A short walk to a bigger boat.

I should tell you that the next few blogs will be as much an advert for Hull as it is about what we have been up to. We have gone home, about 6 miles, but are at the boat just about every day to check and to show folk round etc. We thought Macy the Cat would prefer to be in the garden than on a pontoon too.

On our next day in Hull, Sunday, we decided to see if we could get on a tour of the 'Arctic Corsair' and set off towards the museum quarter. Alongside Junction or Princess Dock is the Establishment of Trinity House. This started out in 1369 as the Guild of the Holy Trinity and then over the years morphed into Trinity House when it amalgamated with the Shipman's Guild in 1457 and became a maritime organisation. Mainly to look after widows and orphans etc. It later became the agency in charge of navigation between Flamborought Head and Winterton Ness and the Humber and licencing pilots. A school was opened in 1785 in the grounds and a new building opened in 1842, and this was the entrance.

This is the chapel of Trinity House that was also built in 1842. The photographs show you that the lads at the school had a uniform to wear. The school moved out of old building here in 2013 and took over another building in the town centre.

The dilapidated, non historic, school buildings were demolished and the area made into a public space that can be used for events etc, or a car park. With it's connection to the sea, Zebedee's Yard, named after an old headmaster, was felt a good place for the Fisherman's memorial. It is quite an incredible piece as it was designed by the son of an ex trawlerman and fabricated here. It has lights and sound and was paid for by subscription. The flowers are held in ship's bow shapes that are sponsored, as are the rivets. It is well worth a look.

The main throughfare to the Old Town is Whitefriargate (or White'fr'gate in Hull). All the land to the south is owned by Trinity House today and this provides the revenue for their many charitable concerns now. There are many beautiful buildings that they built, including the Neptune Hotel, now Boots, but if you look up!?  I thought I would put a newer building's photo here. This is a beautiful Art Deco building of 1934 which was designed and built for British Home Stores.

This is a detail of the lovely Portland stone old National Westminster Bank building on Silver Street, that was designed by Smith and Brodick and erected in 1873. It is now a nice restaurant and bar.

A little further down Silver Street is this above street level, and missed by many. 1848 George Moore Garrick, Master. This was designed by famous Hull architect Cuthbert Brodick who is well known for his buildings in Leeds, but this is only one of two left in Hull. George Garrick was the Master of Charterhouse, and ancient and religious establishment in Hull that owned this plot from the 15th Century until very recently. Garrick was the Master from 1847 to 1849 when he died aged 48.

On the corner of Silver Street and Low Gate is this logo on an old bank building. The beehive is a symbol of industry and was adopted by Lloyds bank following the theft of some of there bank notes. As most people couldn't read they decided to put a logo on so that people would know whose they were! Their present logo of the black horse came to them from a goldsmiths, Humphrey Stokes of Lombard Street in London that thyey bought in 1884. They then started using their emblem, the black horse. Mind you this building was from 1912 so it took a good while for the whole organisation to take it on.

Not a very good photo of Hepwrth's Arcade. It is unusual for an arcade as it has a dog leg in it. It was opened in 1899 and a few years later Tom Spencer of Marks and Spencer fame opened one of his first bazaars in three shops here. Today it is known as a place of independent shops, and especially a good old fashioned joke shop, Dinsdale's. You can also access the covered market from inside.

I don't know anything about this wooden moulding on a shop front on Silver Street, but it has a touch of Grinling Gibbons about it. I wonder if it was a game shop! Not something you see everyday.

Hull was a walled town, but in the 1700's they started replacing the walls with docks. This helped to preserve the Medieval street plan within the old town, which is very rare in the UK. This is one of the streets that ruuns from the High Street to Lowgate at the heart of the Old Town, Bishop's Lane.

High Street was the centre of activity for the Old Town. The merchants had their big houses here that ran down to the River Hull, where they had their own wharves and warehouses. One is still as it was, William Wilberforce's birth place is now a museum. This is the Pacific Club that was built in 1899. Hull had become the centre of the seed crushing industry and so paints, oils, fertilisers etc etc. Each trader had an office that people would have to travel round and round. They decide to build an exchange where each could trade in good northern light without leaving the place. Joseph Rank, founder of Rank Hovis Macdougal would have come here too. It was important until after WWII. It then became a club for well to do before going under. It was saved and has housed the council, the police authority, Police and Crime Commissioner and the City of Culture team.

Further down High Street is the old Corn Exchange, built in 1901. I love the building that was later used for a museum and is still part of the museum complex today.

I'm not sure where the gates came from as they are dated from Lincoln in 1855, but I really like the fact that the corn traders office signs can still be seen outside the door way.

We arrived at the museum to find that we could just tag on to the 1200 tour that was just starting. These tours are free and take a bit over an hour and are led by ex trawlermen. Check before going though as they only run two or three times a week. The Artic Corsair is the last surviving side winder trawler, where the trawl gear was towed over the side, rather than the stern, and the net recovered over the side too. She was built up the River Hull in Beverley in 1960.

The accommodation was a real step back for me as the smell was just as the ships I sailed on and even the fittings were very similar. The ship was usually away for three weeks fishing and in Hull for three days before sailing again to the northern fisheries of the White Sea or Barents Sea, in 1973 she broke the world record for landing cod and haddock from the White Sea. A lot of the equipment on the bridge was just as my early ships.

The green boards is the fish pound where the net's cod end would be lifted aboard after a tow of three hours. From here they would be gutted and then flung in the fish washer, the silver thing with the chute, before passing down below where they were carefully laid out in ice in species type etc. The trawl winch was just in front of the wheelhouse.

Just for you engineers here is the engine thing! Apparently it is a Mirlees 6 cylinder and pushed her along at a creditable 15 knots. She was bought by Hull City Council in 1993 and was restored by volunteers. She is not in very good nick now, but there are plans for her to move a little further up the River Hull to an old dry dock, that was actually the lock entrance to the first enclosed dock in Hull, The Dock, or Queen's Dock as it became, opened in 1778.

My best advice when visiting Hull, or anywhere actually, would be too lock up. Everywhere has shops, but if you look above them you usually see much more interesting things.