the Styal Mill, once a major mill for spinning cotton thread, and still claiming the largest water-wheel in Europe. It is now run by the National Trust and while the sluices and locks to channel the water were open, the shop and mill was naturally shut, but awaiting the gawking bus-loads later in the day. On a distant hill stood the large and whitewashed “Apprentices House”, and I imagined the little lads and lasses of years ago, dexterous fingers aching, backs sore, orphans sleeping six and ten to a room, their whole world contained in this valley and at this mill. I followed home the twisting road, which must once have been the path of the horse, past HM Prison, Styal (Once a place for Manchester’s destitute children), and back into serene Wilmslow, the air cool under the trees. Like the England flags, I too had wilted, and it was good to get into the back garden and drink ice cold water, straight from the tap.

The Carrs Parkland                                                              

The Styal Mill

Later we drove to the immaculate Old Trafford Cricket Ground, glimpsing briefly the Manchester United grandstand in the distance. While the ladies went shopping in Manchester’s glitz, I watched two full days of cricket from the comfortable confines of the Member’s stand with its famous hanging petunia baskets and pavilion turrets, which give it a Lords-like look. Yorkshire got over 400 and Lancashire almost as many, and the game petered out into a draw. Fifty years ago, for the Roses match, the ground would have been filled to capacity, come to see favourite sons, Statham and Trueman, Washbrook and Boycott, plenty of Members with ties and hats, but many more in the outer with their cloth caps, only polite clapping and the occasional jeer for the players, and the one or two professionals in their ranks. Once too, there were just local lads, lads from the mills and the pits, but now both teams were full of professionals, like our son-in-law, and drawn from cricketing countries all around the world. How it had all changed! Now the new Point Grandstand looked like something out of Star Wars films, and is as flashy as a rhinestone, yet functional and avant-garde. Then again there are architectural breaks with tradition at all the major cricket grounds around the country, to say nothing about the changes to the game itself! But mid-week, the crowd were all like me and my similarly visiting old cricketing chum from Perth. Most were grey-haired or balding, with a lunge of gut, artificial hips and knotty fingers, yet steely eyes and a love and knowledge of the game, recalling when we too were young, and players. And over the pie and pint lunch, with a cuppa tea afterwards, the conversation was long about the cricket, … and comparing the various sorts of hearing aids!

The Old Trafford Ground                                         

The Old Trafford Pavilion

We came away from Wilmslow thinking that it was a good place in which to live, quite close to everything, really, and much nicer than anywhere else! Near the airport, but little aircraft noise, near the shops and pubs, but far enough away not to be disturbed by the traffic, near to the motorway, but not on it, amid rural beauty, but with the best features of suburbia. It is all so placid and unflustered, where people politely queue, and are modestly “after you”, are friendly without being familiar, and start every conversation as though you are a fellow meteorologist! Oh yes, Wilmslow really is in the heart of the green, and oh so pleasant land that is England, and if I lived there, I am sure that I too, would be grinning like a Cheshire Cat!

Winfred Peppinck is the Tales of the Traveling Editor at Wandering Educators

All photos courtesy and copyright Winfred Peppinck