Wakefield, City 16/69 in the UK Cityscapes Project

I can't quite believe that we've made it to city 16, it seems just like yesterday when I had my first crazy thought about photographing every city in the UK!

So, what can I tell you about Wakefield, well I've had to wait for a little while to blog about Wakefield as I had a bad experience with my hotel.  It turns out I accidentally booked a hotel which was a possible den of iniquity, allegedly rented out by the hour by the local ladies of the night.  I don't think it's normal for a lady to be "Checking in again" at 8.30am in the morning, especially when you consider that hotels don't allow check ins before 2pm, no wonder the receptionist looked at me strangely when I went in early on the day I arrived to drop off my bag!  In addition to that there were a lot of shirtless men hanging around the balconies of what I can only refer to the Campanile Hotel in Wakefield as a very bad set from Hi-de-Hi, not so much of a hotel and much more of a motel but I have to say a huge note of thanks to lastminute.com who dealt with my refund quickly and without fuss.

if you are a woman travelling on your own please don't stay at this hotel, even without the possible goings on I found that the rooms were dark, the walls stained and the ceilings of the bathroom mouldy.  I didn't take a shower for fear I'd end up dirtier than I was before I got in.  I'm not a complainer and I hate a fuss and on the morning I left 2 hours before my train feeling it would be safer to go and sit in Leeds railway station than stay a moment longer in that hotel.

So, now that we have that out of the way, I waited to blog about it because I didn't want the negative hotel experience to bias my review of what is otherwise a quaint, quiet little city, Wakefield was once named as the 3rd most musical city in the UK, I'm not sure if that's true but I did experience a couple of buskers who were very good indeed.  Wakefield is a smaller city and there's not a lot of stuff going on, I was there on a Monday which didn't help as the brand new Hepworth Gallery was closed.  I did have a lovely wander around the Cathedral which dominates the whole of the city centre but apart from that, there's just not a lot going on.  In saying that it's quiet, I expect that it would be a lovely destination for an older couple who wanted a quiet weekend or thanks to the streets lined with many many bars and nightclubs it seems that Wakefield is one of the new emerging destinations for stag weekends.

And so on with the images of Wakefield - 

and so that was Wakefield, small quiet city in Yorkshire, home to the tallest spire in Yorkshire but not really a lot of other claims to fame, it has a population of over 76,000 at the time of the last census but that's not really a lot when compared with it's bigger brother Leeds.   I have to be completely honest that I didn't enjoy Wakefield, I was in a city I couldn't find a lot to do in and I was feeling very alone and if I'm honest a little scared.  I wondered if this was just because it was the first city I really experienced on my own but I've since found that  when I was on my own in Inverness and Aberdeen I simply didn't feel that way at all, I enjoyed my own company and felt at ease whereas in Wakefield I just wanted it all to be over as quickly as possible.

Next up on my quest to photograph and document the 69 cities of the UK is Inverness and you really won't want to miss this one, so many many images, I promise it will be a photographic delight.

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