Chester

We finally arrived in the wonderful city of Chester at 11am this morning.  After visiting the town hall and looking around the inside (well worth a visit) we walked down to the River Dee and had lunch by the river.  Having been to Chester several times before we’d never got to the river frontage – very pleasant.

Chester Town Hall

The beautiful buildings that are the city centre shops!

The Grosvenor shopping centre.

The famous Eastgate clock overlooking the centre of Chester, supposedly the second most photographed clock after Big Ben!

Doug at the helm of ‘Chance’ passing under the city walls (hewn out of the solid rock) heading towards the three staircase locks at Northgate.

The massive lock gates at Northgate.

The paddles were quite hard work on the staircase locks although better than they were when we last passed through 3 years ago.  There was certainly a lot less litter and graffiti than we had previously encountered.  Again, we have to say there are far fewer boats on the canal than expected - we have only seen 4 pass us all day!

Amazing to find solid rock as part of the lock wall – this is the middle lock of the three at Northgate.

Leaving Chester (we thought it best not to risk an overnight stay on a Friday!) we’ve made our way towards Ellesmere Port, and the canal boat museum, and stopped for the night on the 48 hour moorings by Chester Zoo.  We’ve used these before on our previous boat ‘Spirit’ – it’s very rural and quiet and the cows are very friendly!