Day 35 - 15 September - York

We have been to York before - if you look back here you'll see the blog entry.  However, we didn't get to spend much time there, it was pouring with rain, and it was the day after I had hurt my ankle (and of course I discovered after our return to Australia that I had actually broken a bone in it, so no wonder it wasn't all that comfortable).  All things considered our time in York was not a high point of that holiday.

Today though I could at least walk, we only had about 6 drops of rain - this was the first rain since Hastings and it had stopped by the time we got our umbrellas out.  And of course we had much more time today.

We started the day at the Jorvik Viking Centre.   We had pre-booked our tickets for 11am because you read lots of reports of people waiting for ages in queues here.  Turns out this was a brilliant plan because when we showed up at about 10:20 to ask about collecting our tickets they let us straight in - in front of the queue and without having to wait until our 11am time-slot, which gave us more time for other things later.   Some people have posted reviews of this place saying that it's cheesy or not worth the money, but we were actually quite impressed, not so much with the ride (which is pretty cheesy actually) but with the exhibits and displays that you see after the ride.

We then went to Clifford's Tower, which is pretty much all that's left of the old York Castle.

This is the tower - anyone can walk up the steps but to go inside and right up to the top you have to pay.  However, since it's an English Heritage site our membership got us in for free.  

This is a model of the tower and Castle.

This is a view of the inside of the tower, from part-way up the stairs to the upper viewing area.

View of York from the top of the tower, showing why it's worth making the climb!

View of York Minster from the top of the tower.

After this we wandered back towards the city and found a really nice place for lunch where we both ate far too much (what a surprise!)

We then walked through the Shambles and on to the York Minster.  This time we did a tour, run by a volunteer guide.  It lasted for about an hour and we learned far more about the Cathedral and its history than I could ever write down here.  It's a fascinating place and well worth a visit or two.  

Just one of the many interesting things we learned about:

If you look closely you'll see that this isn't a window - it's a blind with a picture of a window on it.  This is the Great East Window which is currently being preserved (renewed, new lead etc) while repair work is also being done on the stones around the window which have degenerated to the point where a large number of them need to be replaced.  The blind isn't actually as big as the real window - they couldn't find any company that could print a picture of the actual size, which is around the size of a tennis court.
The blind was made as a condition of getting some funding from the National Lottery which has provided around £10,500,000 of the £18,000,000 needed for the restoration - the National Lottery required that people should be able to see something while the restoration work is going on.  As well as the blind, the church has built an enclosed viewing area where 5 of the real panels from the window are on display and this is simply amazing - they're so colourful and detailed they truly left me speechless.  This was a brilliant opportunity; in a few year's time all the glass will be back where it belongs and although the overall sight will no doubt be amazing, the chance to see some of the panels up close was just brilliant.  Here's a picture of one of those 311 panels:

Once we were finished at the Cathedral we started to walk back towards the railway station.  Here's a small part of the walls - we didn't walk all around them as we did in Chester.

While we were walking back to  the station, we saw a Google Street View car, presumably filming.  I've never seen one before.

So, if you're looking at Google Street view of Museum Street or Station Road in York sometime in the future, and you see a fat lady in a purple top and black skirt - that's probably me!

By the time we got back to the Railway Station it was around 4:30.  We had thought about going to the National Railway Museum which is in the railway precinct but we had pretty much run out of time, so instead we got train back to Manchester.

The train trips today were both quite comfortable - first class tickets on TransPennine trains.  Tomorrow we're going to Leeds, but with Northern Rail so back to a long slow all-stations ride.  That's not a bad thing though; we expect the train to be pretty much empty when we board because we're going against the peak hour traffic both ways, so it's a nice way to relax before and after all the walking.