Although we have many friends in Sheffield, it isn’t a place I’ve often visited, and most times when I have gone there I’ve been busy with meetings and social events. My first visit there was in way back in the 1960s as a student when I visited the university and was absolutely terrified by the new Paternoster lift in the Arts Tower, one of very few still in operation. These have cars which move continuously and passengers have to step on or off while the lift is travelling up or down. It may not have helped that I was there with the other members of a football or rugby team (I played both badly, but never like William Webb Ellis confused the two) and our trip on the lift could have been after a lengthy visit to the union bar. I still sometimes have nightmares about it.
I wasn’t really going to Sheffield in October, just passing through on the way to a weekend conference at Unstone Grange, around ten miles to the south. But the lottery of advance train tickets meant we could save a small fortune by arriving in Sheffield several hours before we needed to catch the bus to Unstone on Friday, and similarly on the way home on Sunday we had a couple of hours to spend before the train south to London. So we spent some time wandering around, with little or no plan on both occasions.
On Friday I decided I wanted to walk a little more of the Five Weirs Walk route beside the River Don, though we didn’t have time to do the full nine and a bit miles. In the event we had to turn back early, partly because the weather turned and we didn’t want to get wet.
On the Saturday afternoon we had some free time, long enough to walk a few miles up through Apperknowle on to the ridge and back, as well as around the grounds of Unstone Grange.
We got back to the centre of Sheffield rather earlier than expected, thanks to being given a lift by a friend, and decided to take a walk around the city centre. We could just have sat down in a cafe or a bar, but we were going to be sitting for hours on trains, and the sun was out, though it wasn’t too warm.
We began by walking up towards the town hall, a rather splendid Victorian building that now has a peace garden behind it, then walked further on before walking to find a different route that would take us back to towards the station. We then went to look for a cafe Linda remembered by the canal basin, but found it had just closed, so went back a different way to the station and our train.
More pictures and captions at:
Sheffield
Unstone and Apperknowle
