Puttstars Mini Golf at Rochdale Riverside

A look at the Puttstars indoor minigolf centre in Rochdale.

Emily swung by the Puttstars indoor minigolf centre at Rochdale Riverside entertainment, leisure and shopping centre yesterday.

Puttstars is a new minigolf brand from the Hollywood Bowl Group. The Rochdale venue is home to three 9-hole minigolf courses.

Check out the Puttstars Mini Golf website for more information.

New Adventure Golf course at Jump Heaven in Stockport

A new adventure golf course is being built at Jump Heaven in Hazel Grove, Stockport.

Jump Heaven in Hazel Grove is opening a new adventure golf course.

The layout is being built by the team at Adventure Golf Solutions.

It'll be a very local course for us to play on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour.

Jump Heaven on Pepper Road in Hazel Grove was the UK's first trampoline, Ninja Warrior, Parkour and Total Wipeout arena.

Visit the Jump Heaven website for more information.

Our last pre-pandemic minigolf course visit

The last pre-coronavirus pandemic lockdown minigolf course visit we made was to The Lost Valley Adventure Golf course in Bolton's Market Place shopping centre a year ago today.

That trip to Bolton was our last day out before lockdown.

It'll be great when we can once again get out and about on our travels.

What a difference a year makes

We saw a Back to the Future DeLorean time machine at MediaCityUK in Salford a year ago today!

If you had a time machine would you go back in time or head to the future?

My last pre-pandemic games of dodgeball

I played my last pre-coronavirus pandemic lockdown games of dodgeball a year ago today.

In my last Tuesday night session with the Cheadle & Gatley Griffins Dodgeball Club I played 5, won 4 and lost 1.

I'm really looking forward to returning to dodgeball action when it's once again safe to do so.

My 2020 record stood at 18 games played with 9 wins and 9 losses.

My all-time Dodgeball Win-Loss Record (2005-2020) stands at 987 games played, 451 wins, 492 losses and 44 tied games.

Bruntwood Park Pitch & Putt in Cheadle

Our first miniature golf course visit of the year.

We had a walk round Bruntwood Park in Cheadle on New Year's Day and while there took a look at the Pitch & Putt course.

Rules for the time of Covid

A view to the 7th tee

A frosty bunker

An icy green

The layout was the second miniature golf course we visited, and 695th overall on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour, when we moved to Cheadle Hulme back in 2016.

Visit the Bruntwood Park Pitch & Putt website for more information.

Social distancing minigolf

The Bruntwood Park Pitch & Putt course was the first place saw social distancing measures in place in person. That was in May last year.

A look back at 2020

The last course we swung by in 2020 was the grass Putting course at Park Square in Cheadle Heath on the 29th December.

Before the first national lockdown hit and our out-of-home putting was paused we'd visited 948 courses since September 2006.

We had a very strong start to the year and visited 20 courses in the first 20 days of 2020.

We were still able to visit a total of 46 courses in 2020, including revisits. 15 of them were new layouts to us. We've been able to visit eight courses during the pandemic (March to December 2020), playing two of them.

We've now been to a total of 956 courses on our Crazy World of Minigolf Tour.

Leisure Orienteering at Bruntwood Park in Cheadle

While having a walk round Bruntwood Park in Cheadle on New Year's Day we spotted this nice old sign for Leisure Orienteering at the park.

The sign is at the Pitch & Putt kiosk in the park

It's one of the few remaining signs in the borough that carries the old council logo. We've seen others near the Stockport Pyramid, at Woodford Recreation Ground and on Adswood Road.

The logo for Stockport Leisure Services

There's no missing Salford Shopping City

What a piece of signage.

Salford Shopping Centre opened as Salford Precinct in 1972 and was renamed Salford Shopping City in 1992

Even though the shopping precinct is now called Salford Shopping Centre the huge sign on the block of flats clearly points out where the shops are in Pendleton, Salford.

Park Square Putting Green in Cheadle Heath

A look at the snowy Park Square Putting Green in Cheadle Heath.

Unplayable

The Putting Green at the Park Square offices in Cheadle Heath was the first miniature golf course we visited this year.

Grainger Games in Salford

Grainger Games - a lost video game shop brand.

This is the Salford Shopping Centre location in Pendleton, Salford, Greater Manchester.

The company was founded in 1996 and ceased operations on the 28th March 2018.

As a brand with shops in the North of England and Scotland I only became a regular shopper there when I moved to Stockport in 2016.

This year I've found other former branches of Grainger Games at Stretford Mall and Clarendon Square Shopping Centre in Hyde.

Family Shopper in Salford

My recent hunts for Happy Shopper shops led me to find out about the Family Shopper brand. The stores are part of the same retail group. The first one I noticed was in Ashton-under-Lyne earlier this year.

Driving back from Salford Shopping Centre we spotted this Family Shopper on the corner of Cross Lane and Culverwell Drive.

The building looked like it used to be a pub and looking on the excellent Pubs of Manchester blog I found it used to be a pub called the Golden Gate. It was originally known as the Craven Heifer.

I'm still on the lookout for Happy Shopper stores with the classic signage and branding. I've been lucky to find one in Preston, a couple in Sheffield and another in Derby.

The Carphone Warehouse in Leigh

A look at a lost shop in Leigh.

The Carphone Warehouse on Bradshawgate in Leigh, Greater Manchester - one of the 531 standalone shops closed by the brand in April of this year.

The Carphone Warehouse was founded in 1989 and while the brand still exists, products and services are now offered within Currys PC World stores.

Back in 1999 The Carphone Warehouse purchased Tandy's operations in the UK. My first job was at a Tandy franchise in 1995 and I've found traces of that brand in Hitchin and Saint Annes on the Sea on my travels.

What did this building used to be?

A bit of retail archaeology in Leigh, Greater Manchester.

A new Londis, Ellie D's Tattoo Studio and Grainey's Barbers on Holden Road in Leigh - but what did it used to be?

It's interesting to see how the world of retail and buying behaviour changes over time.

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It was once a Blockbuster Video Express.

After it was a Blockbuster store the unit on Holden Road became a Best-One shop. It is currently home to three businesses, with one section vacant.

Lost Blockbusters

Blockbuster Video ceased operations in the UK in December 2013. At the start of that year there were 528 Blockbuster locations in the UK. The number dwindled until October when only 264 shops remained. The remaining stores closed on the 16th December.

The first Blockbuster Video store had opened in Dallas, Texas, USA on the 19th October 1985.

Blockbuster Video entered the UK video rental market in 1989 following the purchase of Ritz Video.

The QuikDrop box is still in place at the old store location in Prescot, Merseyside

We've found a few empty Blockbuster stores on our travels, including the shops in Fallowfield, Manchester and Colne, Lancashire. We've also seen remnants of signage and QuikDrop boxes in a number of locations.

Pound £ Fever

What a shop name. Apt for 2020.

Pound £ Fever in Leigh

I reckon Pound £ Fever and COVID-19 Buster at the opposite end of Bradshawgate in Leigh are big rivals.

COVID-19 Buster in Leigh

We spotted this interesting shop while in Leigh, Greater Manchester on Saturday.

It's the best shop name I've seen during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Buster sells PPE to businesses and individuals.

No sitting

A look at a shopping centre bench in the time of social distancing.

A bench in the Spinning Gate shopping centre in Leigh

We've seen a few other benches with social distancing signs and rules about sitting down during the pandemic, including a pair of socially distanced benches in Spinningfields, Manchester and these two in Colne, Lancashire.

I've been documenting the Covid-19 and social distancing signs I've seen during the pandemic here on the blog as well as on my Instagram account.

JJB Sports in Leigh

A look at an old JJB Sports shop in Leigh.

The shopfront of the old JJB Sports shop on Bradshawgate in Leigh, Greater Manchester is still visible.

The company went into administration in 2012 with stores closing in October and was dissolved in November that year.

The retail space occupies the ground floor of the Leigh Friendly Co-operative Society building that was designed in 1897 and opened in 1899.

The JJB brand is now owned by Sports Direct.

This shopfront on the town's main shopping street retains the pre-2010 branding on the signage.

Old shops and lost brands

One of my areas of interest is in old retail brands - I'm a marketer by profession and two of my first jobs in the 1990's and the year 2000 were at Tandy and Toys R Us. It's been fascinating to find remnants of a number of lost, dead and defunct brands on the high street and at retail parks. Some of them include Blockbuster Video, Woolworths and RadioShack, as well as examples of previous brand iterations such as Happy Shopper.

Another "KFC"

 A look at Krispy Fried Chicken in Eccles.

Another KFC seen on our travels

Related blog posts:

- Chicken Shops

- KFC

Deane Video Centre - a lost video shop

A look at Deane Video Centre aka Valji's Convenience Store on Wigan Road in Deane, Bolton, Greater Manchester.

The Premier Express convenience shop isn't a video shop anymore.

Premier Stores is another convenience store brand owned by Tesco.

Last month we found a Video Box Office sign in a Happy Shopper shop in Ilkeston.

There is still a video shop - with lots of VHS tapes - operating in Bolton. You can find B.V.C - Bolton Video Centre in Little Lever. It's well worth a visit to step back in time.

Related blog posts:

- Video Shops

Travel in 2020

I've barely travelled outside of Greater Manchester this year so it was nice to 'get away from it all' with a trip to Miami, California and Italy this afternoon.

Miami Sun Centre, California Wines Express and Little Italy on Wigan Road in Deane, Bolton

These shops are all on the Wigan Road in Deane, Bolton.

Related blog posts:

- Holidays at home - Stockport, 2020

- A postcard from Stockport