Yesteryear York

York City "Bootham" Entry Gate
see all photos »

This morning we both woke very tired. Joe is feeling slightly better, but decides that maybe he should stay away from food today just to be safe. After meeting our host and me enjoying an english breakfast, we checked-out at about 9am and headed for the Roman built city walls of York. After asking a local for directions, we headed to the nearby Bootham Gate. This is one of a handful of original gates through the city walls. Inside these walls, traffic is limited to delivery vehicles and local traffic only, along the cobblestone streets and lanes. The shops here look like they were built centuries ago.

York Minister - Gothic Building Side View
see all photos »

The second sight-seeing stop (after the entry gate), was the York Minister - the largest Gothic Cathederal north of the Alps. We decided to pay the admission fee and have a look inside. This place is enourmous and you lose count of the stained glass windows and interner spires and decorative sculptures. The Minister is also the resting place of people of old, with many and varied tombs, from large flat slabs on the ground, to actual size marble respite statues, to colourfully painted and guilded shrines.

Walking in the steps of Romans.

Minister Abbey - Front View
see all photos »

We then headed for the famous Shambles street, where the narrow laneways and crooked buildings house everything from sweet shops to leather goods and coffee lounges. It was once again very cold so I dove into first the local Starbucks for a hot caramel latte, then found a black cashmere skivy in a wollen shop for half price. This will shorely keep me warm if the weather gets colder as predicted.

Our next stop was the Jorvik Viking Centre. Admission here takes you through a time-warp back to 866 AD when the vikings took over the town and established their own community. We boarded a large capsule that seated 6 people and were driven through life-size scenes re-created from this viking time. The wax dummies were very life-like and a few were activated to be a carpenter in motion, or women talking with arm movements. Once off the "ride", we walked through the excavation centre, where information was displayed about the artifacts, bones and full skeletons amongst other items that were discovered when the foundations for the viking information centre were first being dug.

York Minister Abbey
see all photos »

We then headed for the Caste Museum, which shows re-creations of rooms and furniture ranging from 1600's through to 1950's. Histories of many things were also recounted, including the toilet, the washing machine and the refrigerator. Finally, we walked through a life-size town main street, where we could look in the street windows, or enter the coach and fire station or sweet shop. It was now 1pm and time to find a warm coffee shop. I picked up a real cornish pastry and we headed back to Starbucks to relax and use the ammenities.

A tomb inside the Minister
see all photos »

It was then a climb up the city wall stairs and a walk along one of the four remaining sections of the wall that once surrounded the entire city. The view out from the turrets and holes in the wall is impressive. The end of ths walk bring us back to Bootham Gate and we head back to our car. Its now 3pm, and with our destination plotted in the GPS, we have a estimated arrival time of 5:30 in Chester - North of Wales. The hope of arriving at this time was soon lost, as traffic came to a standstill, and for over an hour we crawled along at only 5km/hr. At 4:30pm we stopped at a motoway centre for a cuppa and pitstop. Back on the road the traffic was still slow at times, and we eventually closeby Chester around 6:30pm. As we drove through the town streets, I played chicken with small hares as they darted across the road. We turned into the laneway that housed the farm B&B, then it was me playing chicken with a huge tractor coming in the other direction - down a very narrow country road - eeek!

Internal Walls of the Minister
see all photos »

We eventually found the required driveway and was greeted by our hosts and their pussy-cat apple. We were shown our upstairs room and our prive downstairs loungeroom. After lugging in our gear, we headed out to the local pub, called "The Black Dog", where I enjoyed the Pie-of-the-day, and Joe tempted fate and went with a plain ham sandwich. We both enjoyed our selection, but Joe was exhausted and wanted to head straight back and go straight to bed. I decided to spend some time catching up on the last two days of Travel Blog. No updates from here though as the farm only has dial-up internet access, and there is no way these photos are going up over a modem link!! Sorry guys - you'll just have to wait.