Liverpool’s award-winning coffee shop Bold Street Coffee has opened a site in Manchester on Cross Street, bringing its delicious donuts, breakfast buoys and chicken katsu curry butties with it.
Taking over a former Cafe Nero site on Cross street, the independent coffee shop and cafe is serving up top-quality brews alongside all-day breakfast, lunch and brunch dishes – ranging from full on fry ups to butties, an ‘on toast’ section, wholesome bowls and more.
Make no mistake, though, the special dish here has to be the buoys – a Bold Street Coffee signature comprised of scrambled egg with melted cheese inside a lightly toasted brioche bun.
Image: BSCImage: BSC
Essentially a breakfast burger, they’re priced from £5.95 for the most basice edition. You can then add in sausage patties, hash browns, bacon, avocado, mushroom, scrambled tofu, aubergine patties and more from a list of different variations, depending on what sort of mood you’re in.
There are vegan buoys, veggie buoys, and even a bad bouy (brioche bun, sausage patty, fried egg, cheese, avocado and hollondaise) if you’re feeling naughty.
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Elsewhere, you’ll find porridge, ‘super’ porridge, ‘Gaz’s granola’, vegan and veggie-friendly sandwiches, an ‘egg box’ section stufffed with the likes of granary toast, scrambled egg, melted cheese, avocado, tomato, bacon and sausages.
Whilst the food menu does sound spectacular, let’s not forget that Bold Street is known for its coffee – serving regularly-changing guest espressos and a house blend that they switch up every quarter.
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Hand-picked by baristas and roasted specifically for BSC, alongside a selection of sixteen different coffees on the menu you can also purchase everything you need to make your perfect brew at home – from aeropress, Chemex and V60s, to filters and pour-over kettles.
The only thing they don’t seem to sell (from the looks of things anyway) is a grinder and scale – however, you can ask one of the team to grind your beans to your own specifications when you pick up a bag (priced from £8).
Image: BSC
If you’re not a coffee fan, don’t worry, there’s still lots to drink. Think seven different types of tea, plus iced tea, kombucha (fermented tea), Lemon-Aid, Fritz sodas and Pago juices.
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There are even puppucinos and babbacinos available for your dogs and babies, so no one needs to feel left out at Bold Street Coffee.
Open from Monday to Saturday 8am – 6pm, and Sunday from 9am – 5pm, find Bold Street Coffee at 53 Cross Street.
The reason behind the ‘mini Manc tornado’ that blew through Ancoats this month
Danny Jones
If you saw footage of a ‘mini tornado’ ripping through Manchester online this past weekend, no, your eyes weren’t deceiving you: it did happen and, turns out, it’s a pretty strange and rare phenomenon– at least in this part of the world.
They say 0161 has everything but a beach, and now we seemingly have little twisters of our own, they might just have a point.
In all seriousness, footage went viral on social media, being met with equal surprise and alarm as most were understandably confused at how this could even happen in the UK, given our climate isn’t typically used to these kinds of weather events.
For those of you who haven’t seen it already, here’s what it looked like…
Did you see the mini Manc tornado that passed through Ancoats last weekend? 🌪️
We’ll admit that when first heard a so-called tornado had been spotted in Manchester, we pictured a little spiral of leaves and crisps packets in a supermarket car park, but as you can see, it really was much more significant than that.
Reported as having towered as high as 30 metres along Great Ancoats Street, various people saw the startling city centre sight and quickly began querying what the hell they were seeing online.
Despite many dubbing it a tornado, we can confirm it was something slightly different.
What caused the ‘Manchester tornado’?
What you’re looking at is what is colloquially known as a ‘dust devil’; put simply, these are small, rotating columns of air that pick up dust and debris from the ground and obviously resemble a tornado at times, especially when they manage to become as wide and tall as this one did.
As explained by the Met Office, “A dust devil forms due to irregularities caused by temperature contrasts on different surfaces, which then causes rotation of the air and, when there’s dust and debris, you can get these columns of air.”
Here’s another angle:
WATCH: MASSIVE Dust Devil in Manchester, England yesterday!#tornado
We don’t need to tell you that it’s been pretty warm of late (bloody gorgeous, in fact) and, as a result, the chances of creating a proper dust devil are much greater than usual.
The Met Office went on to add: “Unlike tornadoes, dust devils grow upwards from the ground, rather than down from clouds. In the stronger dust devils, a cumulus cloud can be seen at the top of the rising column of warm air.
“They only last a few minutes because cool air is sucked into the base of the rising vortex, cooling the ground and cutting off its heat supply.”
It’s not the only strange meteorological event seen around Greater Manchester recently, either. From the likes of ‘supercell thunderstorm’ and the eerily silent ‘heat lightning’ in late 2023, to the UFO-like swirl seen across various parts of the globe earlier this year.
Chester Zoo has been given £4m lottery funding to ‘transform’ the local environment
Emily Sergeant
Chester Zoo has been awarded a £4 million grant of lottery funding to help ‘transform’ the local environment.
Merely months after being named the UK’s best zoo for the second year running, thanks to receiving more than 11,000 ‘excellent’ reviews from TripAdvisor, Chester Zoo has now been awarded a whopping £4 million – £4,073,372 in total – by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support its Networks for Nature initiative.
The Networks for Nature initiative is described as being an ‘ambitious project’ to restore wildlife habitats across the Cheshire and wider North West region.
The funds will be used to either create or restore 20 ponds, nearly 3,000 metres of hedgerow, and more than 100 hectares of habitat.
Chester Zoo has been given £4m lottery funding to ‘transform’ the local environment / Credit: Chester Zoo
4,500 students will also be able to take part in year-long school projects to improve their school grounds for wildlife and people through the grants – which have been made possible thanks to money raised by National Lottery players – while 90 young people will have the chance to be trained in an environmental leadership course.
On top of this, 14 new jobs will also be funded through the money, 18 community groups will be worked closely with to improve their outdoor spaces for natural heritage, and the zoo’s network of trained ‘Wildlife Champions’ will continue to be supported.
Hannah Brooks, who is the Senior Community Participation & Engagement Manager at Chester Zoo, said The National Lottery Heritage Fund grant was a ‘massive boost’ for the zoo’s community groups.
The funds’ll go towards an ‘ambitious project’ to restore wildlife habitats across the North West / Credit: Chester Zoo
“As a charity, we’re so grateful that this funding has come through,” she commented.
“This is an exciting moment for the project, there has been a lot of work behind-the-scenes to bring people together and find out what these community groups need to take action to improve spaces for wildlife and people, and now, we will be able to support people to make real change across a vast landscape.
“This could really transform things for the environment in Cheshire and for the people who live here.
“Individual action can be difficult, but collectively we can inspire each other and provide a network that will keep having impact long into the future.”
Georgina Pellant -
8th December 2021 
