The Queen at Chester Hotel

I haven’t stayed there but I did stay in Chester last September. The Queen is right by the train station. Personally, I’d choose something closer to the historic center.

I stayed at the Hotel Indigo in Chester and it was very nice.

I walked by a Premier Inn between the train station and the Hotel Indigo. Premier Inn’s are usually pretty reliable and priced competitively.

Thanks Laura! We currently have reservations at the Indigo Hotel but I was looking at the Queen because I have points I could use. Good point about the locations. I think the better location outweighs the points savings. Thanks for your response.

I don't think it matters much where you stay. There is a literally constant stream of buses from the city centre to the Railway station. Also the free #40 city rail link.
I'd just add a Chester Plus Bus to any day's rail ticket- £2.50 or £1.65 with any railcard.
At that price it barely matters If you use the bus or not.

If I walk then I walk nearly to the Premier Inn then at the bridge over the canal turn right and go along the towing path of the canal into the City Centre.

Chester is also a city where I think the HoHo bus works well, and is very reasonably priced for once.

Cool. Thanks for the info, Stuart.

As a local I disagree slightly with the above post.
No where is that far from anything else in Chester but some are more convenient than others. The Queen wouldn’t be my first choice of location to stay unless being near the station is really important to you.

I can recommend Kokonut Grove Indian restaurant and the Old Harkers Arms pub both by City Road a few minutes work from the Queen and Hotel Indigo and right by the PremierInn.

The Crown Plaza is in a good location right behind the town hall and near the Market Hall and Storyhouse. Similar to the Queen, it probably gets a few mixed reviews but it can’t be beaten for location.

The Abode is a more modern hotel but it has great views over the city.

Both the Abode and Crown Plaza are near the Architect Pub which has a big garden and does good food.
A slight ‘warning’ about the HoHo (warning is too strong a word really) but a lot of the centre of town is pedestrianised so the bus doesn’t go past some of the main sites. Again, no distances are that far but I’ve never quite seen the point of a HoHo in Chester.

I’ll just add that I had absolutely no need to use a bus during my visit to Chester. The Hotel Indigo was a ten minute walk from the train station. It was a further ten minutes to the Cathedral and Town Hall. I really enjoyed walking around the center, as well as walking along the walls.

Emma and Laura,

Thanks for your input. I'm getting even more excited about Chester. I'm glad we'll have 3 days there.

If you want any local help don’t hesitate to ask

Katiecem, don't miss a visit to Huxleys in Chester for some tea and a pastry! It's a charming place, near the Eastgate Clock on the city walls. It sits high and inside is a porthole where you can look down over the city streets. My friend from Liverpool I was staying with said people believe it was a former sea captain's house; hence the porthole. :-)

The owner talked me into getting a Bakewell tart and promised me that it was better than the original (his wife makes them). I don't know about that, but it was delicious!

Emma

Thanks! I wonder about gardens to see in Chester. I currently have the Roman Gardens on my list. What else should I add?

Mardee

Yes, I remember you mentioning the porthole in your trip report. I'm adding Huxley's to my Chester planning sheet right now.

Slightly wracking my brains, because I can't think of many gardens in Chester. It is a very compact city.
Near the Roman gardens you have Grosvenor Park which will have some municipal planting. Not very exciting but nice to walk through to get to the river. Also just a heads up, the Roman gardens aren't very big and are more about the remains than plants.
There are also some nice open spaces around the Cathedral.

If you don't mind travelling a bit Ness Gardens on the Wirral s worth a visit. It's 10 miles from Chester
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/ness-gardens/

Also on the Wirral is Port Sunlight Village. A really pretty factory village where they still look after the landscaping. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is also worth a visit. You can get there very easily on MerseyRail from Chester Station.
https://portsunlightvillage.com/

It's unlikely, but you could get lucky and be in town when Eaton Hall gardens, the home of the Duke of Westminster, has an open day?
It doesn't open very often, but you never know?

Staying with the aristocratic theme but slightly less posh, its worth having a look to see if anything is happening at the Gladstone Estate just over the border in Harwarden (pronounced Harden).
https://www.hawardenestate.co.uk/

Similarly unlikely there might be a local garden being open via the National Garden Scheme
https://ngs.org.uk/

Grosvenor Garden Centre is just outside the city. You could spend hours wandering round it, Its definitely a posher garden centre, i like it because they put a bit of effort into how they display their plants. Nothing more traditionally British than a trip to a garden centre!
https://www.bluediamond.gg/our-locations/grosvenor-garden-centre

Wow, Emma. Thanks so much for all the ideas. I definitely have some more research to do.

Sometimes residents don't fully appreciate what they have. Grosvenor Park is actually Grade II* listed as a fine example of a Victorian park and is a Green Flag winner (one of ten in the Cheshire West council area).
I'm as dismissive as anyone else about HoHo buses (and normally avoid them like the plaque) but I've known Chester for literally 60 years, so should be the last person to want one (for most of my life I had family connections on the Wirral). I found out about the HoHo by chance when checking the bus times to Liverpool via the Wirral. I groaned when I saw Chester had one, but saw where it went on the leaflet and the cost, and thought why not. I was perfectly happy with it, playing tourist for once. Before that the only other ones I can remember doing were in the Azores (another very pleasant surprise) and in Iceland.
Although I have remembered you are on Britrail so don't qualify for plusbus add ons I find the bus down to the station very useful. I don't always have the time or the energy for the walk down. The last two times I've been I've been on a pass and have noticed the difference, in needing to walk up.
I'm hopefully connecting at Chester from rural North Wales in a few weeks time, and am very grateful that my bus goes down to the railway station rather than ending at the bus station, then the walk.

It is possible to be Grade II* listed and a tiny bit dull :-) Yes, it's a perfectly nice Victorian park, nice to wander through, with good lawns to play on and places to sit with an ice cream to watch the world go by. But to me the planting, the actual ‘garden’ bit, isn’t all that interesting.

The comment about locals not appreciating a place is quite funny. I came home to live here after nearly 30 years elsewhere. I regularly see on local social media, and also from my mum and aunt, that Chester isn’t what it was! It’s all rubbish!. Heaven forbid you say you like the new Market development! As I regularly tell them they don’t know how lucky they are to live here. Although i do agree with them that the bus station was better by the town hall….

An example of this attitude is the existence of a website and social media accounts with a slightly rude name (It begins with S ends with Chester and has hit in the middle, all one word). It was set up in response to all the people saying the place was a rubbish. It is now a brilliant resource of everything that is going on in the town. Anyone planning to visit should have a look at it, but if you follow on twitter get used to posts on the minutiae of life here.

Also on the Wirral is Port Sunlight Village. A really pretty factory village where they still look after the landscaping. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is also worth a visit. You can get there very easily on MerseyRail from Chester Station.
https://portsunlightvillage.com/

I agree with Emma; Port Sunlight is a fun day trip. My friend and her husband live on the Wirral, and she took me there. Definitely read up on the history of it as well—it was originally built to house the workers at the Lever Bros. soap factory.

Somewhere else on the Wirral (among their astonishing 37 Green Flag Awards) which I found out about at the awards ceremony last week is the New Ferry Butterfly Park.
It is beside Bebington Merseyrail station, and is open from May to September on a Sunday.
It is a reclamation of former railway land into an urban park with 18 species of butterfly breeding there. Quite an interesting looking place.