(This delay was not my fault! The hotel’s wifi is playing up and I didn’t have a chance to try and get the tethering from my mobile working last night!)

Woke up to a typical London day – drizzly and rather dreary. Luckily for me, today was a travelling day! After packing I made good use of the hotel wifi to do some research and planning before checking out and heading up to Euston station. I’m glad it was only a shortish walk, given the weather!

Even though I’d already purchased my train tickets, I hadn’t gotten around to picking them up. It’s easy enough to do at the kiosks though, you just need to put in the payment card used and type in the reference number that they email to you, and then everything prints out. This time I had a forward facing window seat for the almost 2 hour trip from London to Chester. The express train only stopped at Milton Keynes Central and Crewe. I had an empty seat next to me until the first stop, when it was filled by a lady and her West Highland Terrior, Harry. Westies are probably my favourite of the small dog breeds, and this one was very well behaved! After spending a little bit of time exploring he settled down for a nap and stayed that way for the rest of the trip!

Speaking of the rest of the trip, it went just fine until we got to Crewe. There was a little bit of snow in the fields not too far north of London, but it probably would have melted before too long. We left Crewe without any problems, but then were delayed for 10 minutes not too far outside of it as vandals had apparently stolen part of the signalling cable. I can’t imagine the cable itself has much value, so it must just have been for the hell of it… Luckily I didn’t have a connecting service to catch! Also, I can never pass through Crewe without thinking of Skimbleshanks from the Cats musical – ‘they were fast asleep at Crewe and so they never knew that I was walking up and down the station‘!

My hotel in Chester is only a short walk from the station, but check-in time wasn’t until 2pm. I left my bag there and headed out to explore the city a bit. I had been here before for a couple of days during my first trip to the UK back in 2009, though that was in much warmer weather! One thing I hadn’t managed to do that time was go to the Grosvenor museum, which chronicles the history of Chester from right back when the Romans settled it in 79AD (huh, same year Vesuvius went boom and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum…) The museum is pretty interesting, though it is geared much more towards school groups than adults (and there were a few groups there when I was). They have an extensive collection of Roman tombstones though, which are fascinating, if slightly morbid.

Having spent a while at the museum I slowly made my way back to the hotel, exploring the centre of Chester along the way, which is home to the Rows shopping galleries, which date back to the medieval period and may well be unique in all the world. Chester is also home to the Eastgate clock, said to be the second most photographed timepiece in Britain (After Big Ben). Sadly, the clock is undergoing restoration at the moment, and is covered in scaffolding…

Tomorrow I’m heading out to the zoo! So hopefully it’s not too cold…

Also, I realised as I was typing this that I didn’t take any photos at all today. Whoops! So instead I’ve attached three that I took on Friday.