Walk with me through Chester, UK

The Chester Rows, above, are found in all four of the old city's main streets. Dating from the 14th century, they evolved from houses and shops built on rubble left from Roman ruins. The buildings have shops or dwellings on the lowest two stories and galleried walkways running the length of the stone and half-timbered buildings. You will see this black and white style throughout Chester on both medieval builds and Victorian recreations.

Standing on a first floor walkway, I looked across the street and took this next photo, below. Look at the dates on the building.

Now that I have seen a map, I can tell you that our route, up until now, had taken us from the train station, through Grosvenor Park, through an area called "The Groves," and we entered the old city via Bridgegate. You can read about that walk in:

Walk with me along Chester's Riverfront

It wasn't tourist season and it was later in the afternoon but it's noticeably more crowded in the old city.

Chester is a walled city, known for the most complete walls in all of the UK. Built mostly of red sandstone, they follow the even older Roman walls except where they extend to the river to include the castle. Visitors can make the two-mile (3 km) walk along the top of the walls. There are four gates; Northgate, Eastgate, Bridgegate and Watergate.

We followed the sounds of "Hotel California" played on a Spanish guitar and found this musician, above. That's Eastgate behind him in the background.

We walked up the street to Northgate, turned around, and started walking back. Looking for a restaurant, it was surprising to find many closing.

The imposing city hall is built in the gothic revival style. Ducking through a small alley to the left, we found a glass window overlooking Roman ruins.

We took their word for it, unable to read much through the glass, and ducked back through the alley to find that restaurant.

A restaurant. We sauntered into that white building in the center of the photo, above, and they seated us at a window table on the second floor. Dinner was pizza and wine.

From our window we had a nice view of the Chester Cathedral. We thought it was closed now but, strangely, there were people going through that door...

Naturally, we decided to follow them until we bumped into a nice man who told us the Cathedral was closed. Apparently, there was an evening event. He said we could still go for a quick look around, so we did!

Chester Cathedral was built on the site of a much older church dating from AD 958 and a later Benedictine Abbey.

This is the Cathedral from the side during golden hour.

With the sun setting, the people were leaving and the streets became quieter.

It's time for us to make our way out.

The most photographed clock in England, after Big Ben, is this one adorning Eastgate, below. It was constructed in 1897 for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Leaving through Eastgate, I will end our walking tour here. We continued back to the train station and with a 25 minute wait for our train, my friend decided there was time to show me yet another pub. lol

References

Chester, Cheshire & Beyond - official tourism website
Chester

Images

Photos taken by me with my Canon SX620 HS in Chester, Cheshire, UK.

I hope you enjoyed our walk around old Chester.
@kansuze