YORK: York Minster, Afternoon tea!

A rendering of York Minster from one of their info videos.
'Minster' means a sort of mother church that establishes 
other, offshoot churches. York is also a cathedral.
Note the octagonal Chapter House left of center.

 Sa 21 May

The days are starting to feel like they are flying by...but in fact we still have a third of our vacation left. Today we drove the short distance from Helmsley to York, to return the car by noon (the car rental place closes early on Saturdays). Fortunately we were able to check-in early at our B&B (~11:15), leave our luggage there, drive to return the car, then walk back to the B&B. It's nice when theoretical logistics actually work out. 

The last bit of driving near our B&B, running a gauntlet
between parked cars. This is theoretically two-way.

I'm also really happy/relieved that everything went ok with driving. I could say more about the ups and downs of driving, and maybe I will post-trip, when I plan to reflect on a bunch of things I haven't gotten to, like My Favorite Signs. Or food. Or interactions with Brits.

York Minster

After the car return, we had the afternoon free and Doug booked us 12:45pm admit tickets to the York Minster, a famous cathedral in town. I didn't know much about it, and I was a little afraid I would feel overdosed, since we've seen a lot of churches. No worries, the York Minster topped everything we've seen so far, and then some. It is apparently one of the largest churches of its kind in all of northern Europe, and it took over 240 years to build (c.1230-1472). The pictures I include here only give a very tiny taste of what it's like.

Our tour guide. Can you spot Doug?

Note the blue and yellow prayers for Ukraine at lower right

First of all, it is enormous. The ceiling heights are breathtakingly high; for instance the central tower is 235 feet high (that's about 22 stories high), and you can look up into it. As the tour guide pointed out, you can't even appreciate that the tiny-looking tower stained glass windows are the same size as the long ones below; they look much smaller because they are so far away! 

A view up the central tower. If you
look at the top picture of York Minster
you can see the tower windows are 
long. Here they look tiny and short.

There are so many different spaces in the church as well, and each is filled with different kinds of detail and statuary. For instance there's an octagonal Chapter House, with custom-made floor tiles. There's a shrine to St. Nicholas, where all the seat cushions in that area represent The Twelve Days of Christmas. Everywhere you look there are more marvels to behold. We took an entertaining tour which illuminated some of the history and restoration work going on; it was well worth it.

A panorama that catches 7 of the 8 windows in the Chapter
House (the 8th window was behind me).

"Seven swans a-swimming..."

We also visited the Undercroft Museum in the basement, which is a surprisingly extensive museum about the history of the site before the current building: there were once Roman barracks, and after that, there was an older Norman style church, until it was rebuilt and greatly enlarged to be the Gothic cathedral which it is today. 

There is also information about the current church and its work, and its relationship to the monarchy. One of the interesting exhibits in that section had information about staff like the cleaners, who keep the church clean, and the masons, who constantly address fixes to the stonework. We were at York Minster until 4:40 or so, almost 4 hours.

Afternoon Tea

With the hearty English breakfasts we've been having (at our B&Bs), we often skip lunch but find ourselves a bit peckish in the mid to late afternoon. I was quite hungry by the time we left York Minster, and I'd also been having a hankering for trying out the classic British tea experience. As luck would have it, while many tea places require a reservation, we happened by a place that offers classic cream tea or afternoon tea all day long, as well as regular food options, too. The hostess said she could seat us after a short wait. So we got in the 'queue' and fairly soon were seated.

It was a fortuitous choice, because it was clearly a place that knew how to do tea, but it was more casual than the places were you have to make a reservation for a particular 'sitting'. We each ended up with a lovely afternoon tea: 4 savory finger sandwiches, a large scone, 3 lovely desserts, plus of course, tea. I noticed that of the five tables near us, four of them were having tea, too—three the same kind of more elaborate tea as ours, and one was having a simpler cream tea (tea and scones only).

Next Post

There's a number of possibilities for the next couple of York days—walking the city walls, a replica of a Victorian street, a railroad museum. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

By the way, helpful Beloved Son tells me that the strange animal pictured at the end of yesterday's post is a specimen of Highland cattle.

What is wrong with this sculpture, can you tell?

Doug looking very picturesque by the window in
our top floor room. Note the lovely blue wallpaper.
Every place we've stayed has had wallpaper.