Chester

H and I lived in Chester for 2 years between 2004-2006. It is truly one of the the most picturesque towns I have visited in England and we were blessed to live there.

I was very excited to share our old stomping ground with Cat!

Coincidentally, Howard’s brother lives there now so we enjoyed a nice lunch and “catch up” with him when we arrived.

After lunch and a small game of “lets try to find where Nicole parked her car”, he braved my driving and we dropped him off at his home.

We checked into our hotel, had a quick power nap and then decided to have a wander through “Chester’s Rows” (Main Street).

As I have mentioned my love for clocks, one of the first things I showed Cat was the Eastgate Clock which is perched on the eastern side of city walls.

They were testing the cathedral bells for 2 hours while we walked around so we we’re lucky to have this magical sound serenade us as we explored.

We stopped at the cathedral and Cat hopped on an elephant statue. The statue was a gift to the city from the Chester Zoo which is one of the largest zoos in the UK.

We also admired the beauty of the County Hall building.

Chester is one of the best preserved walled cities in Britain. One of the first things we decided to do the next morning was to walk on the footpath along the top of the walls.

The High Street was just starting to come to life. It was fun to people watch from this viewpoint while admiring the tudor style buildings.

The grounds around the cathedral were green and lush with tons of daffodils.

There were several boats in the canal as we continued on our path. Cat even helped with the lock as the water level was raised and lowered to assist the boats as they moved up and down the canal.

From the canal we walked by the first flat that we lived in on Raymond Street.

We headed back to town towards our hotel and checked out the inside of the cathedral on our way.

We met a lovely priest who gave us some great information about the choir. It took 20 men about 2 years to build. There were many animals and people chipped into the wood with amazing detail.

Being that this was before the time of pictures or movies, they often created animals that they had heard about yet never seen. For example, I can’t imagine that there were a lot of elephants running around the UK in he 1300’s. In the carving, it’s body looks a bit like that of a horse but overall, I think they did a good job of grasping the concept of the animal.

We left the cathedral, checked out of our hotel and headed on our way for the last leg of our journey.

We did make one stop at our second house in Chester before we left. This was the first home we owned and it held a lot of fond memories! Aside from the color of the front door, it hasn’t really changed much!

Overall Chester was a lot of fun to visit. We we’re blessed with great weather and I had a great time telling Caitlyn about our lives back then.