This weekend was out trip to Chester, Manchester and then Tatton Park Flower Show.  This was a coach trip with an overnight in Manchester.  We had to get up about.5.30am to catch a cab with Linda, Nan and Mum to the coach pick up point at West Ruislip Station.

We had a few other pick up points on the way after a rest stop or two our first stop was Chester which is a Chester  is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales....
Chester has a number of medieval buildings, but some of the black-and-white buildings within the city centre are actually Victorian  restorations. and  is one of the best preserved walled cities in the British Isles. Apart from a 100-metre (330 ft) section, the listed Grade I walls are almost complete.

We spend about 3 hours here shopping and looking around the old walls of the town.. Then it was on to Manchester Brittania hotel for the night.  We did have a bit of trouble finding the hotel – the Navman kept getting it wrong due to the many one way streets in  Manchester. The hotel was very old and we had about half an hour to change for dinner.

The Brittania Hotel was originallly a warehouse is a large, ornate Victorian Grade II* listed building which stands on Portland Street in the centre of Manchester.  It opened in 1856 as a textile warehouse for the wholesale drapery business S & J Watts, and at the time it was the largest single-occupancy textile warehouse in Manchester.


During the Second World War  the Watts Warehouse was hit by Luftwaffe  bombs, but it was saved from destruction when the fire was smothered by textiles.
Next morning an 8.30 start  for breakfast and then we were off again to Tatton Park Flower Show.  We started off  looking at the many displays of colourful flowers before moving   on to the various award wining flower designs. 

The Bandstand

We had a nice lunch near the bandstand and watched the band play traditional English type themed music. All up a wonderful day...



We left here about 4.30 and it was a long drive back on the coach trip to Northolt. If we had planned it better we should have hired  car to do the flower show and combined it with out oxford trip in a few days.  We eventually got back about 9.15 pm and back to the Harvester at 10.00pm..