1st September - Trip to Chester

I met Phil and Brian at Piccadilly Station this morning and Phil drove us down to Chester. We had quite an easy journey and arrived at the Park and Ride stop on time.
Debbie was there waiting for us and other people turned up gradually. There were about 20 of us altogether. We travelled into the centre of Chester by bus and walked to the Cathedral. Some of us had brought packed lunches with us so we sat in the cathedral gardens whilst the others went to the cathedral cafe for lunch. I sat and chatted to Helen and Alan about our holidays as I haven't seen either of them for a while. We all met up again behind the cathedral and started to walk along the walls.
Tim and Debbie gave us a guided tour. Tim seems to know a lot about the history of the city from his school days. The weather stayed fair so we had a good view of the city. When we reached the racecourse we saw that the Chester races were on. Vanessa and a few others stayed there to watch a race, whilst the rest of us walked on. We ended up at the Wesleyan Methodist chapel where we stopped for tea and coffee - you can always rely on the Methodists for hospitality! We sat outside and discussed plans for the forthcoming thank you party in hushed whispers as we are supposed to be keeping it secret from our group leader!
After this we split into two groups - some went to the river and others went shopping. I went round the shopping precinct with Jenny, Kay, Emma, Debbie, Helen and Brian. Tim joined us later as he said he lost touch with the others when he stopped for an ice cream. Some of us bought clothes. I bought soap from Lush - one of my favourite shops.
We returned to the car park by bus and made our way to the Shrewsbury Arms for our evening meal. We noticed that it looked a little more expensive than we expected. However the service was quick and the food looked good. Phil, Eddy and I had chicken stuffed with bacon in a creamy leek sauce and Brian had the Thai curry. We enjoyed our meals - I felt too full for dessert so I treated myself to an Ardbeg single malt instead - they have a good selection here. A couple of people did have dessert - Tim had a Banoffee charlotte, Brian had Toffee pavlova and Sarah had apple pie - all of which looked good - portions were generous. We sat around and talked for a while.
We all agreed that Debbie had made a good job of organising the day out.