Chester.

Chester is an ollllld settlement, founded by the Romans around AD79 as a fortress called Deva during the Roman’s expansion North. In fact, it may originally have been intended as the country’s capital. It’s also where I went to university to do my MSc in Biomedical Science and I went back recently for my graduation.

I booked my train tickets ridiculously far in advance, because Aberdeen to anywhere that far South is expensive! Because I was so unbelievably forward thinking for a change, I actually managed to get my hands on my first ever first-class tickets for only a nominal extra fee. As soon as I got on that first train of the journey I knew that was it, I am never going back to standard class! On the first train I got free coffee and a free scone with free jam and free clotted cream. Actual clotted cream! On the second train I got free coffee and free biscuits. On the third train I got free coffee, a free bacon butty and free cake. On the last train I got nothing because that was only standard class. Rude! FYI on the way back to Aberdeen after my trip ended I got all of that plus two free gin and tonics, which made up for the fact the train was busy and I had to sit next to other people!

In Chester my parents had booked a really nice Airbnb right off Bridge Street, smack in the centre of town, which was great because I had ambitious plans to eat and drink my way around all my favourite places (and some new ones). The notable ones are, of course, mentioned below.

The first place I wanted to go to was Porta, an authentic little tapas restaurant which sits underneath the Roman Northgate. I can’t rave about Porta enough! It’s warm, cosy, full of atmosphere and has hands down the best patatas bravas and the best pastel de nata I have ever tasted. Apart from the specials, which obviously change, I’ve had everything on the menu and have never been disappointed. There are a couple of things worth bearing in mind though. You can’t book a table at Porta, I’ve normally tried to get there early or just accepted that I might have to go away for a glass of wine before trying again. Which is definitely not a problem when you have the likes of Covino just around the corner. Porta’s also normally quite a bustling and noisy place. This adds something for me, I enjoy the activity and being able to watch the chefs in the corner of the restaurant do their thing, but, it can be tough to hold a conversation sometimes. Again, not a problem for me but something worth thinking about if you’re taking your hard of hearing pal or wanting to have a serious in depth chat with someone. Could be a good excuse to get a little closer to someone though!

After a long day on the train (about 8 hours) for me and a long day at work for my parents, Porta was our only stop for the evening. Bed was beckoning!

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that I can be a bit of a coffee snob! I’ll only drink instant out of desperation or out of politeness. I can be overly British about accepting personal discomfort over possibly offending someone or appearing awkward…until I get to know someone! My parents are not coffee snobs so with only instant in the Airbnb it was an absolute priority for me to get myself to a coffee shop ASAP! Chester is full of ‘hipster’ coffee places and even more have sprung up since I was doing my masters. If I’m honest I feel like most of them are style over substance. (One fine exception to that is Bean & Cole which is both style and substance). I’m a sucker for good branding though and I love to people watch in these places so paying over the odds for a small coffee that tastes a little burnt sometimes is something I have done more often than I care to admit! What was I saying about being a coffee snob again? Maybe I should take that back and just leave it at snob!

So, my choice for morning coffee was the Bridge Street Roastery which was a new one for me. Honestly? It’s been a couple of weeks between me going and me writing this and I don’t remember much about it which probably says all you need to know. It was fine, I know I had a nice cookie because I have a photo of it, and I’m assuming that the coffee wasn’t bad otherwise I would remember that. But it obviously didn’t blow me away either!

After I was suitably caffeinated, me and my parents went for a walk around the walls. The Chester walls circuit is about 2 miles and takes in most of the ‘must see’ Chester sites; Eastgate clock, River Dee, Chester Canal, the Roodee (Chester racecourse) and the Roman amphitheatre. The walls were built by the Romans to defend Deva (Chester) and strengthened before the English civil war in the mid-1600s. They’ve also had multiple repairs over the thousands of years they’ve been standing. I imagine there’s quite a lot of ‘wear and tear’.

The walls also hold a couple of my favourite stories and ‘facts’ about the city. For a start the Roodee was once covered by water and acted as a harbour but after the river silted and a few hundred years went by, the site of the Roodee became home to the Goteddsday football match. This was such a bloody and brutal match that football was banned and replaced by horse racing in the early 1500s. The first horse race on the Roodee was actually the first horse race of its kind in the country and was allowed by Mayor Gee, hence the ‘gee-gees’. Further along from the racecourse is the home of a set of steps by the River Dee that women would run up and down holding their breath. If they could make it all the way they would be lucky in love! No idea if it’s true but I like to think it could be.

It’s not anywhere near the walls but it’s one of my favourite stories so I’m going to tell it. There’s a clock tower in the city with only three clock faces on it. Chester is right on the border of Wales and when there were fewer buildings to block the view into the city you could see over the border from Wales into England. Not wanting to give the Welsh anything for free the people of Chester chose not to put a clock face on the side of the tower facing Wales. Apparently, that’s where the saying ‘won’t even give you the time of day’ comes from! As above, I have no idea if that’s true but I so want it to be. It’s the height of pettiness!

Walking around the city whilst reminiscing (mum also went to university in Chester) is thirsty work and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I’d been thinking about it for weeks!

There’s a ‘secret’ cocktail bar in Chester along Watergate Street called Prohibition. I love that shit. You have to walk up to, and knock on, a none descript door that’s tucked out of the way and wait for someone to let you in. Inside, the bar is dark and cosy and the menus are hidden in books. The drinks are inventive and tasty and the staff are lovely. I actually spent the 2017/18 new year there. I can’t remember what me and mum had but dad had a cocktail that involved pickle juice and it was weirdly great!

On the way home from Prohibition we weaved our way to Urbano 32, my favourite pizza place in Chester. When I first moved to Chester I was still vegan and Urbano 32 do great vegan pizzas, now I’m not vegan I can tell you they do great non-vegan pizzas too. The restaurant has a really cool vibe but we got our pizzas to take away so we could greedily eat pizza on the sofa. Winner! Whilst we were waiting we had a beer, obviously, and they sold cans of Dead Pony Club, an Aberdeenshire favourite of mine. Also a winner.

The following day was my graduation day and I started it right with a coffee from Jaunty Goat. This has to be the most stylish of the stylish coffee places in Chester and I am in love with their logo.

There’s not too much to say about graduation. Gyles Brandreth from The One Show is the Chancellor of the University of Chester and did all the handshaking and Joanna Lumley was there receiving an honorary doctorate. Other than that, it was a pretty standard affair. I made dad take me on a photo shoot around Chester, which is about the only time I’ll suffer having my photo taken over and over again! I’m not going to lie, I love prancing around in that gown and the fact the graduation was in Chester with it’s cobbled streets, medieval rows and fancy clock it all felt very ‘Harry Potter’ and I am absolutely down with that. We, my parents and I, had dinner in Hickory’s on the River Dee to celebrate. The food there is so good and I went to town, had a fair few of their frozen margaritas too.

Biomedical Science graduate.

Dad was pretty invested in the rugby on our last day in Chester so me and mum left him to it in the Airbnb and went shopping. The shopping bit isn’t so interesting and I actually don’t think we bought anything. We got bored pretty quickly and retreated to another new coffee place called Chalk coffee on Watergate Street. They had doughnuts there and we all know that I fancy myself as a doughnut connoisseur. I’d give them a solid 6/10 on the scale; bit sweet and the dough could have been softer but I’d eat it again! For 10/10 doughnuts you need to go to the doughnut stand under the Eastgate, but unfortunately they were never open when we walked passed. It was tragic!

Pretty quickly after Chalk Coffee I was ready for a beer and I was pretty keen to go to Beer Heroes, also on Watergate Street. My supervisor, my colleague and me have a beer swap every Christmas and I wanted to pick something up from Chester for it. My theme this year is to buy a beer from everywhere I travel. I think I’m a little spoiled by the bars in Aberdeen because they’re on another level, but Beer Heroes was definitely creeping up my list of favourite bars towards CASC, 6° North or Brewdog (all in Aberdeen). Essentially, anywhere that has a good saison and is unafraid to sell sours has a vote from me.

…and that was pretty much it. My visit back to Chester and my graduation was done and after an incredibly brief trip back to Hereford I travelled back up North to Scotland. First class, obviously. That’s the only way I travel now!! (I wish)!

Inverness

As much as I love Aberdeen, I decided I needed to get out of it for a weekend. There’s a tonne of places I want to see but it seemed like Inverness would give me loads of options, plus, it’s on my ‘bucket list for the year’ to see Loch Ness. Bit of a cliché I know!

Day One

It’s only one train and 2 hours up to Inverness from Aberdeen so it’s super easy, and armed with my new student railcard, pretty cheap. As soon as I got to Inverness I hunted down the tourist information place, which is in a different place to what the tourist signs suggest and not where google maps say it is! But, I found it and the lady working in there was super helpful in helping me figure out how to do what I wanted to.

I still had a few hours until I could check in to my hotel and I didn’t have a lot of stuff so I jumped straight on a bus to Culloden visitor centre. I didn’t keep my timetable but I seem to remember it was the number 5 from Queensgate, possibly to Croy. I think they’re pretty used to tourists because there was a little sign on the bus stop telling you exactly which bus to get on and as soon as I walked onto the bus the driver knew where I was going. Apparently, I looked like ‘the type’! The bus drops you off right outside the visitor centre though, which is super handy. I’m making a massive assumption here that people know what I’m talking about when I say Culloden! Depending on your definition of ‘battle’, it could easily be considered the site of the last battle fought on British soil and was where the Jacobite uprising came to a very bloody end in 1746. In short, bonnie prince Charlie (who’d never actually been to the UK before) popped over to Scotland to raise an army and reclaim the British throne for his father. It was pretty clever timing because most of the British army were tied up fighting in Europe. Obviously, the British government weren’t super thrilled about this and they put the Duke of Cumberland in charge to put an end to the nonsense! Bonnie prince Charlie did fairly damn well and got as far as Derby before having to turn back around. But he also made a fair few poor decisions which ended with Culloden. After losing, bonnie prince Charlie got to skip off back to Europe where he was hailed as a hero, which is bonkers when you think he left Scotland and the men that fought for him deep in the shit. The government killed as many of his supporters as they could get their hands on, banned things like tartan and really tried to crush the highland life. Apparently he died as a bitter drunk with a wife that hated him which sounds somewhat like karma to me.

The museum is pretty extensive and really well laid out. I learned loads and some of the films and media displays really helped to give an idea of just how desolate the situation was. Going through the museum before visiting the battlefield itself gave an idea of perspective and helped to give life to what could be mistaken as any other field. From the Culloden battlefield you can walk to the Clava cairn which is a bronze age chamber tomb…unfortunately I didn’t have time…but I wished that I had. Maybe next time! Because there will be a next time.

*Culloden battlefield, with something pretty in the background. Is it the Black Isle? Is it the Cairngorms? Is it something else? Does it really matter?!*

When I got back to Inverness it was time for me to check in to my hotel. Now, the Mercure in Inverness looks absolutely tragic from the outside! I steeled myself with assurances that as long as it was clean it’d be fine, I wasn’t going to spending a tonne of time in it anyway. BUT…as soon as I walked into the foyer I knew I’d been completely wrong. It was really nice! It was super cosy and inviting and the staff were really friendly. I still had some marking to do so I sat in the restaurant and did it there over dinner. I didn’t need to book and I felt really comfortable to just get on with my work.

Day Two

My first priority on day two was to pick up some doughnuts from Perk for my day trip. A chap had recommended them to me on the first day and boy, was it a good recommendation. I got the two types of vegan doughnuts they had available; the lime glaze and the regular jam filled, sugared doughnut. Best.doughnuts.ever. And trust me, I’m a seasoned doughnut connoisseur! I really hoped that they were a Scottish chain with a shop hidden away in Aberdeen, but alas, no. If you’re in Inverness, even just passing through, get a doughnut!

*Seriously, get yourself here. It’s almost definitely worth the 4 hour round train trip from Aberdeen to pick up a load of doughnuts!*

The doughnuts were for my day trip to Urquhart. If I’m honest I was more interested in seeing Loch Ness and the castle was just a happy additional extra which I didn’t know about before I started googling the area. Like Culloden, there’s a bus that drops you off right outside the attraction from Inverness. In fact, there are a couple. I just rocked up at the bus station and jumped on one. So, Urquhart castle is beautiful and definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area…here’s the ‘but’…! I got there as soon as it opened so there were only about 10-15 people about when I looked around. This meant that I could take in the atmosphere, read the signs easily and take pictures without people in. I hear that in summer thousands of people visit and the site gets packed. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I think it’s great that people want to engage with history and even more so, that they choose Scotland/UK for their summer holiday but I think it’s something worth preparing yourself for. You’re not going to get that Instagram ready, picturesque shot in mid-summer at Urquhart castle. This is one of the many reasons I like travelling in winter!

In terms of history, I think it was originally a Pictish site before St Columba wafted in and turned everyone Christian back around 560 AD. I’m never quite sure how that worked! Anyway, I think the earliest part of the castle remaining on the site now is from the 13^th century when it was all tied up in the Scottish war for independence. It’s now a ruin and it became a ruin way back in 1690 when soldiers blew up the gatehouse after a fight with the Jacobites. Once it was partially blown up and left unprotected it wasn’t long before locals started to pilfer the stone for their own homes.

As an aside, I think it’s also worth mentioning for both Urquhart and Culloden that they’re not cheap places to eat, although to be fair they’re not unreasonable when compared to any other major tourist site. I had lunch in both of them and it was again about what you expect, just fine! Had it been spring or summer I would definitely have taken a picnic.

Urquhart castle was actually quite a lot smaller than I expected so I had quite a bit of time in the afternoon to play with. The first thing I did was walk into Drumnadrochit, which is about a 40 minute easy walk from the castle, to visit the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition. I have mixed feelings about this place! It wasn’t a museum like I expected but a system of several rooms which you’d go into to watch a video about the geology, myths, explorations surrounding the Loch and it’s supposed monster. It was good and I learnt some stuff, but I think in the height of summer you’d easily feel like you were being herded. It felt like any typical UK attraction that is totally magical when you’re a child and then as an adult you feel slightly disappointed by the lack of substance and tired exhibits. I say that with fondness though, these places give me a feeling of familiarity and homeliness that I’m not mad about. They make me think of my parents and family holidays. As a lone adult however, those fuzzy feelings were pretty much the only thing that stopped me feeling sick that I’d spent £8 to get in there. One last thing before I move on and stop moaning, the last rooms you need to pass through are shops. If you had kids, you’d have to run a gauntlet through loch ness monster plushies and cute Scottish themed t-shirts. It’s clever marketing and I don’t blame them but it’s also a pretty disappointing display of commercialism. Nearby there’s an associated café, more associated shops selling tartan paraphernalia and kilts and a place to trace your Scottish history. This is cheesy tourism central!

All your Scottish/Loch Ness dreams come true!

After being bombarded with overt “Scottish” tourism I decided to take a walk in the Drumnadrochit woods up to a viewpoint I saw on the map. It was a nice little walk and there are much longer ones for next time. I was hoping for a red squirrel, but no luck, maybe that’s for next time too. I did see the Loch and a tonne of hooded crows though, I always get excited crossing the crow line! I’d definitely say it’s worth going for a wander if you’ve got time.

*Views over the Loch Ness from Drumnadrochit woods, unnecessarily excited to be there!*

Back in Inverness my first priority was getting to The Malt Room, an independent bar, for a couple of whiskies. It’s a really dark, cosy, sexy little bar with a million whiskies and cocktails and the staff really know their stuff. I had one of my favourites, a Laphroaig quarter cask (I’m definitely an island girl at heart) and then I tried one of the local whiskies, a 12 year old Tomatin. It was nice, an easy drinker but it was no smokey, peaty Islay! After recollecting my spirit blurred thoughts back in the hotel I went for dinner at Scotch and Rye, another Inverness independent.

The staff in there were super kind and managed to find a place for me. That’s one thing to be said for the people in Inverness, they are really friendly. The atmosphere was really relaxed in there with a real mix of people, I can’t remember exactly what was playing but I do remember enjoying the music in there too. I went armed with my book and my horrendously cheesy postcards (Nessie, a Scottie dog and a ‘true Scotsman’ caught out by the wind) and sat in there for quite a while. I had a chicken and haggis burger… I genuinely like haggis, I promise I wasn’t trying to be authentic! Then, for dessert, I had two variations on white Russians, and they were so, so yummy. They had quite an expansive cocktail list and if I wasn’t so full and if I earned more money then I think I definitely would have kept going.

Day Three

I had my train back to Aberdeen booked for the afternoon so I had all day to do something fun. I decided to walk out along the Caledonian way and see how far I got. I wandered up along the river Ness and over the Ness islands which are incredibly pretty. It reminded me a little of areas along the River Don in Aberdeen, especially near Seaton park. For both places it really doesn’t feel like you’re still inside the city.

After Ness islands, I was ready for a little brunch and luckily Inverness botanical gardens and their little café was open. I had a pot of tea and a toasted sandwich that was way better than the more expensive fair that I’d had at Culloden or Urquhart. I didn’t plan to spend long at the gardens because I wanted to be on my way along the Caledonian path but I did whip around. It was bigger than I expected and beautifully laid out, it also had one of the prettiest cactus and succulent houses I think I’ve ever seen.

Cactus house at the Inverness botanical gardens.

Back on the Caledonian way there was a rowing event taking place on the canal. Despite being mid-February, it was unseasonably warm and there were loads of people out walking, cycling and watching the race. The whole path up to Dochgarroch locks was easy to follow, felt safe and was really quite pretty. It didn’t feel particularly wild or remote, but it was definitely the perfect way to get out of the city. I wanted to keep going and see what lay beyond the locks but I needed to get back for my train and I wanted to try the Black Isle bar before I left.

The Black Isle bar was another place I wish I’d been able to stay a little longer. They sell a great range of craft ales, most of which are made by Black Isle brewery…obviously! They look like they do incredible pizzas too but I was in the mood for Cullen skink. The super warm and sunny day turned around pretty quickly on my way back and started raining as soon as I got back into town, so a warm and hearty soup was perfect. It was just what I needed and alongside the Black Isle ‘23 Trees’, citrus saison, it was a perfect end to a weekend in Inverness. I will definitely be back…and I’ll definitely be getting my hands on more Black Isle beers when I can.