Sheffield

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In June of 2107 Kate had her annual KBS conference in Sheffield England. Click on the photo to see an album of our adventures.

We flew into Heathrow airport (there's a daytime flight from Toronto on Air Canada that we often take when travelling to Europe) and rented a car the next day for the drive up to Sheffield -- it's just over 3 hours on a turnpike (the M1). An easy enough drive -- we even stopped for "fish and chips" on way.

We took a short ride in a black taxi cab from Heathrow to the Hyatt Place on Bath Road arriving sometime around 10:00pm or so. We got checked in (we had booked through Priceline which I often use) and were heading up to our room when I discovered that although I had my camera bag of lenses and accessories I had left my Canon t4i DSLR in the cab! The front desk at the Hyatt were very helpful and called around but couldn't locate the cab (after all, they're all "black cabs"). I was in a panic, of course. They assured me that the cabbie would find the camera, recall the trip and drop it off at the hotel. By the time we were leaving the next morning they still hadn't. I was resigned to having lost my camera and would have to use one of the small pocket cameras we had with us -- a Canon ELF. That turned out to be the case, and a bit of a revelation. If you follow the link to the our photo album you should know that all photos were taken with a pocket camera.

One of the reasons we stayed at the Hyatt (it's a very nice hotel but not cheap) was that it was conveniently located within walking distance of several reliable car rentals (more on that later).

Luckily, when we got to Sheffield, we got an email note from the Hyatt that the camera had been found by the cabbie and returned to the front desk -- many thanks to honest folks in England. We called and talked to the front desk who gladly held the camera for our return. We picked up the camera on our return from Sheffield a week later.

In Sheffield we stayed at the Novotel Sheffield City Center right next door to the Winter Garden (a green house oasis), the Sheffield Town Hall (not to be confused with the nearby Sheffield City Hall, huh?) and nearby Peace Gardens, the Graves and Millenium Galleries. Kate's conference was held at the University of Sheffield a short tram ride to the east (walk-able distance) not to be confused with the Sheffield Hallam University which was just across the street from our hotel. Navigating our car to Sheffield wasn't too hard (once we got on the M1), navigating in Sheffield to drop of Kate at the hotel and take our car to the Hertz car rental was a bit of a bother.

Sheffield was famous for pins, cutlery and Sheffield Steel (I'm reminded of the Clash song "This is England" from their long out of print "Cut the Crap" LP). The chorus is

This is England
This knife of Sheffield steel
This is England
This is how we feel

The slums, Steel works and factories are long gone and the core of the city is being redeveloped. Nevertheless there's lots of vacant land and shuttered buildings. During the industrial era there were incredibly nasty slums with factory workers who died very young. It;s really a sad history.

The River Don wanders through the city with canal works surviving from the industrial past. I wandered the city on walking tours visiting places like the Kelham Island Museum (industrial history), the Sheffield Cathedral, the Weston Park Museum (by the university with an excellent gallery), the train station, market and much more. The weather was often cool, windy and wet. Typical weather for the season I understand.

On the Wednesday afternoon the KBS social gathering that we took (there were several) was a bus trip to the village of Castleton in the Peaks District. It was a sunny day but very windy. Kate and I explored the village (we were turned away from visiting the castle ruins because of the wind). Others did a long hike into the hills to explore some caves.

On Thursday we took a train to Manchester. The train traveled through the Peaks District where we had visited the day before. There had been a Manchester Arena Bombing only a few weeks before our visit. You'll see some memorial flowers at the Sheffield Peace Gardens and note security guards with serious weapons at the train station. But we didn't see much of that in Manchester. We visited the John Rylands Library (a cathedral to knowledge), had lunch nearby, and visited the People's History Museum where we bought a "Pits and Perverts" T-shirt (from the Thatcher era miners' strike of 1984-85 and the London LGBTQ support of the miners). We visited the Science and Industry Museum (like the Kelham Island Museum but many more stationary engines from the industrial era) and tried to get up to the Beetham Manchester Tower -- I was expecting an old historical tower, instead it's a modern mixed use high rise. We did get to the Central Library -- a lovely circular building that reminds us of the Pantheon in Rome. It's big, bright and modern but the architecture is classical.

As an aside, we were there in 2017 for the election on June 8 where Theresa May was seeking a majority government to better negotiate Brexit. You'll see some posters in the photo album and of course the conservatives didn't get the majority they were after.

On our return the KBS banquet was held in the Cutlers Hall in Sheffield. It's a grand historic building in the town core that now seems to be a hospitality center. In the past it was the guild hall for the cutlery industry which was a big deal in the industrial era.

We left Sheffield by train to visit over night with our No. 1 son Chris, his wife Amy and their new daughter Charlotte near Nottingham. Chris had to fly out of Heathrow the next day and dropped us off at the Holiday Inn Heathrow where there was a car hire on site which we had booked -- it was cheap and a very bad idea. We had arranged to have a car on our arrival so we could go visit our No. 2 mom in Woking for lunch. However, they didn't have any cars available for us in spite of us having made a reservation. I'll never make that mistake again -- always rent from a reputable name even if it costs a bit more. We dashed around trying to find an alternative car hire and ultimately ended up back at the hotel to get a car in the early afternoon -- so much for lunch with mom.

Anways, Sheffield (and Manchester too) was both interesting and historical. It was good to touch base with family again. And I learned you don't need to lug around a heavy DSLR and camera bag of gear -- a pocket camera will do for most travel photography.