York

We woke this morning with the best weather we have had since we arrived in England. It was sunny. Although we have seen the sun pretty much everyday, it usually isn’t until 2 or 3 in the afternoon and doesn’t usually stick around for too long. It has rained on us every single day since we arrived in England as well. So for us to wake with such gorgeous weather, it ended up taking us longer to get going. We ended up leaving for the city of York around noon. It seems that most of the campsites in England play host to various animals. Rabbits and ducks are pretty much the norm, and once in awhile a new creature we haven’t seen before. The drive to York was uneventful, but it was through the remainder of the Peak district. This section was the most barren of them all. I have to admit, if we had more time, it would have been a great place to go for hikes. The campground we intended on staying at had a bogus address. We ended up in a very posh neighborhood just outside the ring road surrounding York. I made the decision to go to a Caravan Club site (mentioned in our European Camping Guide book) despite the fact that we would pay a non membership fee of £7. The location of this campsite couldn’t be better. It is right on the river and only a 20 minute walk to the tourist office. It took us no time to walk around York’s city centre, as it is so small. We learned of a free tour and decided to take it the following morning at 10. We had also planned on visiting Scarborough via the Hogwarts express steam engine train. Once again, traveling off season has its downsides. This old train only does the run in the summer months. With this off of our schedule we had much more time to explore York at a leisured pace. Maybe this is why we actually missed the morning tour by 10 minutes. We had already seen the York Minster the previous day and decided it was a good place to start our walk today before the 2 pm tour. I spotted a market on the way to the tour meeting point and decided to bring Julie there in hopes that she would find something to buy. To our luck, she was able to purchase a skirt, shirt and light jacket to wear on warm days such as today. Today was another bright sunny day, with lots of warmth. Many people walked around town proudly showing their sun burns. After the market we made our way to the Jorvik Viking center. Underneath York’s streets a Viking village was discovered and now they have a tour to simulate the village’s way of life. This is a slow ride through the village streets as they assume they would have been, complete with sounds and smells. This was a discounted tour because of our EH membership. It was interesting to view the Viking skeleton with all its battle scars but even discounted, it wasn’t really worth it. Julie told me it was more for kids. We packed our lunch today and had a picnic of sorts in a park just outside the York Minster. We laid in the sun for about an hour before making our way to the tour meeting point. While we were waiting a lady started a conversation with us, turns out she was from Halliburton and visits England every year. She joined us, along with two young women for the tour. Our guide was a retired history teacher and had volunteered to do these tours for the past few years. There are over 60 volunteers that do these tours. For a walking tour, we managed to walk only one small section of York’s centre, but the areas we did walk were all the old areas. It was extremely informative and history packed (For example; Mel Gibson, a.k.a.William Wallace, never sacked York although our guide only used the actors name). The tour ran the length it said it would, but for some reason, it felt like it was dragging on. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt this, as the other people in the tour bolted as soon as it was over. We did enjoy the tour. I guess we are just used to more energetic people doing the tour and much more walking. York is a beautiful city and we really enjoyed visiting it, although we think the weather played a small part.