Day 26 – Thursday 16 June 2016

Well, a reasonable sleep apart from a couple of missed phone calls during the night, then messagebank on the phone letting me know that I had missed the calls. Up early at 6am, though another late start today, we don’t leave until 8.30am, so very lazy to start with. Breakfast is nothing to write home about, nothing too exciting, adequate. We have certainly been spoiled by the European breakfasts. An overcast morning as we leave Stratford turning into heavy rain that is with us for a couple of hours as we drive north. As a result we can’t see very much at all, rain combined with the trees lining the motorway a fair bit. The rest stop roadhouse for morning tea has had part of its roof collapse during the night because of the heavy rain, so there is a section cordoned off. On the road again & as we get close to York the rain eases & by the time we pull up next to Clifford’s Tower in York the rain has stopped.

Our tour director takes us on a walking tour of the old part of York, inside the old city walls, starting from Clifford’s Tower, part of an original fortification on a small man-made hill built by William the Conqueror in 1068. There were some very tame Canadian Geese with their young goslings feeding on the grass below the tower. Our guide gave us a brief history of York, including Celts, Norse, Picts, Vikings, Romans, Normans, Angles & Saxons. York is at the junction of two strategic rivers, the Ouse & the Foss & has been continuously inhabited & fought over by at least all of those groups mentioned previously. We walk past the Yorvik Centre, the site of a relatively recent discovery of a Viking settlement in the centre of York. The next site we come to is a small square where executions by hanging occurred, marked by some pubs with notable names, one pub is called “The Last Drop”, another is called “The Three Legged Mare”, both referring to the gallows nearby.

We then turn & walk up a short street called “The Shambles” reputed to be the oldest original shopping street in Europe. This street was originally a street of butchers where live animals were slaughtered & butchered in the street. We can only imagine the noise, the smell & the blood & guts running down the street, plus the flies. Today it is a street full of old, quirky & quaint shops. We continue up the street & slowly the imposing twin towers of York Minster Cathedral come into view. It is very similar in style to Notre Dame that we visited just 2 days ago in Paris. The current York Minster was commenced in 1220 on the ruins of a number of previous churches on the same site & completed in 1472, over 250 years to build. There is restoration work continuing with scaffolding & a stone Mason’s hut at the side of the church. We don’t think the building is as ornate as Notre Dame. Inside we were disappointed as there was a lot of scaffolding, apparently they were going to conduct some form of musical performance & there was tiered seating erected, light & camera towers that detracted from the whole look of the inside. The fact that they wanted to charge 10 Pound admission each was the final decider.

From there we walked a short distance to the Petergate, one of the original Roman gates of the city & we climbed the stairs to walk around the top of some of the old wall of York. At the Monkgate we walked down a very narrow flight of stone stairs back to the road & continued exploring. There is even a small museum of some Roman Baths discovered under the cellar of one of the pubs.

The Merchant Adventurers Hall is a stunning timber framed building dating back to 1357 & around 655 years later is still in remarkable condition, obviously with additions, alterations & renovations over the years. We took an audio tour of this building & the history is fascinating, the Great Hall is the main part of the building & is a huge room with an unusual wooden framed roof truss structure, all from oak. Off this are some later additions, such as a committee room that contains furniture, collections of silver still in use today by the guild members & paintings that provide a glimpse into the lives of guild members over the years. There is an “Ëvidence Chest” on display dated 1673, it was used to store important documents. Under the hall is the Undercroft, used to house & help the sick & poor, used for this purpose until 1900. There is also a chapel at the end which is still under restoration after a metre of water flowed through it in floods last Boxing Day.

We walked back across towards the Ouse River & followed the street towards the War memorial Gardens where our coach was parked. It was only a short drive to our hotel next to York Racecourse. Dinner in the hotel restaurant where we had the opportunity to talk to more fellow travellers. Another enjoyable day, fortunately the rain held off during our walk & the temperature reached 22C this afternoon before a chill wind set in towards the late afternoon.

York is amazing, they still call things like in the Viking days, such as Ouse River, streets are called ‘’gate’’ e.g. Monkgate, the old fortified wall is called a “bar”, so the place you get drinks can only be called a “pub”. York is such a beautiful peaceful city but it’s blood curdling history through the centuries is shocking.