Stardate: 8 May 2019 - Not quite grinning like a Cheshire cat...

Today we drove to the city of Chester in Cheshire, mostly to see their Roman ruins.  It's a tad under 60 miles away (a bit over 100 kms?) but oh my dog, the getting there!!  It may have been a mistake to leave Buxton at 8am, just in time for peak hour in the largish towns of Macclesfield and Knutsford, which took over an hour to negotiate.  The first 10 miles through the Peak District were lovely though, despite the heavy rain.  Anyway, over two hours after leaving Buxton, we eventually we got to Chester Park'n'Ride, parked the Vovo and got on the bus. 

Our first port of call (having wandered aimlessly in the wrong direction due to the lack of signage) was the ruins of the original 12th century church of St John the Baptist.  We can thank Henry the Eighth for its state of disarray but even so, it was rather lovely and perhaps the most impressive of the ruins we saw today. 

Just up the road from the church is the Roman amphitheatre (which again we just stumbled on due to poor signposting)  It's actually only half an amphitheatre these days but we got the gist.  It's obviously very popular with school groups and the kids were having a whale of a time with helmets and shields acting out supervised gladiatorial contests.  We thought we wouldn't mind having a go ourselves, and then saw a group of middle-aged women come marching in (on the left) with their own shields and helmets! 

Next up, again very hard to find, was the Roman Gardens which was mostly assorted Roman stone bits and pieces - bases of columns, pavers and the like - that have been moved into a park.

An avenue of Roman column bases at the 'gardens' -  again these were transported from elsewhere - the actual site was a quarry during Roman times and then had various uses - in the 17th and 18th centuries it was a tobacco pipe factory.

Our next stop I have to say, was a complete and utter dud, at least for grown-ups.  It was called "the History of Chester Museum" or something like that, and we were hit with a 7 pound entry fee each, plus another 2 pounds for a piddly Chester map that is A4-sized but would at least give us an idea of where we were.

I would have thought it was incumbent on the reception people to tell a pair of geriatrics that the museum was children-focused and might not be of much interest to us.  But of course not!  Neither of us wanted to play dress-ups, or guess what was under the serving dome, or grind wheat on the wheat-grinding thingy.  In fact, the level of comfort Geoff is displaying in this kiddie-sized set of stocks just about sums up how we felt about this alleged museum.  Geoff reckoned he got about 50 pence worth of value for his 7 pound outlay.  I would probably say the same as at least I got to use their lav. 

Chester's CBD is quite attractive with narrow streets and, thankfully, a number of walking plazas.  Many of the Tudor-looking buildings were actually Victorian but we did see a couple of originals. 

It seemed quite a prosperous city mostly, but like everywhere we have been, there was a worrying number of homeless people looking thin, cold and ill.

All up, Chester was not quite what I expected but aside from the really shitty, pretend museum that robbed us of 14 pounds, quite enjoyable.  Over to Geoff now, who I'm sure will be much kinder than me about today.

***

Well I guess you live and learn.  Who would have thought that a drive that looked quite doable on google maps would turn out to be a challenge of endurance and resilience.  Given that extra degree of difficulty by the rain.  (It was our first wet day of the whole trip though.)  I've now seen much more of Macclesfield than is good for me, and we didn't even go through the centre of town.  That would have added another half an hour.  You should never forget that this is a very small country of over 60 million, as distinct from a huge continent with less than a third of that population.

Anyway ... if you were staying less than 10 minutes drive from Chester, it would be an excellent day out.

Another amphitheatre view.  It IS impressive, although we thought the one we saw in Caerleon, Wales, some years ago was nicer.  That one is a complete circle, and you can use your imagination to think what it would have been like back in the day.  This one allegedly would have seated 7000, but it's hard to imagine it now.

I thought the medieval part of the city was more impressive than the Roman.  Not what we expected, but there you go.  There are several streets like this one, where no cars are allowed, in which pedestrians can roam freely and enjoy the ambience.  If you look closely you can see that there's a kind of mezzanine level of shops slightly above ground level.  Quite charming.  We're not entirely sure that all of this frontage is original ...

... but we thought this one probably is.  If it looks like I've deliberately cut off the street level portion, that's because I thought the Betfred shop would kind of ruin the authenticity of the centuries old streetscape.

Last photo.  You can see the claim that is made as to the antiquity of the arches.  And who are we to argue - who knows what a 1274 arch is supposed to look like?











Lesson learned, we think our remaining outings in the densely populated midlands will be more modestly removed from Buxton.  Won't be a problem - there's plenty!