Destination: Chester
A great city surrounded by great roads. What’s not to like?
Brought peace...? Well, sort of — the legendary Pax
Romana was imposed and maintained by the curiously un-peaceful method of importing large numbers of highly trained and heavily armed legionnaires and kicking seven bells out of the indigenous population until they adopted togas and learned to take baths occasionally. We are talking about Chester here though, not Bath. Yes, and Chester was the largest Roman garrison town in the country. In fact, it started off as a fortified camp called Deva Victrix and the town grew up around it. After all, if you’ve got thousands of off-duty squaddies roaming around, they’ll be needing something to do, and something to drink while they’re doing it. Panem et circenses then, I suppose? Bread and circuses, yes. The amphitheatre at Chester was the biggest in Britain — or at least, the biggest we know about. Nothing like the scale of the huge amphitheatres in the heartland of the Roman Empire though, but it could still seat 8000 bloodthirsty spectators. Much of it was robbed for building stone way back when, and the remains were lost altogether until the early 20th century. Since then the archaeologists have been busy, but there’s not that much of it left to see now.
Anything more modern worth visiting instead then? Well, there’s the cathedral — that’s only a thousand years old... Then there’s the Norman Castle, the medieval city walls, the oldest racecourse in the country (horses, not bikes unfortunately), a wealth of heritage from the industrial revolution, and a lovely collection of timbered and half-timbered houses and shops in the city centre. Don’t be fooled by the olde-worlde aspect of those buildings though — they’re mostly Victorian, funded by the wealth that was generated by the railway age.
As if we’d be taken in by a cheap architectural trick like that! What about the surrounding countryside? Now you’re talking. North Wales is right on the doorstep to the west, while the gentle lanes of Cheshire spread out to the south and east, and the Peak District’s only a short hop further east. Probably best avoid the urban sprawl of Liverpool and Manchester to the northwest. Unless you like urban sprawl, of course. No? Thought not.