21 Best Museums In Greater Manchester

The specialist ones. A transport collection, a police museum or a canal-side local museum draws a fraction of the crowd that a headline city-centre venue does, and the exhibits hold children just as well. Museum of Transport and Portland Basin Museum fit that description. If you want the big-name museum anyway, take it first thing rather than after lunch, when the weather has had all morning to push people indoors.

Noticeably, in a city this size. Museums are the default answer to a wet weekend, so a poor forecast lifts visitor numbers at the well-known sites in a way a sunny one does not. That affects queues, cafes and how much space there is around a popular case. It rarely affects the smaller sites much at all, which is the real argument for keeping one or two of them in mind for exactly those days.

A few. Four of the 21 add an outdoor flag to the indoor one. That normally signals a garden, a yard or an approach folded into the visit rather than any substantial open-air section. Elizabeth Gaskells House and Air Raid Shelters are among them. It is not enough to make any of these a fair-weather visit, but take a coat if the site has grounds attached.

Less than the street above it does, which is the point. Below ground the temperature stays much the same whatever the season, so a site like Air Raid Shelters is neither warmer in summer nor colder in winter in the way an ordinary building is. Expect cool and slightly damp rather than cosy, and dress for that rather than for the weather you walked in from. Younger children in particular feel the chill quickly down there.