Our mini-break in Chester

My other half races radio controlled cars, having decided not to continue with the series he was racing in I persuaded him to spend his budget on a mini-break for us. I had always wanted to go to Chester Zoo so we booked into the Premier Inn in the centre of Chester. On Monday we set off for my parent's home in Derby travelling via Roundhay Park in Leeds.

Roundhay Park is huge and our map reading skills of the park map were not good. We had a lovely lunch when we arrived, just a soup and buns, and then we set off for Tropical World. This is where Google maps on the Blackberry came in very handy as we went completely the wrong way. As I said this park is huge and an excellent place for children to run wild and entry to Tropical World is reasonable.

After spending the night at my parents we set off for Chester on Tuesday morning stopping at Hack Green Nuclear Bunker, we thoroughly enjoyed this "secret bunker"; it was really interesting and some of the equipment took me back to my early office days. http://www.hackgreen.co.uk/

We booked into the hotel at 2 pm and realised that we would have to travel to the zoo by bus as parking was very restricted at the hotel and we didn't want to lose the parking bay we had paid for. We spent the rest of Tuesday wandering around Chester and checking out the bus times for the next day. We ate our evening meals and breakfasts in the hotel restaurant, we have become big fans of Table Table restaurants and it was the same menu in the hotel.

We spent the whole of Wednesday at the zoo, arriving at 9.50 and leaving at 5. We were absolutely shattered but it was a great day, so many animals to see. I especially liked the bats as they were flying free, huge fruit bats with wing spans of 1.4 m, a small bat even landed on me. The big attraction was an 11 day old elephant but it was not easy to get photos of him as his mum and grandma were very protective, you can just see him in the photo above.

We finished our mini-break by visiting Tatton Park at Knutsford, which again was another exhausting day as there are 50 acres of garden, all well worth seeing, then there is the Mansion, the Farm and the Old Hall. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the Old Hall as it was getting late and we wanted to eat on our way home at a Table Table restaurant, The Aspley, a pub-style restaurant overlooking Huddersfield Broad Canal. http://www.tattonpark.org.uk/Attractions/Park/

Next week we are taking mother-in-law out for three day trips to National Trust houses.