YORK 2: City wall, city walk, a railroading attic

Green lines show city wall.
We are staying at a B&B outside the wall, but not far from it.

Su 22 May 

City wall

One of the things York is known for, besides York Minster, is its city wall. Built in the medieval era, in some places next to or on top of an earlier Roman city wall, the wall still surrounds most of the core city. 

Many cities were walled in medieval times, but many city walls eventually came down to make room for new development, and to open up traffic flows in and out of cities. The UK still has a number of preserved city walls though, and York has one of the best known, best preserved ones. Cities were encircled with defensive walls in other countries, too—we have visited Xian in China, and actually did a bike circuit atop its impressive, wide city wall. 

We were curious to see what York's wall is like—the first thing we did in the morning, after breakfast, was to walk along the wall. It's much narrower along the top than Xian's was, but at least it has a handy railing (though Doug later was on a section with no railing!). It's a nice way to view the city. The walk reminded me of New York's High Line park, which was not a wall originally, but an elevated train line. However it's similar in that you're also viewing the city from a height and you can walk for uninterrupted stretches without dealing with traffic.

City walk

Next, we met up in front of the York Art Gallery for a free 2-hour city walking tour, run by volunteer guides. Bath had free city walking tours, too, and we'd gone on a very good one there. Our York guide talked to us about the history of the city, including showing us yet another abbey ruin, also destroyed after Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries in the 1530's. Henry sure was one destructive fellow! We saw other historical buildings, an outdoor area where stone masons work on repairing/replacing parts of York Minster, and finally, the Shambles. The Shambles was originally the street in York where butchers plied their trade, and the street could get quite messy as unwanted bits of meat/blood/guts got thrown into a street gutter. Hence the current usage of the word to mean a place is a mess!

Can you spot which picture shows architecture similar to that in Bath?

Lots of trains, and a railroading attic

We spent the afternoon at York's Railroad Museum. It's a good, impressive museum, but we've also seen Sacramento's Railroad museum, which we felt was even better in some ways. However one distinctive aspect of this museum is that it has an area called "Open Store," which is basically like a storehouse of all sorts of collected train paraphernalia, but open to the public. It was wild: it has train signage, signaling equipment, train and train station furniture, train silverware/dishes, and random busts and memorials. It also has lots of model trains. 

In the steam locomotive photo, look for Doug standing by it, to understand just how big the engine is.

A section of the Chunnel tunnel

You can reserve to have afternoon tea in this train

The problem with the statue

Reprised here is the photo of the York Minster statue I asked about yesterday. The tour guide pointed out to us that the statue has two right feet! Apparently the sculptor had done the right foot (the one on your left as you look at the photo), and asked an assistant to complete the other foot. The assistant just copied the first foot, so the statue ended up with two right feet. Below is a close-up photo of Doug's that shows more clearly that the statue's left foot is really a right foot!

Just checking

Vaccination rates in the UK

One of the best things about this trip has been feeling so free from COVID worry. I decided I should really check up on England's COVID stats to see how warranted this relaxed state is. England's stats do look quite good; all the pertinent numbers (# of cases, # of hospitalizations) have shown a continuing decline in the past 7 days. By contrast, our home county of San Mateo is showing a rising trend in its stats, even though the overall numbers are still relatively low right now. 

Of course, vaccination uptake is probably the single biggest reason for UK's success. The chart shows UK's stats. Comparable numbers for the US are 78%, 66%, and 31%.

At one of our breakfasts in Keswick,  one couple said that they had gotten COVID, but it wasn't too bad—comparable to a cold. They had been vaccinated though, which probably helped make their cases less severe. We mentioned going out on walks during the height of COVID, and the others said things were completely locked down here in the beginning—you couldn't even go out.

Next post

Tomorrow is our last full day in York. 

Like Bath, York has many, many cute stores, often catering to the tourist trade. One thing I've liked about the stores, though, is that most do seem to be small, independent business, vs. chains. Often they're very specialized, like this one dedicated to rubber stamps (there was a store in Keswick dedicated to selling slate). 

We loved this couple in front of us;
they have coordinated outfits on

Doug's photo, a no-railing section of wall

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.

HELMSLEY: Lots of driving, ocean, a scar, abbey ruins

We went from E.Keswick to F.Far Arnsdale (to see
the Atlantic Ocean) to G.Gorsdale Scar, to H.Helmsley

Fr 20 May 2022

Driving through the countryside

We spent much of today's rainy day driving through the English countryside, on the eventual way to Helmsley. I think Doug deserves a medal for his driving today. I thought it was already hair-raising enough to be on the left-side of the road in general, and to cross opposing traffic on right turns instead of on left turns. Today's driving on tiny country roads took my road anxiety up a notch (and that's just as a  passenger). 

This photo gives some sense of the narrow 
clearance; some roads were narrower than this...

Imagine, you are on a tiny, single-lane road, between immovable stone fences, going at a reasonable clip (~30mph) around curves and over hills. You never know when all of a sudden a car will appear, coming right at you. You each squeeze over as far as you can to your side of the road, and fortunately (for us, today) manage to just pass by each other with a few inches to spare. Sometimes, wisely, one car stops until the other one has gone safely by. I totally understand now why most English cars are so small! 

A few roads were so narrow that they provided passing pull-outs every now and then, to help cars get by each other. We simply lucked out on those roads, with having no traffic, and never had to resort to trying to find the pull-outs. But in general, there's not convenient places to pull off of these roads—as I mentioned, in many areas there's a STONE fence on each side of the road, so you can't simply pull off the road if you want to stop for some reason. 

On the other hand, the English countryside is lovely—very green, and full of sheep and stone fences. I really enjoyed all the crazy town names; I'd hoped to list some for you, but only have time for one now:

Ocean

Doug had a hankering to at least glimpse the ocean from England, so we took a detour down from the Lake District to go to Far Arnsdale for a quick glimpse of the Atlantic. It was a bit disappointing, I think for Doug, though we both dipped our hands in the water, to touch the ocean. And I got to use some nifty pay toilets there.

Gorsdale Scar

From the coast, Doug next drove us to see the Gorsdale Scar, an impressive limestone ravine with two waterfalls spilling into a stream. He thought we should see something in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, plus it was also a good way to break up the driving.

Abbey ruins: Rievaulx, Byland

We barely made it to the Rievaulx Abbey ruins before closing (actually we were one minute late but they took pity on us and let us in). The Rievaulx and Byland Abbeys were both started in the 12th century, for Cistercian orders of monks. They were clearly once beautiful, majestic buildings, but both were vacated and largely destroyed during the years after King Henry VIII's Suppression in 1538. The first four photos are of Rievaulx, the next four are of Byland (the sun came out briefly at Rievaulx, then it got cloudy again). They were a sad reminder of a very different time.

Kudos to Doug

I want to put in a good word for all of Doug's planning and logistical arrangements! It takes a lot of work to figure out what to do and where to stay, if you're on your own and not part of a group tour. At least now there's Google maps to help with the navigating, but it's still a lot of work to make all the itinerary choices. He's done a wonderful job, and it's thanks to his efforts that I have the time and energy to write this blog. (Rick Steve should get a shoutout, too—we use his guidebook a lot.)

Next Post

Tomorrow we make the short trip to nearby York and return the car by noon. The rest of the trip, going to London after sightseeing in York, will be by train. I will be both relieved and sorry to part with our little orange Vauxhall stick shift!

Not sure what these are, but there were two of them,
right by the road!