In retrospect, if I knew a month ago what I know now, I would have planned my trip differently. As I spent half the day on the train (including passing by tomorrow’s stop today) and realized how little time I have in Chester today.
Travelling with a large backpack on the train has its drawbacks – it takes up a lot of space – and its benefits – it takes up a lot of space – a whole seat’s worth to be exact; so when I feel like being anti-social and not have to sit next to anyone on the train – it’s perfect – my sole neighbour is my ever-increasingly heavy backpack.
Arriving at Chester without a map or a clue as to how to get to my B&B, I managed to get there with the aid of a miserably diagrammatical map posted in the train station and some overly detailed directions from a passer by who I stopped on the street once I got discouraged when I ran out of St. Anne’s Street before finding #2 (the road ran out at about #50) – apparently having a large round about cutting though a street is no reason to change names – just miss about 30 numbers and you’re golden.
Chester, as it turns out, is a walled city, strewn with buildings from the 13th to the 21st Centuries. The pretty Dee River flows along one side of the wall and a canal with locks along another. Quite picturesque – I would loved to have run along the canal bank tomorrow, if only I had time.
I wandered the full way around the top of the walls (where there is a walkway that had been built along the top of wall possibly many of hundreds of years ago) circumscribing the downtown core of Chester and was partway through my second lap when I was struck by the need to find the tourist information centre and find a map of Chester and the even stronger need to find a toilet (I do hope that Questing for Toilets doesn’t become a topic of this trip).
I found the information centre and and was about to burst through the door to ask about the nearest toilet, when a woman outside the centre asked: “Are you here for the city tour?” To which I replied, “I can be; when does it leave and where’s the nearest toilet?” Having ascertained; five minutes and just around the corner, respectively – I said I would join the tour and promptly disappeared around the corner.
The tour did the “Hidden Chester” so it talked about the cells they had below one of the sets of gates that were so cramped that you couldn’t stand up in them, we wandered along one side of the wall to the Water Tower (which used to be at the river’s edge, but then the river moved). In the tower next to it was a Camera Obscura which is a set of mirrors placed in such a way that you can see what is in the area around you (like a periscope) and it is projected onto a white table in the centre of the room – very neat!
We wandered about being told bits of history (which I promptly forgot) and just generally enjoying the city. Tour over I wandered about a bit more and then headed back to my B&B to try to get on the internet – being still unsuccessful – which is becoming a reoccurring theme on this trip.
So here I sit writing another post-dated blog that I have not been able to post due to my computer’s inability to successfully connect to a secure WiFi.
I will most likely need to seek professional help when I get to Oxford (professional help for my computer woes not for my failed mental state as a result of my technical difficulties.
And now, to top it all off , my phone has died and the data cord that I brought to charge it from my computer doesn’t actually charge my phone – I’m sure I checked that it did – but alas no.
So those of you keeping track – as of 2300hrs 9 May I am completely cut off from “Home”
I have never felt more alone.
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