Our 5-day holiday took place at the beginning of June and our base hotel was a Mercure just outside Chester. (We prefer to stay at Marriotts, but there wasn’t one in the area) As usual we used Blakes as out travel company and Janet Blake made sure we had a lovely driver, who looked after us throughout the holiday, and joined in the fun, especially at the Sculpture Park where he was the driver for the second group in the buggy.
We left Weston soon after 9am and had a coffee break at Gloucester Services and a lunch stop at Trentham Gardens – always good for a bit of retail therapy and food – and we are always up for both of those things!
We were made welcome at the hotel and rooms were quickly allocated, I was surprised and disappointed that our rooms did not have air conditioning and were not up to the “Marriot standard” (nowhere to store clothes etc) I spent most of the time living out of my suitcase, although we did share six coat hangers between two of us in our open plan wardrobe.
The quality of the food was good (remember this is my opinion and I eat anything), but the service on the first two nights was anything but good – we waited ages and there was no system to how the tables were served, and although there was choice for non-meat eaters, they didn’t seem to have heard of fish – until the last night when we could chose fish and chips, so if you didn’t eat meat you ate a lot of pasta!
Our second day was spent in Chester, we all did our own thing, some people walked around the walls, visited churches, went on the Red bus and found M & S.
On Wednesday we went to the Iron Works (Sculpture Park), some of us enjoyed being driven around the large grounds in a 10-seater buggy, others walked and certainly did plenty of steps that day – the sculptures were amazing and all made from recycled metal – we did have our only heavy shower on that day, otherwise we had much better weather than in Weston. We went on to Shrewsbury in the afternoon, not very much to see there although there was an excellent craft shop and a lovely bookshop with a café.
Thursday was Bodnant Gardens (National Trust) We spent the morning here, enjoying the wonderful display of trees and plants – the roses were lovely and there was a spectacular arch made up of Laburnum trees. In the afternoon we drove on to Llandudno, and a few people went on a tram to the Great Orme , others looked for the Alice in Wonderland statues dotted around the town.
Friday – our last day. Today we visited Blist Hill Victorian Village, which has just been taken over by the National Trust – booking to go here was unbelievably complicated, and I really didn’t think we would be going there, BUT, we did and had a wonderful day, seeing shops like we had in out towns in our childhood, a chip shop which cooked chips in lard, and a pub which had a sing song at lunchtime. What a great finish to our holiday. I hope the other people (31 of them) enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you to Frances Lewis (my very good friend), who always helps with anything and everything during our time away.
Jenny Schofield
(last updated 28/7/26}