A week in York

After a six hour drive from Cardiff to York (with exceptionally good traffic conditions all the way), we set up the caravan on the York Rowntree CMC site, which is just across the bridge from the city itself. The stretch along the river reminded me a lot of Spike Island, in Bristol, but it’s much prettier when the sun is out. Several canal boats were parked up, along the path between the CMC site and the bridge. There’s also a very nice park on that side of the river.

York is perhaps the most interesting city we have visited, because it’s so… uniquely timeless. The city walls and gates, much of the castle complex and the mediaeval streets are still in near perfect condition, and they’re overlayed with many other things that were added during the centuries that followed. It has a very gothic/steampunk feel to it. Oh, and there are lots of Viking/Norse-themed things around - the city does have ancient origins as a Viking/Norse settlement called ‘Jorvik’.

Most the buildings are occupied by independent local businesses, many of them selling things that are locally made, much as others would have during the Victorian era. York is almost  unspoiled by the low-effort blandness of 21st century minimalism that replaces our heritage in most cities these days.

After crossing the bridge, into the city, the first thing of interest we came across was the keep of the old castle complex, which looks very pretty when it’s illuminated at night. I refer to it as the castle ‘complex’ because the main buildings were were replaced over the centuries, and only parts of the outer walls remain, but I’ll come to that.

A few hundred metres from the keep is the narrow mediaeval street known as The Shambles. I think it got that name because butchers traded there once, and the original usage of ‘shambles’ had something to do with meat. If they sold every type of meat, it would probably be called ‘Omnishambles’.

One thing that does surprise me about York is its popularity as a tourist destination. People came from all around the world to see The Shambles, and consequently the street is ridiculously crowded on a typical weekend. God knows what it’s like during the summer months.

The one thing I did pick up there was a small piece of Whitby Jet, embedded in a necklace. Renowned for being the gold standard for that type of gemstone, Whitby Jet is found only in that region of the coast. It was formed in a similar way to coal, but the plant in question was a specific type of tree. Unlike coal, Whitby Jet wasn’t formed in seams, so it needed to be found in deposits or carefully extracted from rock layers. Because of this, the larger pieces of it are typically reserved for use in more expensive items.

I knew York Minster, being the second largest cathedral in Europe, would be an impressive sight to behold, but I was still in awe of the structure towering over me. We didn’t see much of the interior, as it would have costed around £56 for the both of us to have a proper look around, and there were too many tourists around at that time of day. Nobody should need to pay to enter a cathedral anyway.

York Gin

As is my custom, I sampled the locally-distilled gin. York Gin is aromatic, but quite basic on its own, with the only flavouring, I think, being a hint of pepper. It’s still of a much higher quality than the average pub gin, obviously. It is surprisingly drinkable with just enough tonic water to take the edge off, a small amount of lemon, and maybe some ice.

York Gin tends to be sparing in the additives it uses for the versions of their product. The Old Tom edition is essentially dry gin with a small amount of locally-made syrup that contains extracts of several plants around York, including a white rose. That’s actually quite a rare method of flavouring for a gin.

The Roman Fruit variety has extracts from several fruits associated with ancient Rome. It seems pretty standard on paper, but it has a nice aroma.

York Gin also produces a pointlessly strong 57% ‘Outlaw Navy Strength’ version, rather like Tarquin’s does. It might work in a coctail shaker with plenty of ice.

York Castle Museum

The castle was built during the reign of William the Conqueror, who wanted to fortify that part of England shortly after invading Britain. It continued to be a military fortress until 1400, with the keep surrounded by a moat, and a complex of auxhilliary buildings.

After the beginning of the 15th century, the castle wasn’t considered strategically important enough to be worth the costs of maintaining, and it became more a government administration building. It also functioned as a prison, and apparently there were a few political prisoners and executions.

Most the original buildings in the castle complex were replaced by more recent constructions, and the main building is a museum exhibiting aspects of life in Yorkshire between 1700 and 1970. Among the sections we visted were:

• Clothing throughout the 1700s and 1800s.
• Several reconstructions of typical living rooms during the 1700s and 1800s.
• An impressively detailed reproduction of a typical high street in York, between 1880 and 1900. The shop windows contain exhibits from that period. It’s worth visiting the museum just for this.
• A section of exhibits from the 1914 to 1918 war.
• An entire section exhibiting the fashion, products and appliances from the 1960s, all immaculately preserved.
• The old prison section of the castle. It appears to have functioned as a local police station and jail, at some point in the past.

Leeds

The city is a huge mass of shops, malls, arcades and high streets, and there are other businesses and remnants of its industrial past on the outskirts. It’s surprisingly upmarket, thriving and clean for a formerly industrial city, and the beautiful Victoria Quarter (which is what tempted us to visit Leeds) has been immaculately maintained. I could tell the architecture of the modern shopping centres was carefully designed to be consistent with the old buildings and Victorian arcades. The Trinity shopping centre’s ceiling is an impqressive sight.

Leeds was central to the production and trading of corn, especially given its proximity to the ports at Liverpool and Hull.

The Corn Exchange building still exists. I think it only functioned as a corn exchange for a couple of decades, in the 1800s, and currently accommodates a few dozen local retailers and businesses. It’s a good place to go for clothing and accessories.

We happened upon the Scarbrough Hotel while trying to retrace our steps to the car park. I think it’s a chain pub, but has the quiet, warm atmosphere of the kind of independent bar I prefer to frequent these days. The interior decor is very tastefully done, with the dark wood and non-pretentious chandeliers. The cleanliness was in stark contrast to the unsightly scaffolding and fencing outside.

While looking at the old photographs and portraits, I discovered that Henry Scarbrough was the original owner. He was very likely (I can’t be 100% certain) an ancestor of mine, given my family went by that name, lived in and around the city for several hundred years, and were industrialists there during the 1800s. How they adopted that name and inherited their wealth (wherever that went), is a story for another day.

Scarborough

Like most seaside towns that became resorts during the Victorian-era, Scarborough could do with a little revamp, though the lights of the arcades make all the difference in the evening. I’d imagine Scarborough would be a lot more pleasant if the weather was fine. I planned on exploring more of it, but had to change my schedule that morning.

The history of the town goes back much further than the 1800s, though not much remains of it. It’s said to have been a settlement founded by a Viking leader called ‘Skar’, and apparently was previously a Roman outpost. There is an ancient neolithic settlement at the most northern point of Scotland, once colonised by Vikings, called ‘Skara Brae’, so maybe there’s a connection. It’s more likely, though, that it’s called ‘borough’, for the same reason numerous other places in Britain are.

At the summit of the hill overlooking the port, there was a fortress, and from that location one could view the surrounding terrain for tens of miles in every direction, and across the North Sea. This made it a prized strategic location.

The fortress is a ruin now, but it once served the same functions as the Tower of London, and, if recollection serves me, the two sites were once part of a network of such facilities in which important things, including weaponry, were often relocated. I came across the term ‘overspill armoury’, a couple of days before, to describe another such facility elsewhere around York.

What fascinates me most about much of the east coast, though, is the North Sea. The vast expanse of water is actually shallow enough that Scarborough, in the not-too-distant past, when the sea levels were slightly lower, was at the edge of a land bridge that connected Britain to the European continent.

I reserved a place at King Richard III for myself and Robby, largely because of my aversion to chain establishments (the ones in York are okay). It’s rumoured that Richard III stayed there during the several months he spent in Scarborough in 1484, but, given the castle served as the royal residence, it’s more likely he used the house to discuss, in a more private setting, something of mutual interest with a loyal friend of his, who just happened to be living nearby. Or perhaps, with it being such a climb to the castle, the house was merely a more convenient location from which to oversee the port’s reconstruction work.

Aside from the castle, the King Richard III is probably the oldest building in Scarborough, and it really stands out because it’s embedded in a line of shops that were built within the last 200 years.

Half of the restaurant area is definitely in a more recent construction that replaced part of the original building. The original building itself was made of large, light-coloured stones, though I don’t think it’s sandstone. The original supporting timber beam for the ceiling is still a structural feature, and one might assume the ceiling was pretty low. Ceilings weren’t actually low in most mediaeval buildings - it’s actually more the case that ground levels, especially for roads, rise considerably over the centuries, which makes the mediaeval buildings appear shorter. The weight of the stones, and multiple key stones, hold the entire thing together, Robby told me, though the walls were repointed in recent decades.

Oh, and Scarborough does have a modern high street, further up the fill behind the promenade. There isn’t much to see, but it has the appearance of another high street in decline.