Our route from Colorado Springs took us a little over an hour and we arrived in Denver to find our hotel, for the next 2 nights, drop our luggage and return the hire car.

For our stay in Denver we would be exploring on foot.

Unfortunately we needed to return the car to the depot at Denver International Airport, a massive, sprawling testament to aviation modernity located about 15 miles from the city. The RDT light railway system, returned us painlessly to Denver Union Station and gave us an opportunity for an initial exploration of the lower downtown (“LoDo”) area on our way back to the hotel.

The centre of the “LoDo” is 16th Street, a 1 mile long pedestrianised street of restaurants, bars and retail outlets. For the benefit of the weary of foot a continuous procession of free to use, hop-on-hop-off electric shuttle buses provides transport for visitors and, locals and shelter for the homeless.

As a city, Denver is a vast sprawling place, beginning some 17 miles south on the I25. The downtown area is quite compact and we began the day’s exploration with a visit to the Capitol building. Rumours that a particular step marked the official elevation of the Mile High City (5,280 feet) appeared to be erroneous, or at least, if true, then not commemorated in any way that we were able to find.

Our next cultural stop was the Denver Public library, a modernistic building, buried in the concrete and glass canyons of the legal and financial district. Our purpose here was to visit the exhibitions of public art located amongst the 7 floors. To my untrained eye most of the paintings seemed to be painted in the “naïve” style of Edward Hopper (Nighthawks) and Grant Wood (American Gothic) but the most thought provoking work was an installation based around the “Rocky Flats” environmental disaster, something I had been unaware of but now high on the reading agenda, starting with Kristen Iveson's "Full Body Burden".

In short this was a Denver based, Plutonium horror story where Erin Brockovich meets Karen Silkwood.

Private business, in collusion with Government, put profits above environmental and human considerations…who ever suspected such a thing could happen!!!

After lunch we made our way into a more residential area of the downtown area, across the Millennium Bridge and into Confluence Park, a green space which runs alongside the Platte River.

With weary feet we returned back to base, via the 16th Street shuttle bus, under a sky growing heavy with threatening clouds.

The first rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning gave early warning of the short but intense storm that was to follow.

This was the first proper rain we had seen since arriving on these shores (how very English).