Tag: Tourist guide

Dark Chester: a walk through the shadows of our dark-tourism history

We took a walk on the dark side a few days ago.

It was the inaugural outing for my new Dark Chester tour [pictured above], a walking tour through the shadows of Chester’s 2000-year-old history.

Think Horrible Histories meets Inside Number Nine with a dash of the Uncanny podcast.

In other words, an evening storytelling stroll with tales of plague, persecution and poltergeists.

For some more background, read this blog I penned for the British Guild of Tourist Guides:

Chester: take a walk on the dark side.

This first tour was an exclusive event for the Chester Heritage Festival, which runs until July 27 with lots of free activities, as well as paid-for tours.

As well as leading the tour, I also worked with the Heritage Festival team to livestream stories from two of the tour stops.

You can watch the livestream from Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre here.

The livestream from The Bear & Billet is here.

Plus I had some great initial feedback, including this comment:

 

The plan now is to take Dark Chester weekly.

So join me. Let’s take a walk on the dark side.

How to discover hidden Manchester on an alternative city tour

I’m always on the look out for an alternative city walking tour.

It’s a great way to see a city in a new light and gives me with inspiration to help design my own themed tours of my home city of Chester.

I was introduced recently to Hayley Flynn, whose Skyliner alternative walking tours of Manchester are inspired by the city’s hidden heritage.

My interview with Hayley is in today’s Guardian Saturday magazine as part of the Locals Guide To … series.

It coincides with the 30-year anniversary this year of the renaissance of city’s Northern Quarter, stretching between Piccadilly and Victoria trains stations.

The council first commissioned the artist-in-residence, Liam Curtin, in 1992 to create art to trigger organic growth in the area.

The tour includes the Tib Street public-art trail with the poem Flags by Lemn Sissay set into the pavement, and the wall murals telling stories of the traders from the old Smithfield Market.

Hayley says:

“I also keep uncovering snapshots of leftover history around here, such as the original mosaic-tile sign of the old ice-cream parlour on Port Street.”

I also asked Hayley about her favourite nightlife spots and she recommends the bar YES on Charles Street for its alternative karaoke night in the downstairs karaoke dungeon.

“My go-to karaoke tune? Jesus, He Knows Me by Genesis.”

Read the full feature here: A Local’s Guide to Manchester.

More about Sykliner.

A walking tour of historic Edgar’s Field Park in Handbridge, Chester

This site is one of Chester’s hidden gems.

Indeed, I used to regularly take my children to this local park, but it was ages before I realised there was a 2,000-year-old historical artefact just behind the swings.

The park is Edgar’s Field in Handbridge and the carving is the Roman goddess Minerva [pictured above].

The shrine is said to have been carved into the sandstone in the second century AD and is believed to the only site in Europe still in its original location, according to experts at Historic England.

Today we’ve come for an audience with Minerva.

Minerva was the patron of arts and craftsmen and, later in Roman history, she became the goddess of war with temples in Rome devoted to her.

She was often portrayed wearing a chiton, which is an ancient Greek garment, and a helmet. Many statues of her show her holding a spear and a shield, to represent her warlike qualities.

But she can often be found offering an olive branch to the defeated as Minerva was a compassionate victor, who had pity on those her armies vanquished.

This is now a quiet park on the banks of the River Dee but it was once a massive quarry, excavating the huge blocks of sandstone to build Chester’s Roman walls.

And this weathered rock shrine was once a site of ancient Roman worship.

The quarrymen, who carved the effigy, would have made offerings and prayed for safety during their gruelling, risky labour.

Sadly, Minerva looks a bit the worse for wear these days — the weather and vandalism have seen to that. But you can still pick out her figure holding a spear and wearing a helmet, an owl over her shoulder on the right.

The awning over the shrine is a 19th-century addition, placed there in the hopes of warding off further damage.

Edgar’s Field dates from the Saxon period and gets its name from King Edgar, the great-grandson of Alfred the Great, who held a council in or near the field in 973AD.

From here the king visited nearby St Johns Church, which was built in 689 AD. Writings from this time describe the scene of Edgar being rowed up the Dee by eight Saxon, Welsh and Viking princes as an act of submission — a romantic image forever associated with Chester.

Edgar’s Field was laid out as a public park by the first Duke of Westminster, Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, who presented it to the City of Chester in 1892 as an act of philanthropy.

My children are grown up now — but I still come to visit Minerva.

I love the way that Chester may change yet Minerva stands, serene and stoic, keeping watch over the good people of Handbridge from her freeze-frame stone tomb.

Join my Context Conversation about Dylan Thomas’ Wales on May 14

May 14 is International Dylan Thomas Day.

The date marks the anniversary of when Under Milk Wood was first read on stage at The Poetry Center, New York, in 1953.

His home town of Swansea, south Wales, will mark the day with live and virtual events while Dylan Thomas fans round the world will remember the impact of his work — now taught in Welsh schools as part of the literacy programme.

Thomas was a complex character but often misunderstood. Success came late for him with his critical plaudits constantly overshadowed by constant money worries and reports of his legendary drunkenness.

But, after his death, he became a cult figure, earning an inclusion on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and inspiring the lyrics of Bob Dylan.

It’s only by visiting the places in Wales associated with his childhood and later life that we can come to understand the man behind the mythology.

My latest travel talk for Context Travel is Dylan Thomas: a literary pilgrimage across Wales.

I’ll trace a journey across the country that inspired Dylan’s writing from his Swansea childhood to Laugharne, where he lived and worked prior to that fateful trip to New York.

It forms part the Context Conversations strand and will be hosted via Zoom on Friday, May 14 at 6pm UK time — International Dylan Thomas Day.

But what to expect?

  • The Swansea years as a young man
  • The Laugharne years and finding fame
  • New York and the final years
  • Readings and events for Thomas fans

Book your place here. It’s a one-hour talk, followed by 15 minutes of Q&A for Wales travel tips.

Thomas collapsed and died in New York in November 1953 aged 39. He was on a lecture tour of America, had been mixing with the Beat poets, and Under Milk Wood had been performed for the first time earlier that year to critical acclaim.

He is buried in the graveyard of St Martin’s Church in Laugharne — that’s me [above] pictured by Dylan’s grave.

In the cold-stone interior of the church itself, a plague to Thomas bears the inscription from one of his most evocative poems, Ferne Hill.

It reads: “Time held me green and dying. Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”