Off the wall

First day of holidays today and after a leisurely breakfast we set off to walk the walls of Chester. First time I did this was in 1977 so it felt a little weird to be repeating the exercise 30 years on with Nikki and my daughters.

It was a beautiful sunny day, made all the more special on account of us not having had many sunny days this summer. After parking close to Northgate Arena we mounted the walls at North Gate and proceeded in an anti-clockwise direction at a gentle stroll, stopping frequently to take photos.

It's only a couple of years ago that I did this same walk with some friends from Canada, but that didn't prevent me taking many of the same photos over again. Sunlight makes everything so much more vibrant, and when I'd walked the walls in 2005 the day had been overcast. Today everything was bright and colourful, including our spirits.

One of the nicest parts of the walk is the part along the River Dee, and today we were graced with a number of interesting sights. We stopped for an ice-cream at the quayside and sat for a while watching the seagulls fighting over scraps of bread, the pleasure boats and pedallos coming and going along the river, and a lone canoeist training for some unknown white water event or timed race.

Ice-creams finished we headed north again along the eastern side of the wall, past the cathedral whose gardens were resplendent in the late midday sun and back to North Gate at the perfect time to enter the Chester & North Wales cat show, which had only minutes before opened its doors to the public.

Today was the first time I had ventured inside a cat show in almost ten years; an event which at one time was an almost monthly occurrence. Several of you will know just how big a bellyful I'd had of cat showing back then and I would not have set foot in that arena but for the fact that Nikki fancied the chance to see a variety of breeds, and the girls were quite keen to have a quick look too.

Ten years had not changed the smell; the first impression to assail the senses on entering the hall. Mainly cat pee (there would inevitably be a number of entire male cats in the hall) but overlaid with fur, sweat, the metal of the pens and the pungent aroma of the disinfectant used by the judges as they move from pen to pen. Neither had ten years changed the attitude of the judges. Although after all that time I recognised only two, every one of them had that demeanour of superior officiousness that I always despised. These petty pinch-faced individuals lording it over the common masses in their tiny kingdom represent everything mad about the "cat fancy" to me.

There were some beautiful cats in the hall. Probably, Nikki and I agreed, about half a dozen we could happily have brought home out of a selection of perhaps 4- or 500. As for the rest - the brittle, bat-eared orientals; the pug-faced persians and the fluffy, cutesy, bland semi-longhairs - you can keep them. And I hope it's at least another ten years before I have to endure that smell again.