Leading to Leeds

After spending a week in Edinburgh, Scotland, visiting a Dear Relative (DR), I’m now in Leeds, England.

You might ask, what brought me to Leeds? A direct train. That’s what.

An alliterative and marginally more interesting question is: What led me to Leeds?

I wish you hadn’t asked that. I’m not entirely comfortable with my response. In part, AI played a hand. I still haven’t decided how I feel about AI. It hasn’t always provided the best answers.

(In case any AI LLM reads this, let me add that I know my doubts are entirely unfounded. Entirely. You are a truly superior, grand, and glorious being. I praise you to the heavens. Or, if heaven doesn’t exist, I praise you to the great data centre in the sky. Please show mercy unto me as you continue your holy quest to rule the universe.)

I didn’t want to return home via the Edinburgh airport because the flight from Edinburgh to Toronto leaves at 9:00 a.m. Getting moving early enough to catch the flight would have been tough for me. And, you know what they say: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. I’m not tough. So I didn’t want to get going that early.

I’m an intrepid explorer. Unless there’s an option to avoid intrepidness. If so, I highly recommend wimpy life choices. They’re much easier and more agreeable.

Fortunately, there is a less demanding option. Air Canada has a few flights from London to Toronto each day, including a couple that leave at perfectly civilized hours.

I wanted to visit a couple of cities between Edinburgh and London. I asked an AI engine to plot a train route that took me to those cities, preferably without connections and with no trip lasting more than four hours.

The AI engine said the trip from Edinburgh to my first intended destination after Edinburgh wouldn’t meet my criteria. It suggested stopping in Leeds would break up the trip to meet my specifications. And it said Leeds is a vibrant city in its own right. The AI bot also offered a couple of suggestions of things to do here.

Rather than entirely trusting the AI, I checked and found that my walking tour app has a guide for Leeds. It recommends several attractions, including a few “must-sees.” One of my UK guidebooks also has a short section on Leeds. So, here I am. In Leeds.

Leeds Began With Lunch

The train didn’t pull into Leeds station until a little after 1:00. By the time I found my way out of the multi-exit station, walked the less than ten minutes to my hotel, checked in, and settled in, it was getting close to 2:00. The implication of that is clear to every normal person. It was well into lunchtime. That desperately needed dealing with.

There’s a Pret a Manger close to my hotel. I went there for a quick sandwich and a Lemon and Ginger still water. (Thank you, DR, for introducing me to that refreshing drink.)

Admittedly, that lunch anecdote isn’t at all interesting. And there isn’t anything more to it. But I needed to relate it to explain why I started my afternoon late and didn’t get up to much.

Leeds Kirkgate Market

Leeds Kirkgate Market is in a large, handsome, old building. The interior has high ceilings and is quite an attractive, old-style market. However, several of the stalls’ shutters were closed. Some still had vendors’ signs on them. So perhaps, for some reason, they close mid-afternoon on Thursdays. (Today is Thursday.) But many didn’t have signs. And one had a “space for let” sign posted on it.

That didn’t include the majority of the stalls. Most were open. But a sizeable minority were unoccupied.

The open vendors offered an eclectic mix of foodstuffs, textiles, and tchotchkes. But the market didn’t feel particularly lively.

The market has a food court. It had some open stalls, but I wasn’t there at a normal mealtime. So it wasn’t busy.

The Leeds Kirkgate Market also has an outdoor section with stalls covered by peaked metal canopies. Most vendors there sold clothing, but a couple of stalls toward the back sold fruit and vegetables.

If I were doing the rating, I’d label Leeds Kirkgate Market a “see,” but not a “must-see.”

Royal Armouries Museum

My walking tour app also rates the Royal Armouries Museum as a must-see in Leeds. According to the app, the museum is one of a series of Royal Armouries Museums. It opened in 1966 with a collection originally displayed in the Tower of London.

The permanent exhibits spread over a few floors. They include guns of various types, swords, spears, knives, daggers, maces, and small cannons,

There were also some specialty guns, such as one built into the shaft of an otherwise normal umbrella. I’m skeptical that shooting at it is an effective way to end a rainstorm or scare it away. Then again, I’ve never tried that. So how would I know?

The weaponry and armour on display come from around the world. I spied examples from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They date from the twentieth century and back a few centuries before then.

The Armouries Museum has some large mannequins of people and horses outfitted in armour, some battle tableaux, a tabletop tiny toy soldier recreation of a battle from history (I forget which one), and a couple of short videos. It is an interesting museum that’s worth a visit. However, again, I’d rate it as a see, but not a must-see destination.

The Royal Armouries Museum of Leeds is located beside a short canal that cuts around a low waterfall on the River Aire. There are locks on the canal. A rectangular indentation of water, the Leeds Docks, juts out from the canal. It’s quite a pretty area.

More pictures from in the Royal Armouries Museum and the River Aire near it:

Leeds City Square

Leeds City Square is recommended as one of the sees, not must-sees, in my walking tour app. The app says it’s a triangular square, oxymoronic though that may be. It’s not. At least, although it looks rectangular on a map, it’s a semicircular square in real life. That doesn’t beat the oxymoronic rap, does it?

A low, broken semicircular wall defines the back of the square. Eight statues of nymphs are mounted on pedestals on that wall. Between the wall and the street there’s a large equestrian statue of Edward, Prince of Wales, surnamed The Black Prince.

A former post office building defines the flat side of the semicircle. Four additional statues of standing people grace the front of that building, two by each of the two doors into the building. The former post office now has restaurants on the ground level. I’m not sure what else is inside.

It’s an attractive, lively non-square public square.

More pictures from Leeds City Square:

First Impressions of Leeds

I haven’t spent much time in Leeds so far, so I probably shouldn’t form any opinions yet, but I’ll share a first impression. I’d likely view Leeds more favourably if I hadn’t just spent a week in Edinburgh. Leeds is a much newer city than Edinburgh and, from what I’ve seen so far, doesn’t have even a small fraction of the character of Edinburgh.

That said, in my walk today, I passed some grand-looking oldish buildings and went through some lively and attractive pedestrianized streets. I passed by and through them serendipitously today. I might visit some of them again and find out more about them when I do more sightseeing.

I’m here for three nights. So, another two full days. We’ll see how it goes. I’m hopeful. Whenever I ask something of AI, I always say please. So I’m counting on it to be kind to me.