Hull and Hessle

A trip to Hull with my support worker today, somewhere I've not visited for quite a few years. The weather was lovely most of the time, it just drizzled a bit whilst we were inside the art gallery. If we saw a shop in the main shopping area that we wanted to go in we did and I bought a jacket from a charity shop and a sausage and tomato pie from a butcher's shop, a type of pie I've never seen before but I did see them for sale in another shop...they must be popular in Hull.

Something I noticed, of course all the telephone boxes are cream coloured because Hull owns its own telecommuications company...and all the phone boxes are still in operation.

We started by having problems at the multi-storey carpark; the first payment machine didn't work and the second one was a different type and myself and Siobhan were really struggling until a young woman came over and helped us. It had a slot to put money in but it wasn't accepting cash and so we had to pay by card.

We encountered another problem when we needed to use the toilets in the shopping centre; we saw this sign and assumed it meant that the toilets were upstairs and the steps or lift were over to the right...we were wrong, they were actually straight ahead a bit and over to the right.

We then made our way down to the Old Town.

We couldn't go inside the Minster, it was closed for a private function.

We arrived at the Museum Quarter, fortunately all museums in Hull are free admission. We only briefly went inside the Hull and East Riding Museum; it seems to be mainly designed for children. We spent much longer inside the Streetlife Museum.

 

We got to the waterfront and went in a pub for a meal.

When we returned to the City Centre we went inside the Ferens Art Gallery. I enjoyed seeing the Dutch Old Masters again, although I thought there were a lot more the last time I was there. In one of the other galleries there was a display of work by young artists, I particularly liked this one and so took a photograph of it.

On the way back to Doncaster we stopped at Hessle and had a quick look round the shops - I got something for my tea.

Another Visit To Hull

I need to book my days out with Siobhan a couple of weeks in advance and so I'm always taking a chance with the weather. Today it was sunshine and showers, so I needed to go somewhere with plenty of indoor attractions - and Hull was my choice. The city has four free museums and the wonderful Ferens Art Gallery, and it's the UK City of Culture 2017.

As usual we stopped en route at a pretty village to eat our sandwiches; today it was Welton.

We spent most of our time at Hull exploring the Marina, the Waterside and the Old Town areas. We popped into the Streetlife Museum during a particularly heavy shower and visited the art gallery on our way back to the car park.

On the way home we called at the cafe at the California Gardens Garden Centre at Howden for tea and  scones.

Kingston-upon-Hull: UK City of Culture 2017

When I found out about this I immediately made plans to visit a couple of times this year. I was really looking forward to going to Hull today; I did enjoy myself...but it seems that the city isn't ready yet - there are still plenty of roadworks taking place and the only difference I noticed from my previous visit was the installation of a large wind turbine blade in the main square. All it did for me was block my sightlines of the impressive Victorian municipal buildings I wanted to photograph.

We stopped for our sandwiches at Hessle as usual, but this time we drove on for a couple of hundred yards beyond the Foreshore area to a nice wooded car parking area next to Hessle Haven, from where we were able to to go for a short walk right down to the water's edge.

It was still quite sunny when we reached Hull and so we lingered so that I could take some photographs - there was no need to go inside to shelter from the weather.

We then made our way to the Old Town...it's not far.

We went in to the Hull and East Riding Museum but didn't stay for long. There wasn't much for us to see; all of the exhibitions seemed to be aimed at children. However, just across the square is the Streetlife Museum of Transport,  a much better prospect - we spent an hour in here, and could have spent longer if it had been a little less busy.

We then made our way back to the main shopping area and the highlight of the day for me - the recently re-opened and refurbished Ferens Art Gallery, which like all of the museums in Hull is free entry. There are more Dutch Old Master paintings inside this building than anywhere else outside of the Netherlands. There are several dozen of them, most in very good condition and all of them well lit and presented...the galleries were quite busy today.  

We slummed it a bit by stopping for a pot of tea and a toasted teacake each at a coffee shop inside the indoor shopping centre before we set off for the drive home to Doncaster.