Manchester Gets Snow All Year Round
By Jim Symcox on Apr 18, 2008 in manchester Sports, The Chill Factor
Manchester weather appears to be an odd variety of sleet, rain, sun and cloud. So to get a more consistent type of weather – snow – we decamped to the relatively new “sports resource” near to that shopping Nirvana: The Trafford Centre.
To disappoint the keen golfers I’m not talking about the all weather golf driving range or the enormous gym.
I’m talking about
The Chill Factor!
For my snow bound readers it could be a home from home.
The Chill Factor is a huge building with a real snow ski slope, tubing run and even a junior luge. The ski slope can be seen from the picture on the right.
The whole place is impressive from the snow that abounds and covers every inch of the slopes to the restaurants and the balconies where you can watch people ski or fall down.
As you’d expect get out on the slopes or on one of the two massive balconies and you can feel the Chill Factor chilling you too. Still that makes it fun to nip back inside for some retail therapy, either in buying snowboarding or skiing duds, or feasting at one of the restaurants.
Everyone I talked to loved the experience. And by the way if you’ve got a digital camera with a slight delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken be prepared to take a lot of pictures of just snow. I did!
My only concern about the whole place is whether it can run at a profit because of what must be an elephantine electricity bill for the snow and keeping it cold. Hopefully the fact that there are quite a few winter sports enthusiasts who will pay the entrance price and buy the latest must-have snowboard fashion gear will help.
All we need now is a good sized ice rink as part of the complex and I’ll be there every day!
