A group from The Friends of York Walls had a wonderful day out on a visit to the walled city
of Chester on Tuesday October 16th 2012.
FOYW have formed links with some members of the Chester Renaissance group and a day
visit to Chester was organised with their help. They entertained us with a guided walk & talk
around the walls, including entry into many places the normal public currently don’t have
access to.
The coach departed from York at 9.30am and after a wet drive via the M62 the sun came out
and we arrived at Chester in time for lunch and a short look around the city center. We met
up with Jane and Magnus from Chester Renaissance at the Chester Amphitheatre at 1.45pm –
and the weather was perfect.
Chester Renaissance have recently been spending over £2M on major restoration work
around their City Walls and have included many innovative improvements to make the walls
a major tourist attraction. The result of the work should be an inspiration for York and to
FOYW – if only we could get some of the same European Grant money!
We walked the walls in an anticlockwise direction and looked in many of the restored towers
not presently open to the public. By 4.30pm our weary group arrived back at the Chester
Castle and Little Roodee area. We departed from Chester at 5pm for the evening return to
York.
We would like to thank Jane Hebblewhite and Magnus Theobald of Chester Renaissance for
their time, their interesting talks and their guidance during a wonderful afternoon, and for
giving us the opportunity to see the results of all the recent work on the Chester City Walls.
Some photographs taken on the day can be seen below and more at our Flickr Group.
If you took any good photos on the day please share them with us on the Friends of York
Walls Flickr Group here (add the tag “Chester Visit”).
The Chester Renaissance website can be viewed here. There is an interesting article on the restoration of the walls here. A summary of a Chester Walls Walk can be read here in an article published by Cheshire Life in March 2007.
