Half timbered and balloons

Now,having had two blogs so far from inside Chester Cathedral, you'll not be too surprised to find Bev and me doing a bit of wandering around outside in Chester. Chester is a feast of half timberedness. This fine example bears the legend, "antiqui colant antiquum dierum", which means "let the ancients worship the ancient of days"and is on the city coat of arms.

This fellow is Mr Alleyne-Johnson. Between his box of electronics, his fiddle and sustantial dollop of talent he was making a fairly impressive noise. You can look him up on youtube if you want.

This is A Celebration of Chester by Stephen Broadbent (the pigeon is temporary)

Chester is famous for it's rows, which are covered walkways on the first floor (second floor for those on the other side of the pond) - effectively, it's a second street level.

A carved dragon

Just visible in the above picture, if you know where to look, is The Old Boot Inn up on the walkway. We popped in there for a wee refreshment. I had a fine pint of Samuel Smiths Ale but it paled into insignificance when compared to the pint of Samuel Smith stout Bev had. I had definately a choice error on my behalf. It was quite superb from the wee taste of it I had.

They had a characterful floor too.

Near the Cathedral is this statue of an elephant. It is called Janya and was made by a lady called Annette Yarrow. It was presented to the city by Chester Zoo.

This is the Eastgate clock,it sits above the Eastgate curiously. It is said to be the second most photographed clock in the country after clock on the clock tower at the Houses of Parliment in London (not Big Ben as Wikipedia try to tell us - which is a bell - silly wiki!)

Of course it's going to appear frequently photographed if people insist on putting it on their blogs twice.

St George sticking it to that poor old dragon again - who's responsible for dusting these things by the way.

Towards the end of the afternoon we were accosted by a nutter in a harlequin costume. He did insist on tying us a balloon animal each. This is a tiger. The other one was an equally convincing and unphotographed penguin. We were meant to take it home and tippex it's tummy (honest - you can't make this stuff up)

We finished our afternoon with a cuppa in this cafe. Oh look we've left the tiger behind in the entrance.

 We left the penguin there too after failing to give them to a small child ( I think the father was about to call the police)