Sunday to Chester

I started today with a walk in the local area. The walk was interesting as it was along a promenade which used to be beside the River Dee. However, the river has retreated so far away that it is virtually invisible from the pavement, and is covered in lush vegetation. The weather was once again fine but a bit overcast.

After breakfast, I went to Chester. I easily found the car-park on the Ring Road where I had parked with Bryn and Rose and had to decided whether to pay for 2 hours or 4. In the end I decided on the latter which was 5 pounds!!! As it was Sunday, entry to Chester Cathedral was free, so I went in and photographed the carved elephant I had wanted to look at in January (pictured here). The significance of this carving on the end of one of the choir pews is that it was done by someone who had never seen an elephant, so he created it from descriptions he had heard. You will see that it appears to have the body of a bull and an earthworm for a trunk. As I was photographing it, one of the guides came up to tell me about it (not realising that I already knew the story). He said that he was telling a family about it recently and the little girl asked why the man didn’t just go down to Chester Zoo to have a look at one.

On my way back from Chester, I stopped at the Cheshire Oaks outlet mall. I had noticed that they had a Toshiba shop and, as I am a bit wary of my laptop after its performance in London, I thought that I would have a look to see what sort of laptops Toshiba produce now. I was interested to see a little one (12 inch screen) which had a built-in DVD RW (unlike my current machine) only weighed 1.3 kg and had 5 hours of battery life. It wasn't desperately expensive either. I didn't get it of course and I have also seen a similar little VAIO. I just need to keep these things in mind, in case.

Tonight, I booked for Uncle Jack and me to go to King's Gap for dinner. Even though the weather had been excellent all day, once I was back in the hotel, I became aware that the heavens had opened outside. It was good timing however as I didn't have much else to do for the day and it would have been very inconvenient in Chester. When I went out to the car park, I found that I couldn't enter on the driver's side because of a huge puddle. There must have been several millimetres of rain in no time at all. I picked Uncle Jack up at his house and drove him to Hoylake. He then spent a good deal of the evening reminiscing about how enjoyable the two nights he had spent with Bryn and Rose in January had been, one at Kings Gap and one at the Caernarvon castle pub. I'm so glad that they managed to fit in a visit up north to see him.