You can arrive in Chester by train and never start the car.

Arriving at Chester station, and the walk in

Chester station is about a fifteen-minute walk from the city centre, and the usual way in runs along City Road, Foregate Street, Eastgate Street and Bridge Street. It is a walk most people manage with a bag, but it is worth knowing the surface before you choose it: Eastgate Street and part of Bridge Street are pedestrianised and laid with historic sett, which is handsome and uneven underfoot and under wheels.

The station itself has step-free access to every platform, lifts, accessible toilets and a Changing Places toilet, and it is staffed from 03:00 to 01:00. Taxis wait outside, which is the simplest step-free way into the centre if the sett or the distance is not for you that day.

• About fifteen minutes on foot
• Uneven historic sett on part of the route
• Step-free access and lifts at the station
• Taxis outside, day and night

What is genuinely walkable once you are here

These are routed walks from a front door on Steele Street, inside the walls, rather than straight-line distances. The steps up onto the walls at the Newgate are three minutes away, and so are the Roman Gardens. The Rows and the Eastgate Clock are six, the river at the Old Dee Bridge is seven, and the Cathedral is eight.

Storyhouse — cinema, theatre and a late bar — is eleven minutes, which is the outer edge of what feels like nipping out. Almost everything a visitor comes to Chester for sits inside that ring, which is why a car spends most of a Chester week parked.

• Steps up to the walls, three minutes
• The Rows and the Eastgate Clock, six
• The river at the Old Dee Bridge, seven
• Chester Cathedral, eight

The weekly shop, the laundry and the ordinary week

A car-free week fails on the practical errands rather than the sights, so these are the ones worth knowing. The nearest Tesco Express is two minutes away and has a cash machine, and Waitrose is twelve minutes and is the better of the two for a full shop you intend to carry home.

For laundry beyond a washing machine, Handbridge Launderette is ten minutes and The Launderette on Garden Lane is fifteen, with service washes, dry cleaning and duvets. None of that needs a car, and none of it needs planning around opening hours you cannot reach.

• Tesco Express, two minutes, with a cash machine
• Waitrose, twelve minutes, for a full shop
• Launderettes at ten and fifteen minutes

Days out without hiring anything

Chester station is the reason a car-free stay here works better than in most small cities. Transport for Wales runs direct services to Llandudno on the North Wales coast in a little over an hour, to Shrewsbury in under an hour, and to Holyhead in about an hour and three quarters for the Dublin ferry. Liverpool is about an hour, and Leeds is roughly hourly and takes a little over two.

All of those are direct, which matters more than the raw time: a day out that needs no change is a day out you will actually take. Journey times move with the timetable, so check the operator before you travel rather than trusting a page.

• Llandudno, a little over an hour, direct
• Shrewsbury, under an hour, direct
• Liverpool, about an hour, direct
• Holyhead for the ferry, about 1 hr 45, direct

A longer stay is where this pays off

A weekend without a car is a novelty. A month without one is a saving and a simplification: no permit, no daily charge, no moving it for street cleaning, and no hire car sitting outside a house you can walk everywhere from.

The longer-stay page has the discount bands for leisure stays, the arrangements for company and NHS bookings, and the same walking, driving and rail times laid out side by side.