Sheffield

The drive from York took longer than planned, again, as there was actually quite a lot of traffic and an accident on the M1 motorway. We eventually arrived at the Etruria House B&B we had booked. What a stark disappointment this was in comparison to our B&B in York. Old and dilapidated are the first words that come to mind. We got our bedroom, on the ground floor, and Jessica was led to her room on the first floor. We immediately discovered that they had built a shower/toilet area directly in to an existing bedroom in what was basically a closet. The door wouldn't shut properly. But most of all the room was absolutely freezing! There were 2 radiators in the room but the windows were single-glazed and all of the heat must have been escaping. We spent most of our time under the sheets... Jessica's room was much warmer but rather tiny. The toilet/shower area, on the landing, was disgustingly dirty and she didn't dare use it. She would came in to our room or we all used a cleaner toilet downstairs.

Eventually we walked in to Sheffield town centre. It was quite a nice, albeit cold and brisk, walk from the B&B to town and we were struck by both the cold and the hills... everywhere. Sheffield is basically a town built upon huge and roaming hills. You have to be in really good shape to get around this place. The city is actually quit big and spread out, with a pedestrian area, a touristy area and a huge area which is obviously devoted to the university students. This took up about half of the town. When we later learned how many students there were the reasoning became obvious. There are at least 20,000 undergrads at Sheffield University and there is another university in Sheffield (Sheffield Hallam) with at least another 20,000 undergrads. There are therefore about 50,000 university students (under- and post-grads) roaming around this place regularly.

We ended up eating in a pretty awful all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. But we got a pretty good feel for the university student life here in Sheffield. It can all be summed up by: Partying and drinking... everywhere!

On Wednesday we left the B&B, thankfully, and headed to the university which was holding its special open day for politics students who had already received an offer. Actually York was also holding their politics students' open day on exactly the same day and we had had to choose one or the other before coming. The Open Day was quite impressive with a tour all over the campus, a visit to some actual student accomodations (which Jessica loved) and finally some presentations by the politics department which were quite informative. Overall I think we all enjoyed it.

I have to admit that Sheffield was the one I was worried about. I had some pre-conceived notions that it was going to be a pretty rough and dirty city with a lower-than-average university campus. I was wonderfully reassured and proven wrong. The city is certainly quite dirty and some of the coal-coloured dirt on the front of many of the buildings looks centuries old. But the overall organisation of the city is quite impressive. The university itself is absolutely enormous, spread out over a huge campus and is entirely new and modern. Just about every building looks like it's been built in the last 6 or 7 years and most of them have been. They have put a lot of money and effort in to this place and it shows.

There were lots of presentations and demonstrations going on throughout the school and on campus which gave it a very lively and diverse feel. There were student union elections going on, campaigning in the university centre, charity bake sales, people in costumes and such...

We left Sheffield and headed back to Leamington and in the car tried to come up with the advantages and disadvantages of both universities (York and Sheffield) and realised it was almost impossible. They were very very different...