York. What a lovely place, once you've navigated the terribly busy one way street circuit, found a park and come to expect parking could cost more than 2 pints at the Pub! Nonetheless that's the price you'll pay to visit town who's tourism industry is constantly growing. After finding a B&B within 15 minutes walk of the old town hence no more car concern we were set.
One of my funniest memories of York was making the decision to walk out of the information centre into the pouring rain. It wad so heavy cars had stopped driving and the usually busy streets were completely vacant. Like a ghost town! How naive we were to think £1 umbrellas would stand up to the deluge... After having them blown inside out a few times and now considerably wetter than we were 2 minutes prior we made a bee line for the ever present Minster (not more than 150 meters). Our ever growing awareness of good photo opportunities (generally the main criteria is for it to be free of random lurching people) soon had me out in the torrential rain trying to make a positive from the wet weather - not a person in sight. Got marginally wet but I'd bet it's the only way to snare a crowd free pic of the jaw dropping Minster.
Did a very informative tour of the York Minster (aka St. Peters) which I feel will suffice for the rest of my life looking at churches! Went for nearly 2 hours! As I say, it was interesting enough: 3 interesting facts;
1. Large stain glass window (as big as a doubles tennis court and amazing intricate) cleaned every 125 years at a cost of 20 million pounds! It's presently being cleaned and will take 10 years! Incitement they clean one window a year on average and there are 120 original gothic windows in the Minster. The windows and stone supporting them (in the case of the large window presently out) is all removed, lead beading removed, then all replaced carefully, and new stone cut as needed. HUGE job. Equally HUGE cost.
2. One of the statues has two right feet! Apparently the master sculptor did most of the statue then asked his apprentice to do another right foot (oops! He meant left foot!) which his apprentice diligently did!
3. The Minster has it's own police to keep things in order!?! They seemed to be doing a lot of sitting around drinking tea when I saw them! I think they're scared of another fire being lit (which has happened a few times here)?!?
A town walk/tour with the canny but limping Fred was also quite informative. He spent a lot of his time discussing the big impact that the Romans had on York. Quite amazing how advanced they were back then with sewage and water systems etc etc. He also enlightened us to the origins of union jack (english + scottish flags) and the coming of the Anglo-Saxons.
The Shambles was another good place to see with the rain pouring as the crowd were thin also. It's buildings converging towards the top more evidence of seemingly obscure taxes (taxed on floor space of lowest floor, so to minimize tax simply build a larger floor on top and have it overhang the 1st one and so on as you build more levels... Perhaps not the safest of schemes but tax efficient!).
York was also the place we discovered haddock and chips could be served with scraps?! What's more, the scraps part was at no additional cost?! Hard to believe considering you'll pay to get a teaspoon sized serve of tomato sauce. Anyway, the scraps as we discovered after ordering were the little bits of loose deep fried batter from the fish sprinkled over the chips when serving... Oily delicacy we were assured by another young english customer who was surprised we'd never heard of them before! We ate them but as they say, you don't get something for nothing; I'm sure one way or another those scraps will catch up with us!
After the excitement of York we ventured further north to county Durham. It was time to meet (meet for me, catch up for Manda) Tom's Aunty Win in High Etherly. We made it to Bishop Auckland no worries but had a little more trouble finding her house there... Problem being that it wasn't in Bishop Auckland. After consulting google maps courtesy of Maccas and 10 minutes driving we arrived at 14 Auckland View, High Etherly, Bishop Auckland to a very excited Win! We had the most terrific 4 nights with Win; talking, eating (beef casserole with puff pastry topping, wine, cheese and crackers, port, cooked breaky, and some wickedly good Yorkshire puddins filled with pork gravy and mint sauce!) and drinking cup after cup of tea!
Win was in great form and hopefully she enjoyed having us as much as we enjoyed being with her!
Durham cathedral with St bede got a quick look given we'd spent hours at York Minster only days ago. Interestingly they advertise it costs £60000 per week to run it. Hardly small change! No archbishop here (the north's is actually at York Minster, south's at Cantderburry) but still an impressive and interesting building.
The Durham Castle was closed for renovations but surely it isn't much more than the other castles we've visited.
A good hearty surf and turf dinner with Win's Gerald and Pam and their son Paul at the golf club (where coincidntly Gerald is the club captain) was just the trick after months of fast, nutrient lacking but calorie rich food. Black Sheep Ale pints (a local drop) pretty good!
In other news, we managed a quick catchup with Floss (Danny's sister, Manda's great Aunty I guess you could say) in Newcastle. After initially thinking we mightn't have been able to arrange it, it all fell into place! We did well, squeezing the 45 minute trip up to Newcastle after mass and a delicious lunch with Pam and Win in Bishop Auckland. We even managed to have some photos and the speeches from Danny's farewell emailed to us and printed which we gave to Floss. Yet again it was a pleasure to meet more of the extended family and for Manda to catchup with so many of them!
Hadrians wall was the last item on the agenda before we headed into Scotland and after following it roughly in the car for 30 miles we finally got to the site of a past Roman fortress on the wall so ventured in for a look! The wall was quite impressive spanning basically the whole distance from east to west with the purpose of keeping the Scots out of the then Roman occupied England. After buying tickets and later returning them, as it wasn't necessary to buy an entry pass because you could see in no worries from the adjoining sheep paddock, we had our obligatory photos and were back on the road to invade our last country, Scotland!
One of my funniest memories of York was making the decision to walk out of the information centre into the pouring rain. It wad so heavy cars had stopped driving and the usually busy streets were completely vacant. Like a ghost town! How naive we were to think £1 umbrellas would stand up to the deluge... After having them blown inside out a few times and now considerably wetter than we were 2 minutes prior we made a bee line for the ever present Minster (not more than 150 meters). Our ever growing awareness of good photo opportunities (generally the main criteria is for it to be free of random lurching people) soon had me out in the torrential rain trying to make a positive from the wet weather - not a person in sight. Got marginally wet but I'd bet it's the only way to snare a crowd free pic of the jaw dropping Minster.
Did a very informative tour of the York Minster (aka St. Peters) which I feel will suffice for the rest of my life looking at churches! Went for nearly 2 hours! As I say, it was interesting enough: 3 interesting facts;
1. Large stain glass window (as big as a doubles tennis court and amazing intricate) cleaned every 125 years at a cost of 20 million pounds! It's presently being cleaned and will take 10 years! Incitement they clean one window a year on average and there are 120 original gothic windows in the Minster. The windows and stone supporting them (in the case of the large window presently out) is all removed, lead beading removed, then all replaced carefully, and new stone cut as needed. HUGE job. Equally HUGE cost.
2. One of the statues has two right feet! Apparently the master sculptor did most of the statue then asked his apprentice to do another right foot (oops! He meant left foot!) which his apprentice diligently did!
3. The Minster has it's own police to keep things in order!?! They seemed to be doing a lot of sitting around drinking tea when I saw them! I think they're scared of another fire being lit (which has happened a few times here)?!?
A town walk/tour with the canny but limping Fred was also quite informative. He spent a lot of his time discussing the big impact that the Romans had on York. Quite amazing how advanced they were back then with sewage and water systems etc etc. He also enlightened us to the origins of union jack (english + scottish flags) and the coming of the Anglo-Saxons.
 |
| Old remains of church from Roman era York |
 |
| The overhanging Shambles |
After the excitement of York we ventured further north to county Durham. It was time to meet (meet for me, catch up for Manda) Tom's Aunty Win in High Etherly. We made it to Bishop Auckland no worries but had a little more trouble finding her house there... Problem being that it wasn't in Bishop Auckland. After consulting google maps courtesy of Maccas and 10 minutes driving we arrived at 14 Auckland View, High Etherly, Bishop Auckland to a very excited Win! We had the most terrific 4 nights with Win; talking, eating (beef casserole with puff pastry topping, wine, cheese and crackers, port, cooked breaky, and some wickedly good Yorkshire puddins filled with pork gravy and mint sauce!) and drinking cup after cup of tea!
Win was in great form and hopefully she enjoyed having us as much as we enjoyed being with her!
Durham cathedral with St bede got a quick look given we'd spent hours at York Minster only days ago. Interestingly they advertise it costs £60000 per week to run it. Hardly small change! No archbishop here (the north's is actually at York Minster, south's at Cantderburry) but still an impressive and interesting building.
 |
| Durham Cathedral inside courtyard |
A good hearty surf and turf dinner with Win's Gerald and Pam and their son Paul at the golf club (where coincidntly Gerald is the club captain) was just the trick after months of fast, nutrient lacking but calorie rich food. Black Sheep Ale pints (a local drop) pretty good!
In other news, we managed a quick catchup with Floss (Danny's sister, Manda's great Aunty I guess you could say) in Newcastle. After initially thinking we mightn't have been able to arrange it, it all fell into place! We did well, squeezing the 45 minute trip up to Newcastle after mass and a delicious lunch with Pam and Win in Bishop Auckland. We even managed to have some photos and the speeches from Danny's farewell emailed to us and printed which we gave to Floss. Yet again it was a pleasure to meet more of the extended family and for Manda to catchup with so many of them!
Hadrians wall was the last item on the agenda before we headed into Scotland and after following it roughly in the car for 30 miles we finally got to the site of a past Roman fortress on the wall so ventured in for a look! The wall was quite impressive spanning basically the whole distance from east to west with the purpose of keeping the Scots out of the then Roman occupied England. After buying tickets and later returning them, as it wasn't necessary to buy an entry pass because you could see in no worries from the adjoining sheep paddock, we had our obligatory photos and were back on the road to invade our last country, Scotland!
 |
| Small section of wall |
No comments:
Post a Comment