Salford may have missed out on a chance to have its own beach, but that has not stopped it being touted as a holiday destination in a new book.

An entire chapter of a book about ‘unsung Britain’ is devoted to the city as it lines up with Norwich, Milton Keynes, Hull, Coventry and Slough as a place to see.

During an eventful short break, author Tom Chesshyre’s first glimpse of Salford was a Conservative Party advert which someone had covered in graffiti. But he also sees LS Lowry’s ‘brilliant’ pictures at the Lowry arts centre, noting: “If Unsung Britain has an (unofficial) artist, it has to be LS Lowry.”

He also learns how Salford mill worker Mary Burns apparently played a key part in the Russian Revolution.

Using his £150-a-night room in the five-star Lowry Hotel as a base, Chesshyre ventures into the neighbouring districts of Langworthy and Seedley.

He sees the regeneration of Chimney Pot Park, which saw 350 empty terrace houses turned into ‘upside down’ homes which have the bedrooms on the ground floor, and discovers the scheme has split the community as the homes are occupied by ‘outsiders’.

His visit takes in one of the city’s most popular pubs, The Crescent, where Friedrich Engels is believed to have met Karl Marx for a pint.

Mary Burns had a 20-year affair with Engels and showed him the streets of Salford and Manchester, so he could ‘marry real life with his theories’ which resulted in his Conditions Of The Working Class.

A walk down Liverpool Street leads to the gas works that Ewan MacColl sang about in Dirty Old Town. Along the way he sees ‘zombie-like’ figures who he concludes are skinny drug addicts – ‘real-life matchstick figures, in the heart of Lowry-land’.

Chesshyre says he enjoyed his stay, which also included visits to Salford Lads Club and the Working Class Movement Library, because of the ‘sense of regeneration and of being in a spot that was so historically important as a centre of industrialisation, and seeing how life moves on now’. His book, To Hull And Back: On Holiday In Unsung Britain, is on sale now.

And Salford’s beach? It was announced in 2004 that a beach would be installed on the River Irwell at Greengate but the plan was later shelved.