York the First

Wow hey cooooool, I’m not doing a greatjob of keeping up to speed on my posts, but for all the best reasons, really! In my Yorkshire week I was working into higher gear on translations (coming better than I anticipated, though still a steep road ahead) and trying to get hikes/walks/cycle rides in as much as possible, which generally left me pretty thoroughly tuckered out at the end of the day. And Scotland was jam packed with old and new friends and fantastic adventure, which I could/should have predicted, but didn't. And only having two days in Oslo has meant they are full full full. Remind me to write a bit about slow travel whenever I catch a moment.

But! Hey! I'm back, and I'm catching us up to speed on YORKSHIRE! This is split into two posts: the first video/photo/ramble is about York and the Yorkshire Moors, and sometime (Saturday? Sunday? October?) I'll add another bit about Whitby, a seaside town in North Yorkshire. But first, after the jump, THIS!

Detail from the city walls at York. I think. At a certain point all the stone facades start to blur and then the stone statues on top of them turn to you slowly and ask you who has taken The Master's pudding, and you wake up drenched in sweat and tell yourself it was all a dream...

Video first! I'm not 100% sure it captures the trip, but the last minute and a half or so (mostly the steam train trip I mention at the end of this post) is about right.

Ahhh Yorkshire. This was a swell-o-riffic place to spend a week. Particularly after the fun and excitement of friends, which itself followed the urban drive of Berlin, it was nice to catch my breath in the countryside (more or less). Not someplace I'd be able to live long-term, as I discovered by the end of the week, getting antsy for the business of city life, but man oh man does the UK ever make it seem appealing to live so close to nature. (SPOILER: this is made more evident in Scotland, but we're NOT THERE YET.)

Trip started in York, which I almost entirely experienced through its medieval core; you know that's the core because the city is THOROUGHLY ringed by its original wall, now open to the public for general meandering and gawking. And most of what I did, when I wasn't tapping away at dissertation stuff, was walk. Well, and cycle, once my AirBnB host kindly lent me his.

Made a friend on the road from York to Selby, a market town a short ways south.

 A side note: pub culture in Yorkshire is still pretty cozy/chummy/collegial, somewhat following the European model of the pub/bar as a place for friends to gather rather than to meet new folk. That said, it's a welcoming and lovely scene, and if you're ever wondering whether to just call it a night or to go out to the local to check out the open mic, obviously go to check out the open mic, it turns out to be a great evening and aside from the weird jerky Americans who are playing a festival that weekend and clearly think they're blowing everybody's minds by crashing the open mic, everybody is nice and open and fun and you're glad you went. Take more pictures next time, maybe?

The weather was mercifully gorgeous throughout the trip, but I ended up exploring a few museums anyway, and am glad I did. The national rail museum, located just next to York's train station, is free, and man is it huge. A dream come true for train nuts - I'm not quite the target market, but close enough - and kids would love the place. (I texted my friend Mike almost immediately to tell him how much his son Everett would love it there.) Far more impressive still was the Castle Museum, one of many cultural institutions on this summer's travels located in a former prison. Castle Museum's main exhibit is a time-lapse look at life and culture throughout English history, with recreated living spaces from multiple periods, and even a completely recreated Victorian city centre with costumed docents sharing information about the period. It was beautifully designed.

PLUS, when you LEAVE the Castle Museum sometimes the sun has come out and it's a gorgeous day and somebody has set up a fair on the grounds of the museum and gosh how lovely.

 The York Minster was gorgeous. I visited it for an Evensong one night, and between the incredible design and the pristine acoustics, it was a trip highlight by a significant margin. A young but talented visiting choir sang the (short, simple) service, and I was tempted to return later in the week, though my timing made that impossible.

The Minster, from without! This building has the largest collection of stained glass of any structure in the world, as I understand it. And man. I believe this to be true.

The entry into the Choir, where I sat for Evensong. I didn't wander too far afield, as my coming for Evensong meant dodging a normal tourism entry fee and it didn't feel Quite Right to turn the service into a photo op, but you know, while standing in line...

Instead, as the week went on, I pressed on north to Helmsley! My AirBnB host from York seemed puzzled by this being on my radar, noting that it was more someplace that people from York got away for a Sunday than someplace international tourists seek out, and (while I enjoyed my stay) I can see what he means. It's a sleepy market town, though its proximity to Rievaulx Abbey had put it on my radar, and I was not disappointed.

The Abbey! One of several sites that was excavated and became an attraction during the 19th century's fascination with ruins and Things Ancient, the Abbey has a swell audio guide and makes a great morning's walk from Helmsley. Even on an atypically-for-this-trip rainy day - especially on a rainy day - it was a beautiful and haunting building!

I was lucky in my B&B, a cozy and welcoming one-room guesthouse where my host was the vocal (and somewhat visual!) double of Emma Thompson. She was a superb chef and a kind, thoughtful, gracious host, and it was kind of nice to be looked after (even as my usual preference while traveling is to carve out my own space). But even if she'd been a terror, it would have been worth it to pick up her advice to take a steam train up to Whitby (which you can see in the above video). Golly that was swell.

This is a rambling post, and I suppose that's both a product of its lateness (memory growing fuzzy and less ordered as time passes) and perhaps why it was late. This was a good week, but a sleepy one. A short update on Whitby will get us up to speed and get us to SCOTLAND, where life took a really excellent turn for the social and new and exciting and grand and adjective adjective adjective.