Manchester invented a good part of the modern world and then spent a century being too busy to brag about it. The first passenger railway station anywhere, Liverpool Road, opened here in 1830, the Bridgewater Canal brought coal into the city, and the mills of Cottonopolis spun and wove so much cloth that the damp red-brick warehouses became the model for industrial cities from Osaka to Massachusetts. The Cooperative movement began a few miles north in Rochdale, and the splitting of the atom was first achieved at the university here. Karl Marx's friend Friedrich Engels ran a mill in the city and wrote about its slums.
It is a tough, funny, welcoming place, and the old mills along the canals now hold flats, bars and offices. The Northern Quarter has independent record shops and the kind of cafés where the barista also plays in a band. The rain is real, but the stereotype is a little unfair; a fine Sunday morning here, with sunlight on the canal basins at Castlefield, is as good as anywhere. Football is a religion, with two enormous clubs on the east and west sides, so do not talk about it unless you mean it.
For a rider, though, the point of Manchester is what lies east. Within forty minutes you can be on the Pennines. The A57 Snake Pass climbs from Glossop to about 500 metres across wild moorland and drops into the Derwent valley, and the A537 over the Cat and Fiddle is another famous, exposed road with a long record of crashes and a firm speed limit. Beyond them lie Buxton, Castleton and the Peak District, with limestone dales, reservoirs and a thousand sheep. Moorland weather changes in minutes, and ice can linger on the high roads into April, so dress for a different season than the city's.
Leaving the city takes patience, because the M60 ring road and the radial roads fill at rush hour. The sensible plan is to go early on a weekend. Fuel and food are everywhere, with filling stations on every main road and more cafés than you could try in a year. Look for secure bike parking near the centre; the city has designated motorcycle bays, and many hotels will let you leave a bike inside a gated yard.