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<\/a>When you reuse an old building, sometimes there’s a beam in your hallway<\/p><\/div>\n
When I told someone (I forget who) that I meant to go to Chester on my intercongnum (<\u2014 like an interregnum, but for cons), I was warned off of it. I don\u2019t understand why, though. I had a great time. When I left the railway station, one of a group of young toughs walking the other way said, \u201cGawd, I bloody hate tourists!\u201d Maybe that\u2019s what whoever was talking about, but that was the extent of it. I\u2019m comfortable in the north. I\u2019ve been \u201cup here\u201d as much as down south. The people talk like my mum (more or less), and it\u2019s right temperature for August: 9c is the forecast for the 21st<\/sup><\/span>. In the morning, of course. It\u2019ll get up to 15 by the afternoon. Consequently, my hotel, The Mill Hotel and Spa, had no air conditioning. I actually had to put the heat on overnight.<\/p>\n I liked this hotel. Originally a corn mill, it\u2019s now a neat boutique place with a pool and sauna and all that spa stuff (I could\u2019ve even had a mani-pedi!), and its towels are oh so fluffy, and it cost much less than the hotel in London. Ah the North. It took me a while to get to it because unlike London, I\u2019d never been to Chester, and I had been relying on memory to find the place. I flailed around a bit, but it\u2019s not a big town by any stretch, and I had a landmark: the hotel, being a mill, was on the canal. If I found the canal, I could go up and down it until I found the hotel. I found the canal, and I went up, and found the hotel. A five minute walk turned into a fifteen, but I made it, and nobody set me on fire.<\/p>\n Is that a sword in your hand, or are you just gladius to see me?<\/p><\/div>\n I had intended on going to the cathedral right after checking in, but I found myself hungry and tired and when I noticed that the hotel had a Roman high-tea canal cruise featuring a real live legionary of the 20th<\/sup><\/span> Legion, I knew was I was going to do today. We had to muster for the cruise at 3:45, so I had an hour to go lie down (all this vacationing is exhausting, don\u2019t you know. I mean look at that we\u2019re on double digits on the MEA*). After 45 minutes I remembered that the reason I had picked this place originally, other than its ease of access from both town and the railway station, was its real ale bar. Down I went, refreshed and ready to take on the world, or at least the Golden Pippin I drank while waiting for the Legionary to show up. Show up he did, and he played the part of the grouchy, yet kindly, yet curmudgeonly ol\u2019 veteran serving the SPQR. On the cruise he told us bits and pieces of the roman history of the town (if you didn\u2019t know, Chester was originally Deva, the largest Roman garrison town in Britannia. And it\u2019s the locale of the climax of the first novel I ever actually finished (Deva, that is)) and he had some bits of archaeological finds that we could hold up and pretend we were Phil Harding with. This included a nail, a few brooches (used to close one\u2019s cloak on a cold summer\u2019s evening (brr)), and a Diocletian follis, which sounds fancy, if you don\u2019t know what those words mean, but in reality it\u2019s a bronze coin the size of a quarter. The cruise was fun, the high tea delish, and our legionary finished us off with an Albert and the Legionary poem, in the style of Stanley Holloway. I know who Stanley Holloway is. See? The North.<\/p>\n Parliamentarians breached the wall during the Civil War.<\/p><\/div>\n After that was done, I took it on myself to walk the walls. Chester\u2019s walls date from the time of Deva, and two runs of them are intact (though fortified). In the 17th<\/sup><\/span> century, a bright spark decided that the wall would make a grand promenading spot, so the city lay the top with flagstone and made the iffy bits easier to navigate, and that\u2019s how it\u2019s been ever since. The entire circuit covers about 3.2 km, following the canal, the River Dee (hence Deva), and going over no less than seven gates. There\u2019s even a bookshop up on the wall!<\/p>\n All that walking got me thirsty, and I ended up at this place called The Pied Bull. Man. Oh Man. This place was amazing. It was a brewpub, and it had a B&B, and it was built in 1430, and man, I wish I had stayed there. I don;t know how I missed it. Too bad. I had a good chat with the barkeep, and he let me sample all of the beer brewed on premises, and it was all good. I had a couple of pints as well, and felt my knees going a bit wobbly, so I ordered some food to give me the energy (and beer sopping up power) to get home, and the sandwich I ended up picking was playing the hallelujah chorus in my mouth. I started taking smaller and smaller bites, just to prolong the joy. But, as ST:TNG taught us, all good things\u2026<\/p>\n![\"Untitled\"](\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5560\/14992886032_f46ff144ab.jpg\")
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