Hunched and pale, caps pulled down and Woodbines lit, they come pouring through mill gates flanked by smoking towers shrouded in fog.

Look closely enough at LS Lowry’s ‘matchstick men’ and you can almost hear the clattering of their boots and the mill siren piercing the air.

The grim streets, houses and factories captured by the Salford artist’s brush seem a world away from the slick urban complex now home to the world’s largest public collection of his works.

Surrounded by the waters of the Manchester Ship Canal, once one of the country’s busiest industrial sites, Salford Quays is a prime example of sustainable regeneration.

Linked by a network of waterways and a waterfront promenade, it’s a striking 21st century hub of world-class business, stylish apartments and cultural, retail, leisure and media complexes.

With the BBC relocation to the waterfront MediaCityUK, Salford once again has a significant place on the national and international map.

At the heart of the Quays lies The Lowry, a nautical-looking mass of twisted steel and glass housing two theatres, studio spaces, cafes, bars and a restaurant. Upstairs is the gallery, where a permanent Lowry exhibition comprises paintings, drawings and pastels. The Lowry’s 400-item collection ranges from familar industrial scenes depicting the factory gates, front-step gossip and street corner games the artist observed, to seascapes and portraits, among them a self-portrait and oil paintings of his parents.

The gallery also houses works by French Impressionist Adolphe Valette, who taught Lowry. While in Manchester, Valette captured its foggy streets, squares, waterways and buildings in bleak but beautiful paintings.

Also on display is photographer Nadav Kander’s striking contemporary images of stars including Morrissey, Take That and Nick Cave.

We visited The Lowry during a weekend at Salford Quays. We stayed at the pleasant Old Trafford Lodge hotel, at Old Trafford Cricket Ground, where our room overlooked the famous pitch. It’s not every day you wake up to a view of one of the world’s greatest sporting arenas!

The 15-minute walk to the Quays passed the other world-famous Old Trafford – the home of Manchester United. With a match on that day, surrounding streets were turning into a sea of red scarves, and chauffeur-driven cars lined up outside the ground.

We visited the Imperial War Museum North, on the canal’s Trafford Wharfside, an area heavily bombed during the Manchester Blitz.

The building’s ‘shattered globe’ design is comprised of three shards representing air, earth and water. From a viewing balcony on top of the 55m-high air shard we took in a panoramic view of the Quays and Manchester’s skyline.

A word of warning – don’t look down below your feet. The tower’s delicate-looking iron structure is clearly visible beneath the flooring and, while it’s said to reflect “an aerial perspective of modern warfare and the precariousness of life below”, it will make your head spin. If you’re a height junkie like me, you may quite like the head-spinning though.

An ex-Iraqi Army T-55 tank, captured during the Iraq War, stands outside the museum. In the ‘earth shard’ we followed a chronological journey around six themed spaces, starting with the First World War. The haunting sound of troops singing It’s A Long Way To Tipperary filled the air.

We passed items salvaged from conflict, including a US Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jet, a 13-pounder field gun which fired the British Army’s first shot of the First World War, the mangled remains of a car destroyed by a bomb in Baghdad, and twisted steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

It’s an excellent museum, with the right balance, and quantity, of war memorabilia and interactive appeal for younger visitors. I was particularly impressed with The Big Picture, an audiovisual presentation filling the walls with archive images, accompanied by oral history accounts of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary conflict.

Crossing the lifting footbridge, we trawled the shops in the Lowry Outlet Mall and ate at Lime, a stylish restaurant and bar overlooking the bustling but relaxed plaza, where twinkling lights bounced off the water after dark. I had delicious Thai spiced fish cakes, mint and pea risotto and lemon sorbet.

Lime is said to be good for celeb-spotting so I asked our waitress which stars she’d served. “Pat Sharpe came in recently,” she said. “And Mike Baldwin from Coronation Street used to come in every day.”

If it’s good enough for a Corrie legend, it’s good enough for me.

Factfile:

* Salford Quays is in Salford, Greater Manchester.

* The Imperial War Museum North is open daily, 10am-5pm. Ring (0161) 836 4000 or visitiwm.org.uk.

* For more about The Lowry ring 0843 208 6000 or visit thelowry.com, and for Lime ring (0161) 8690440.

* The Old Trafford Lodge is at Lancashire County Cricket Club, Old Trafford. Ring (0161) 8743333 or visit oldtraffordlodge.co.uk