I decided for my birthday I'd like to do some more local sightseeing because last time we'd been in Colchester (for a beer festival with J's work colleagues) I'd realised I hadn't seen anything there except the Arts Centre & a couple of pubs! We're trying to conserve J's leave a bit this year, having used up too much last year, so I had my adventure on the nearest Saturday rather than my actual birthday.
Colchester's only a 20 minute train journey away so we wandered down to the station first thing in the morning through the park & along the Waterfront. Saw a couple of squirrels in the park, and watched a duck dive into the water at the marina and just not resurface. We stood there for a bit wondering if it was going to return, but no sign. Hopefully that just means it came up on the other side of a boat where we couldn't see ... :o
Our train was a little delayed, so we hung about on the platform for a while then a train turned up at about the right time. Only not the right train! And then it backed off, looks like it got lost ;) Our train did show up shortly after so we could get on with the adventure!
Ruins of the Old Town
I'd figured out in advance a route to walk round the west & south of the town centre that took in some bits of ruins. We started at the station and followed the helpful elephant sign down & across the river to where the bits of Roman Wall started. The first gate we saw isn't there any more but there's a Victorian marker to show where it was - which someone has carefully piled up pinecones at the base of, a little oddly. Then round the route of the wall to the Balkerne Gate, of which a fraction survives and that's still the largest surviving bit of Roman gate in the country. There's a pub next door called the Hole in the Wall which was built on top of where the gate had been. The next stretch of wall was more original than most as it hadn't been repaired much in medieval times.
I found out in the museum later on that the wall had stood pretty much intact between the two great sackings of the city - Boudicca in 60CE (which I already was aware of) and at the tail end of the Civil War in 1648 (which I hadn't known of before - Royalists bullied their way in against the town's wishes, then Parliamentarians besieged the town to get them out again).
St John's Abbey Gate stands in the middle of houses now on the south side of the town centre, with the road names all referring to the Abbey, just no abbey left. A casualty of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, it's just left behind a rather imposing gate.
Moving a bit north of St John's Abbey Gate in the southeast (ish) corner of Colchester town centre is another ruined church building. St Botolph's Priory was built very early in the Norman era, and was the earliest Augustinian monastery in England. It was also dissolved by Henry VIII, but I think the church survived as a church until 1648 during the siege. They eventually, 2 centuries later, built a new church for the parish.
The bits that are left look rather grand and are built using bits of Roman tiles. With a fine Norman arch at the entrance. It's also on a fairly well used path from somewhere to the town centre, we got a few odd looks from shoppers wondering why people were looking at the ruins ;) And there were also mozzies hanging about waiting for passing tourists & shoppers as my legs noticed, tho at least one will fly no more!
Lunch at Church Street Tavern
I'd decided I wanted fancy pub food for lunch, so had looked at a few places on google & settled on Church Street Tavern. Thankfully despite looking busy on the outside there were a lot of seats inside, people were mostly wanting to sit out in the sun (and smoke) I think. We had a pint each, plus shared one of their cheese & meat platters. Tasty, but for a sharing platter we felt it could do with another piece of bread each and possibly a decent size slab of a plain hard cheese (like cheddar) to counterpoint the brie & blue cheese.
The member of staff clearing our plates made a comment about it how filling the platter was ... which was amusing as just before she showed up we had been discussing where we were to get coffee & cake on our way to the museum ;) We politely didn't mention that to her tho, and headed off along the high street to Coffee Cube which provided us with tasty cake for dessert :)
Colchester Castle Museum
The museum in Colchester is inside the castle, which was built on the site of a Roman temple, so it's a historical place in its own right. There was a guided tour which gave you access to bits of the castle that aren't part of the museum proper, but we didn't really have enough time to do that plus look around.
The displays inside give a chronological picture of Colchester's history, starting with the Iron Age settlement - which apparently counts as the first capital of Britain. Dominant themes for that section were looking at how sophisticated & connected Iron Age Britain was. Then of course there was a lot of Roman stuff, Roman Colchester having been both important and destroyed early in its history by Boudicca. Which provides a convenient archaeological marker - there's a burnt layer dating to 60 CE right through the town so it's easy to date pre-/post-Boudicca.
Colchester stays important after the Romans leave, and is one of the places taken up by the Normans later as a significant town. There's the first Augustinian monastery in the country (which we'd seen), and the castle was also an early Norman one. We started moving through the museum a bit quicker by the time we got to the medieval stuff, which was a bit of a shame - I'd misjudged the timings of the day just a little. Some of the highlights included one of the charters for the town (not the earliest one), and a music book for a choir made in Sicily.
We finished off the Colchester part of the trip by walking back up to the station, past more helpful elephant signs. Made it just in time for a train, too, so nicely timed.
Dinner in Bistro on the Quay
One of the reasons we were running a bit short of time in Colchester was that I'd been a bit tardy booking a table for dinner and by the time I rang earlier in the week I had a choice between a bit too early for supper or a bit too late. I went for too early ;)
I've only been to Bistro on the Quay 3 or 4 times, but I always enjoy it when I do go :) We stuck to the fixed price menu for food this time, which has about half the choices on it. I had the prawn & avocado cocktail, followed by the chicken stuffed with chorizo & butternut squash. And more cheese for dessert. And J had leek & potato soup, then the cod fillet followed by sticky toffee pudding. All accompanied by a bottle of white wine :) A very tasty & filling dinner, a good end to a fun birthday adventure!
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