Chester

Chester Rows

Shopping in the Rows

Eastgate clock 1897 the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria

Eastgate HSBC Bank 

Almshouses

Arriving in Chester is a relief from the flat Cheshire countryside which is laced with roads that seem to be a promenade for expensive cars. It had been half a lifetime since I last visited the city.  The historic centre had been saved from the brutal redevelopment that goes for progress in many British cities. Planning has worked here in a way that is not recognised by the new planning legislation being introduced in England. The shopping centre was fitted into and around the Rows and the place was buzzing in a way that seemed at variance with the recession that seems to be seeping back into much of the rest of the country. It may have been the glorious fresh sunshine that made the City of Chester (Pacific locomotive 46239 from memory) seem more like a continental than English city. This impression was encouraged by the large numbers of French visitors who were sightseeing in the City.

But I had to be home by 6:30pm so we left and took advantage of the motorway network past the scenic side of Cheshire: the Stanlow oil refinery, the chemical works in Runcorn and then onto the M6 for the journey north. We stopped at Penrith to stock up with some good Lancashire produce from a new Booths store that had opened. Booths are based in Preston and are a sixth-generation family company that involves employees as shareholders. Its commitment to sourcing quality local produce,  slow food and its 100-year history of providing coffee shops explains why it is still thriving and expanding its business in the northwest of England. It is a Waitrose for folk with flat vowels.

We walked into Penrith to visit a favourite bookshop which had a great coffee shop but sadly it had closed in the autumn. It was being transformed into another Costa coffee shop - how many of these do we need - we often used the bookshop but will not bother with Costa and that probably means giving Penrith a miss as well. Whitbreads, not content with wiping out many good local breweries in the 1960s and 1970s, is now rolling out Costa coffee shops all over the UK and destroying indigenous town centre businesses in the process. As a company, Whitbread is the opposite of Booths - constantly buying and selling businesses with a set of values that do not support either local produce or diversity. They standardise, franchise and sell on businesses with a focus on short term profit. They are fairly ruthless in pursuit of this with little loyalty to staff as I learnt from one of their electricians who explained their operation to me last year.

It was then just a couple of hours home and we arrived on a balmy summer evening.  I went for my second run of the day in the hills behind the house and returned for some Booths' chicken and ham pie and salad, it was the perfect end to what had been six wonderful days for the Cornwall birthday bash.