A great day today. The weather was just fantastic! Low to mid-twenties and not a cloud in the sky! And most welcome for my full day of sight-seeing in York. I caught the bus into town and then got a day ticket to York for 5 GBP. The bus ride from Leeds to York is just over an hour.
The city of York is pretty old. The town centre is still walled most of the way around, and you can actually walk on the walls! Apparently the ladies of the town needed somewhere to promenade so the Victorians built the walk. It’s not designed for Americans in most parts, because there’s no high fences to stop them toppling off and suing someone ;-).
My first destination in York was the Minster. It is just beautiful. It’s the largest gothic cathedral in Europe, north of the Alps. It’s impossible to get far enough away to get a full shot of it in any direction, unfortunately. The huge tennis-court-sized stained glass window is being repaired at the moment, so they only had a life-sized poster of it up (and the outside wall is covered in scaffolding, of course.
They were selling tickets for 8 GBP to see the Minster crypts and something else, plus another 5 GBP to walk to the top of the tower. I couldn’t figure out if the 8 GBP was to see the Minster as well as the crypts or if it was just for the crypts and the church was free, so I decided it meant the crypts and that the church was free. In any case, I decided not to bother with queuing for either and just walked in and looked around the church. There were areas where you could see the crypts below and they didn’t look all that interesting, so I didn’t think I was missing out. The Minster is huge, as you can see in the pictures above (note that the last one above is only of half of that side of the building! The stained glass windows inside were pretty impressive with just their sheer size:
I walked around the Minster:
And went into the Treasurer’s House (mainly because it was owned by the National Trust and I could get in for free), which was interesting enough. The owner of it had each room decorated in the styles of previous centuries. There was a nice outside garden too:
Next place to head for was The Shambles. This is where all the butchers shops were a couple of centuries ago (in 1850 there were still 26 of them!). I wandered around a bit before I found it, plus had lunch at the Starre Inn. Not bad fish and chips for 5.99. But don’t let them talk you into the bread and butter for 99p. Quite unnecessary! The Inn itself has some history and looks quite quaint. It doesn’t actually have a shop-front as such, only an alley for access:
More wandering in search of The Shambles:
The actual Shambles was quite interesting, as was the market behind it:
I decided to head down to the “Castle Area”. This was a museum complex plus Clifford’s Tower with attached parking lot:
I wandered off in search of a coffee, because I was getting tired. There were some pretty buildings around:
The city walls were still tempting me, so after refreshing myself with a coffee, I set off to the walls so I could walk some of the way around them. I had hoped to get good photos of the Minster from the walls, but that wasn’t possible, unfortunately. Ah well. It was interesting enough:
To get to the section of the wall closest to the Minster, I had the option to walk through Museum Park. This was very nice, with its ruins and ‘follies’. There were squirrels running around too, looking cute:
I walked back onto the wall and got a couple of photos of the Minster, but they were nothing great – trees and buildings in the way, so I turned around and walked back to the bus stop the way I’d come. The bus trip home was not very nice. The bus had an hour’s delay because of a ‘jumper’ – this wouldn’t have bothered me, except the man sitting in front of me stank so much.
I got home and didn’t bother with dinner or anything, just kept Barbara company. Last night in the smoke and sleeping on an exercise mat on the floor. Also the last night of free accommodation, though :-).
