COW Vintage, once on Piccadilly Place, now on Church Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter is a beautifully decorated vintage clothes shop.

63 Degrees is brings French cuisine to Manchester’s Northern Quarter; the Parisian Moreau family who run it pride themselves on cooking with fresh ingredients.

Sheffield Botanical Gardens boasts a bear pit (yes, really), a huge, glass-roofed pavilion and acres of peaceful space.

At the Greater Manchester Police Museum you can stand in the dock, see make-shift riot weapons – such as a soap in a sock – and try the feel of a wooden pillow.

Sandbar, just off Oxford Road in Manchester, is a well-loved watering hole, with a great selection of ales and some eccentric seating.

Jenny’s Bar is hidden away on Fenwick Street in Liverpool. Descend a staircase from what looks like a fish restaurant, and you’ll find a bar in two parts.

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (or the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King) appears at the top of Mount Pleasant as if parked up by aliens.

Winner of the 2017 Art Fund Museum of the Year Award, The Hepworth in Wakefield is easily one of the leading cultural highlights of the North.

The Everyman Theatre on Liverpool’s Hope Street reopened in March 2014 after extensive renovation. It is twinned with the Playhouse on Williamson Square.

Liverpool’s £72m museum tells the city’s own, 800 year-long history.

A historic site and restoration project with an eclectic range of shops, studios and a gallery space, run by local artisans and craftspeople. 

The Royal Court Theatre stages mostly home-grown comedies, somewhat mannered and self-conscious reflections of an inward-looking city.