Birthday excursion

A few years ago, I started a tradition of taking a day trip to some other city on my birthday, instead of going into work. After Peterborough, Liverpool and Carlisle, this year it was Leicester's turn - a city I've been through many times on the train but never properly visited. The weather was a bit patchy but mostly stayed dry. As days go, it was an odd mix of 15th century history and spaceships, spaceships, SPACESHIPS!

I first of all visited the Richard III centre. The displays are very well done (downstairs telling the story of the Wars of the Roses; upstairs telling how his bones were found and analysed), but it can't quite disguise the fact that they don't have any actual artefacts in there. Still, you get to see the dig site itself, with its holographic skeleton!

After that, I went over the road to the cathedral and saw his tomb, then next door to the Guildhall, which was an unexpected treat. It's a huge timber-framed building with many rooms and actual artefacts, plus a good café where I had pie for lunch :o)

In the afternoon, I wandered through the enormous Abbey Park (finding the abbey ruins, Cardinal Wolsey's grave and the Wolsey Chimney along the way) to the National Space Centre. It was deceptively big inside, with the exhibits each going back a long way. I saw spaceships, Apollo records, moon rock, ISS equipment and all sorts of other stuff. There were a few school parties but otherwise, being a weekday, I largely had the place to myself.

The centre closes at 4pm so I only had a couple of hours there (40 minutes of which were taken up by the planetarium show), which wasn't nearly long enough to see everything properly. I guess I'll just have to go back some time! There's also an old pumping station / industrial museum across the road from it, which looks like it's worth a visit too.

I caught the 5pm train and got back to Sheffield just in time to pop round to Blake Street (where there was Van Helsing cheesiness) before heading pubwards for the Third Friday Social. A good birthday all round! :o)