By Stuart Forster
With its easily walkable centre, numerous historic sites and traditional pubs, Chester is ideal for a weekend away. And I’m finding that participating in a Taste of Chester Food Tour is providing a wealth of insights into the Cheshire city’s heritage and culinary offerings.
Gareth Boyd established Walking Food Tours UK in 2018 and has just asked the group if we know where the phrase “going to the geegees” comes from. I’d always assumed it was Cockney rhyming slang but that isn’t the case. Henry Gee was a mayor of Chester during the reign of King Henry VIII and in 1539 he organised horse racing. The racecourse is the world’s oldest, says Gareth, and Gee’s surname explains the origin of the phrase.
At The Cheese Shop on Northgate Street, Ann Faulkner explains that her mother, Carole, established the business in 1985. Back then, finding artisanal British cheeses was tricky but now the majority of the products sold in the shop are from the UK and Ireland. Ann has selected a handful of local cheeses for us to try.
Cheshire cheese was, she informs us, mentioned in the Domesday Book in the 1080s. It was a valuable commodity in the Middle Ages and around 2,000 farms were producing it a little more than 100 years ago. Nowadays, just two make it, and one of those is in Shropshire rather than Cheshire. Sampling a traditional Cheshire cheese, I’m impressed by its creamy mouth feel and depth of flavour – it bears little resemblance to crumbly supermarket-bought stuff that shares its name.
Outside of the cheese shop, Gareth guides us up onto the walls that were once part of Chester’s defences. In the early 1400s, Welsh people were not allowed into the city between sunset and sunrise. Originally from Cardiff, our guide jokes that, back then, he might have been shot with an arrow for being up on the wall.
We pause at a stone Phoenix Tower that was formerly a meeting place for medieval guilds and used as a royalist gun platform during the Siege of Chester. In 1645, King Charles watched his army’s defeat at the nearby Battle of Rowton Moor from this spot. That, explains Gareth, is why the structure is also known as King Charles Tower.
The king stayed with supporters at Gamul House, on Lower Bridge Street. Our tour guide recommends heading there later to visit The Brewery Tap to sample local craft beers. He also suggests that we continue along all 1.9 miles of the city walls – the most complete in Britain. The walls skirt by Chester’s castle, along the River Dee and past Britain’s second-most photographed timepiece – the ornate Eastgate Clock, which commemorates Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1897.
We continue to the Roman amphitheatre, which was rediscovered during building works in 1929. Stone from the venue was used in construction across the city during the Middle Ages. Our final stop is at the dual-level shopping gallery known as The Rows. We head into Vin Santo’s 600-year-old cellar to sample locally produced still and sparkling wines.
Tomorrow, before driving home, we’ll head to the Cheshire Oaks outlet shopping mall to browse the designer shops. This evening, the plan is to pop by the Rooftop Social Club to play outsized games and a beer or two.