Woke up late (for us anyway) - a bit after 7am. Got ourselves ready for the day and wandered up to Manchester Piccadilly station to get the train to Chester. The train trip takes a little over an hour if you get a direct train, which we did both ways today.
I'm still working my way to an understanding of the railway system here - there are lots of train companies but in some respects they all act as one single entity; for example, you can book any company's fare with any train company. However, some tickets are only valid for particular trips, some only for particular train companies, some only for routes through a particular station, some are off-peak but there's no specific definition of off-peak either (it depends where you're travelling).
However, we found our way too and from Chester without being kicked off the train, so that's all good. We travelled on an Arriva train both ways. Arriva is a Welsh company and a lot of their services are in Wales (Chester is only a couple of miles from the Welsh border). So, we got to learn that although they're both in England, both Chester and Manchester have Welsh names - Caer and Manceinion.
When we got to Chester, we waited for a City Sightseeing bus. These guys do bus trips around many cities - they have a pre-recorded commentary and I thought it would be useful to give us an overview of the city and also to get us to a place where we could start walking around the walls.
Chester is a very old city - the commentary is full of stuff like "the Romans built something here in 88AD" or "this is the newest building of its type in Chester and it was built in 1664". They told us quite a few interesting stories as we drove into the city.
Once we got off the bus and had a look around the centre of the city - as well as the usual stop for coffee etc - we wandered up to the city walls and started walking around them. We walked the whole way around, including a couple of stops to see specific points of interest.
At the railway station - we could have taken a horse ride but Paul's allergies mightn't have approved!
On the way into town - the Society of Friends started these cocoa houses in the late 19th century in order to try to discourage working men from drinking alcohol, which was astoundingly cheap at the time. It didn't work.
Chester Cathedral, viewed from within the city - further down there's a view from the wall.
The Water Tower - on a small part of the wall that you can't walk on unless you're on a specific tour (which we weren't). This photo was taken from the wall, although we also drove right past it on the bus.
The Chester Racecourse - oldest racecourse in Britain, viewed from the city wall.
Chester Castle - just within the city walls.
The Grosvenor Bridge, viewed from the wall. We also went over this on the bus. At the time it was built, this was the longest single-span arch bridge in the world, but the powers that be were so concerned about the design that they forced the designer to build a scale model first to prove that it would work - they told us that the model is still near the bridge.
The Bear and Billet Hotel. This is the one I referred to above; the youngest surviving building in Chester of this style - later buildings were brick. This was built in 1664.
In the background here you can see a section of the wall. Chester was Royalist in the Civil War, and the panel in the foreground of the picture lines up to show some damage done by Roundhead cannon fire. In reality it was repaired, but you can see the repair on the wall quite clearly, even without the help of the modern picture panel.
The Roman Gardens - a small public park beside the wall containing a lot of Roman relics that had been dug up over time. It also contains the civil war panel above.
The large gateway over Pepper Street is the Newgate, built in 1938 as it had become impossible for traffic to continue to use the medieval Peppergate beside it. The traffic still struggles here and it would seem in most of Chester.
The EastGate clock - we saw the clock and gate from the bus, but here's what the clock looks like from the top of the wall (ie, above the gate).
Chester Cathedral, viewed from the wall. We were very pleased to see the cathedral here - firstly because of the lovely building and gardens but mostly I'll admit because it meant we had almost finished our circuit of the wall!
Our current plan for the rest of the time in Manchester has us spending a day doing local sightseeing in between each trip away. So, tomorrow it's the Manchester Museum (only a mile or so walk from here).
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