Grand Tour of England Day 2

After eating breakfast outside (yes we are in the warm south - well south to us,) we got the bus at a convenient stop up the road from outside the farm entrance for the 15 minute ride in to Chester. ( We hadn’t realised our bus passes had expired, not having had need of them for 18 months.)

Chester city centre is compact and easy to get round on foot. We made our way to the Cathedral. The gardens surrounding it were very pretty with beds of the most beautiful irises. This incredible cathedral structure, founded in 1092 as a Benedictine Abbey, was subsequently rebuilt around 1250 and it took 275 years to transform the building into the stunning Gothic-style building it is today. Chester Cathedral has the most complete set of monastic buildings in the country. These include a Georgian square and series of streets, the remains of Roman barracks on the Dean’s field and open green spaces within the city walls. We really enjoyed wandering around the cathedral, admiring the stained glass windows, stone sarcophagi , the huge organ pipes, beautiful ceiling and interesting historical information about the Cheshire regiment. We couldn’t remember when we’d last been in a comparable building, possibly Canterbury, as Chatres 4 years ago must be the more special.

After a very interesting couple of hours we headed down the old narrow streets with their jettied Tudor construction in black painted wood, framing the white buildings. Some are genuine Tudor but others were built in the Victorian era. Although this was pretty it was a bit crowded for us and there was no Covid safety measures in place like we have in Newcastle, where there are many marks on the street to indicate the one-way system, and lots of posters at eye level to remind people. We did see a few footsteps pointing in one direction but not many and people just milled around. We climbed the steps onto the city wall, some of which had been destroyed by Cromwell’s men in the 3 year siege of the city. The walk along the wall took us down to the river where we watched a heron by the weir while having our sandwich.

We headed back up via the Roman ruins of a bathhouse in pretty gardens. It could have been Rome with the cypress trees. The ruined amphitheatre was in an interesting position in the middle of a busy roundabout.

Val recommended the Albion pub which is olde worlde but we didn’t fancy going inside especially as Covid figures in Cheshire are high. We got the bus back and enjoyed reading our books while sipping a glass of chilled wine outside the van.