Chester to Bath

We had a disorganised start this morning, because I had gotten my times for breakfast mixed up and made Pip and I late. Still, we wandered out to see Chester in daylight. There is a particularly garish clock set up in the town centre, and when I had stopped to photograph it the night before, a man had stopped me and said "if you like the view, go up on the city wall tomorrow morning - there's a man who sits up there and sells his drawings of Chester". Well, I doubted I would want to spend money on views of Chester, but I thought I ought to have a look after the random recommendation. We climbed the staircase to the level of the clock, and sure enough there was a man just beyond us, hanging up his prints on the fence.



When I went up and took a good look, there was a hilarious surprise - the artists drew views of Chester, alright, as well as the surrounding countryside, and various famous English landmarks. But he put a spin on each picture, by inserting Dr Who characters into each scene. The idea is tacky, I'll admit - but I am a huge fan of Dr Who, and the drawings were well-done, and it seemed kinda pop-arty. I struck up conversation with the artist (name of John), who grinned sheepishly and admitted that he'd "sorta made a living from Dr Who pictures". By this stage mum and Pip had joined me, and when he discovered we were Australians, he grinned again and asked us to hold on one moment. With a flourish he produced two pictures from his portfolio folder - the first one of Daleks at the Sydney Opera House, and the second of Cybermen climbing the Harbour Bridge. I was so taken by the first one that I bought a print. I love the weirdness of blending English pop culture with somewhere so close to home. Pip bought a view of the Chester clock, with Tom Baker and David Tennant raising their eyebrows at one another in front.

We strolled on, going further than we had the night before. We took a look at the site of the Roman amphitheatre (Chester's a Roman town originally) - it was interesting, but not very well-preserved. There's a road straight through the middle, for instance.

Back in the town, Pip bought herself a scarf at a little street stall. When we started retracing our steps so as to be off and driving again before midday, it suddenly became apparent that Pip had dropped the scarf somewhere behind us by accident. Argh! She and I rushed back towards town, with mum and dad following more slowly behind us.

Unfotunately we couldn't find the scarf - someone must have picked it up quite quickly. Pippo was upset, but dad took her back to the stall to buy another (happily it hadn't been an expensive thing to lose). Mum and I decided to wait at the point where we'd all caught up again, on the upper level of the shops. But something had been lost in translation in the rush, and after half an hour there was still no sign of dad or Pip. We had both the working phones, as well. Eventually mum and I began walking back to our B & B out of desperation; we were getting later and later, and we had wanted to be in Bath before dark. Happily the other two had come the same way, and were waiting for us on the bridge out of town. We bundled into the car, and finally drove out of Chester, into Shropshire.



Mum was excited to be driving through the area, because A. E. Houseman is one of her very favourite poets, and he wrote mostly about the area where he'd grown up ("A Shropshire Lad"). Unfortunately in the scramble she had ended up as the driver, and there was nowhere to pull over and swap. Yet another bungle on our part - we seemed cursed today. The final straw came when my blood sugar levels went belly-up and I started feeling carsick. We stopped at the first roadside pub we came to, in a place called Lembotswood, and I wobbled around the carpark until my stomach had settled. Judging by the historical photographs in "The Pound"'s loos, Lembotswood has remained exactly the same for the last hundred years - it's just gained cars. The pub's roof is thatched, complete with birds made of straw above each gable. We went in and had a drink each, and watched the tallest of the waiters expertly navigate the low ceilings. I thought one of them was going to knock himself senseless several times, but he'd mastered the quick duck under each roof beam, even when carrying drinks.



The last few miles into Bath, I swapped seats with dad. He can't see well in the dark, and someone had to help navigate by reading signs in the falling dusk. Well, the trip was fairly scary and horrible in the dark - we were following very good directions provided by our hosts for the night, but the roads into Bath are windy and narrow, and have no streetlighting. We descended the last steep hill into Bath, and inched around the edge of the hospital. Finally the sign for Apsley House came into view. We prised poor mum's hands off the steering wheel, and went inside to check in.

Here came the crowning mini-crisis of the day - mum had accidentally booked the wrong night, and our hosts were expecting us to be staying in the gatehouse the night after. Thankfully they soon figured out what had happened, and generously offered us rooms for the night in the main house, and at the cheaper rate - even though it really hadn't been their fault. Poor mum only asks a travel agent to help book flights, because she likes to organise car hire and accommodation herself. She had been juggling so many different things on our long and complicated itinerary that it was little wonder a changed date had slipped through the cracks. She was embarrassed, but I'm just impressed that she makes so many other things WORK, without making mistakes...

No harm done in the end, though, and a serendipitous result. The rooms we had been given for the night were sumptuous - mum and dad had a four-post bed, and Pip and I had an enormous suite of rooms to ourselves. This is probably the first and last time I'll ever stay in 5-star accommodation, and it was kinda fun. Pip and I made sure to sample all the exotic soaps and shampoos that were arrayed in our gigantic bathroom. She got the double bed, and I slept in a little side-chamber of my own. You should've seen the embroidery on the fabric of the curtains. Whee...



At the suggestion of our host, we went out for dinner at an Indian BYO restaurant not far down the hill, named "The Desh". I had chicken Biryani, but each of us shared our meals around the table. I'm afraid I got tipsy on wine, and we headed back for bed soon after we'd eaten. Good grief, those beds were comfortable!

Back to England

We were up early and left for the ferry wharf at 7. Our taxi driver was very jolly, and told us all about how he and his wife had loved Torquay so much they'd bought a holiday house there. It took us a while to figure out he meant Turkey, the country - NOT a place in England. And here we were, thinking we'd had a handle on the Irish accent!

With no Nigel, the ferry trip back wasn't very eventful (unfortunately there's nothing but open sea to see on the way). I was so heavily doped up on "Kwells" travel sickness pills that I slept mostof the way. We picked up a new hire car at Holyhead, and set out through Wales once more. The Irish sea was on our left this time, and I had much better views of the Snowdon mountains. The area near where we were driving is a national park, and if the mountains are anything to go by, it must be beautiful. Alas, the walls of the motorway obscured most of the view I might have had.



We did stop in Conwy, however, because dad had heard of castle ruins there. Conwy is just inside the Welsh border, and the castle "ruins" dad had heard of turned out to be a near-complete English keep (yes, English - a medieval attempt to keep the Welsh in line). It was spectacular! Almost everything is still standing, though the roofs and floors between levels have disappeared. It was a fascinating experience, because the place gives you such a complete picture of what it would have been like to live in a castle. I don't mean that they have tacky reconstructions, either - nothing at all but signs. It's the mere fact that you can wander up the towers, into the king's chambers, the chapel... around the walls, into the cellar of the great hall to see the huge fireplace on the wall above you. I had a ball trying to picture each room as it might have been, filled with people. There were good views of Conwy and its bay from the tops of the walls, too. I could see fishing boats pulled up on the shore.





Lunch was a hurried trip to a bakery before our parking ticket ran out. Afterwards, we drove out of Wales and into England once more. By early evening we had reached Chester, our stop for the night. Our guesthouse (named "Homeleigh", god help it) took a bit of finding, but we finally arrived and trekked up two sets of very narrow stairs to deposit our luggage in our rooms. The rooms, incidentally, were very comfortable. The bathroom door stuck a little, and to Pip's delight I managed to get stuck in there after taking my bath.

She rescued me, though, and the lot of us set out to explore Chester and find food. The interesting thing about the heart of Chester is that the shops are on split levels - one row lines the footpath, with a walkway at roof-height to service shops above. The buildings themselves are lovely, and fairly old - most of them seemed to be 17th century and half-timbered. I would guess any new developments in Chester are heavily restricted to make the structures conform. The Christmas lights had been strung out, and even though they were twee, I found the inner streets charming.



Mum and I were accosted by a woman handing out pamphlets, but it turned out the papers offered discounts at a nearby restaurant, provided you ate before 7pm. We decided it was too good a deal to waste, and walked into "Grille".

Well... when we were greeted at the door like long-lost friends, and a man took our jackets, we realised we were in the sort of restaurant we normally avoid, in order to refrain from going bankrupt. Still, true to their pamphlets, they served us food from the cheap menu, and treated us as though we were were paying hundreds each. I asked for the fish of the day, and... ohhhh. YUM. Monkfish wrapped in bacon, on spinach an potato mash, with tomato and lemon sauce. One of the best meals I've ever eaten. Dessert was choc-truffle torte (not something as base as "cake", y'see...).



We waddled "home", somehow managed the stairs, and retired to our rooms to digest. I spoke briefly with Pat on the phone, before sleep.