Once we were outside we notice the Roman Amphitheatre. It is the largest one in Britain. It would have seated around 7,000 spectators. While we were walking around the top there was, what look like a school group at the base leaning how Roman Centurions would be trained. By the sound of the laughter coming from the group they were having fun.

Not far from the Amphitheatre was the Roman Gardens. The gardens were laid out in 1949 to display fragments of Roman buildings that had been discovered in Chester as the town grew. One such piece was the Roman Bath. It was first discovered in 1732 and over time more fragment of the baths have been found. The baths would have been 40’ (12m) wide and may have been up to 60’ (18m) high. It sounded like it would have been a very impressive building.

From there we made it onto the wall. Out walk started along the river. I know the people from Chester probably take walking on the Wall as nothing special as they have grown up with it but for me, well I loved it. Some parts of the Wall are at ground level but for most part it runs above most things. As we walked we kept on spotting wow moments. (Like the young man with the hawk or the ring path garden.) You know the ones where you go ‘wow’ that is interesting then move on.

We also saw the back of the ‘Chester Castle.’ It had a tower bearing the name of Julius Caesar. William the Conqueror had a hand in building this castle as well and the Warwick one. When William built the castle it was only a timber tower atop of an earth mound, it wasn’t until the 12^th and 13^th centuries the castle was rebuilt in stone. Sadly it is not open to the general public so we had to continue on.

In the Georgian time it was popular to promenade along the wall. One just had to be seen in the right place you know. (Now I guess we have Facebook.) Between promenading ladies and gentlemen, Rope-makers used the walkway for work. One area is called the ‘Ropewalk.’ Long strands of flax were laid out in a straight line before they were twisted together to form rope. Some Rope-makers could walk up to twenty miles in a single day.

We walked past the ‘King Charles Tower.’ It is reputed that King Charles I witnessed the defeat of his army at the battle of Rowton Moor from the town in 1645.

In 1914, 122 Anglo-Saxon coins were found near the wall. They were minted between 959 and 1013, not bad. (They must be worth a mint by now.)

We found ourselves back at the clock. This is where we left the wall. It was though a narrow dark alleyway. No wonder we couldn’t find it when we started looking for an entrance to the wall. Although we had only walked half way around the wall we decided to end our day in Chester. There was only one thing left to do. Try and remember where we had parked the car.

The next day we were going to travel out again but changed our mind. Storm Dorothy hit. We stayed in the castle room and watched the storm rage on. We could just see the sea from out window. It was not happy. We counted three tiles which we saw fly off the roof. At one stage Adrian opened the window a little to let some fresh air in when we heard a crash from the bathroom. When we went to investigate we found the increase of the airflow had blown a panel from the vanity unit. It did look like the panel had only been sitting in the spot so it was easy for Adrian to put it back into place. We kept the window close after that.

By evening the storm had passed and we took the opportunity to go for a quick walk before dinner. Beside the castle was a small almost overgrown garden protected by the storm by a brick wall. It was lovely in a wet soggy way.