Sunday 27 December

It was great to experience Liverpool, especially for the boys who have studied The Beatles as part of the year 9 music curriculum, and for me after reading Helen Forrester books growing up. I’m going to make the kids read them when we get home 😉. We left at 8am and went under the Mersey River through the tunnel to Birkenhead, and then on to our first stop, Chester. We saw a lot of flood-affected areas on the way, and while we have seen no news from home or here while travelling, we did learn that parts of York (where we were a few nights ago) have been evacuated.

  
Any English name with ‘caster’ or ‘chester’ in it means it was once a Roman fortress. The town of Chester still has a wall around it that is 3 miles long. We walked part of it with the travel director, saw a Roman amphitheatre that has been uncovered recently, and then were let loose for an hour. Chester’s other claim to fame is its “rows” of shops – those above ground level are all connected by an undercover walkway (middle picture below).

   
   
I’ve decided after exploring Chester though, I am not a fan of rows. From the street level, it is hard to tell what businesses and shops are on the level above. And being a day of beautiful weather once again, the undercover walkway was not needed – whereas yesterday I would have said every shopping area should have rows! We enjoyed (well…I enjoyed…) an impromptu Business Studies/Commerce lesson as we walked, discussing the effects on the businesses around us and the pros and cons of being on the row upstairs or street front. Mind you, this early on a Sunday morning nothing is open, which didn’t help my analysis of what was working for them! With no actual shopping possible, we stopped for a coffee and were on our way again. 

Our next stop was Ludlow, where we were given time to explore and have lunch. We looked around for about 15 minutes and as 12pm arrived, we decided to find somewhere for an early lunch. We chose The Church Inn, thinking it was an appropriate name for a Sunday lunch! Would you believe it, they said they would not be ready for a party of eight for at least half an hour, and they turned us away…it’s the first time in our lives we’ve been turned away from church haha! 

DeGrey’s cafe was willing to take us (and several others from our tour group that wandered in after us), and we placed our lunch orders at 12.15pm. At 12.45pm we started to feel a little concerned about lunch not arriving (given we had to be back on the bus at 1.15pm), and as others that entered the cafe after us were served before us at 12.55, I started to panic! (It did give us plenty of time to continue our HSIE lesson part 2, as we watched junior staff wander around and listed inefficiencies that could easily be overcome.)

Ross spoke to the staff about our time constraint, and they offered to pack up our meals in a take away bag and not charge us. Ross offered to pay anyway, but they insisted (and also didn’t charge eight others from our tour who also needed takeaway lunches!), so we returned to the bus eight minutes late with our free lunch and ate it on the way to Cardiff. 

  
Our first stop there was a tour of Cardiff Castle, and then to our hotel for a ten minute (!) turnaround to then go out for our farewell dinner. 

   
 
The drive to the pub was about half an hour, but it was an interesting evening dining in a pub built in 1308!! I tried mulled wine (for the first and only time 😝), and we enjoyed a three course meal before the drive back to the Mercure. Unfortunately we are in three rooms on three different levels of this hotel, which is really messing with my control-freak nature <sigh>…
  
(Challenge from Louella accepted – we easily found a telephone box)