York is comfortably north of my comfort zone, in fact, prior to this weekend it was the most northerly place I'd visited in the UK, but that didn't stop me loving it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, York is yet another city that feels like Bath - probably because they're both Roman. And this similarity means that it also takes up a position on my 'would like to live there' list. A list that's now getting scarily long and wide.
It was great to find old streets that weren't filled with chain shops and department stores, even the StarBucks was so understated as to look like a little independent coffee house. It's actually a real pleasure to shop in a shop that you haven't been in elsewhere and I for one feel more likely to buy something in a place like that knowing I can't get it somewhere else, even if it does cost a little more.
But York really is beautiful, full of genuinely old buildings and a general sense that the people who live there appreciate it for what it is. Perhaps it helps that the whole city is dominated over by the impressive Minster, a constant reminder of the city's heritage, but there were plenty of signs about 'taking pride in York' which I can't remember seeing in any other comparably city. The fact that the old city walls are still largely intact is wonderful too. I'd take city walls over a ring road any day.
Beyond this though, York is just a tremendously atmospheric place, something that I can only guess comes with the age of many of the buildings and the history they know. It's a shame that there's always a tendancy to compare cities to other cities, but with the exception of Bath I can't really think of another city that comes close in terms of the intimacy of the atmosphere in York, and even Bath falls short here as in a way, it's just too big and spread out. York feels much smaller and there's a genuine sense of friendliness amongst the people there.
In fact, the steam train gave rise to one of the more bizarre conversations had in York. We discovered that the train went to Scarborough, a place we hadn't visited, and so we considered going for a ride. Until we found that it was £30pp. We then questioned why we didn't just drive to Scarborough, before asking why we even wanted to go to Scarborough in the first place. Realising that we would only be going because it was a steam train, we came to the decision that when you're on a steam train it feels much like any other train and that its best to see it from the outside - which we had when it steamed past out B&B window. So we abandoned both the steam train ride, and Scarborough. Next time perhaps.
York is just the sort of place that it's great to wander around without a purpose, so it was a little unfortunate that one evening, devoid of anything to do, we went to see a play at the theatre advertised on the basis that it starred the actress who played Sue Ellen in Dallas (an actress primarily famous for not shooting JR). This turned out to be a bad decision (the lady next to us commented that, not being able to hear anything Sue Ellen said, she thought she'd gone deaf since entering), and rather than killing time, it seemed instead to flog it, then kick it while it was already quite far down and out. York could do better.
But for a city with such heritage there wasn't any of the grandeur that can be a little overwhelming at times, as there can be in Cambridge. In fact, sometimes you'd see something that could only suggest a little mischievous on the part of the people living there that nicely stood out.
After spending two days admiring York we detoured via Castle Howard, about 30 minutes north-east of York in doing so took myself further north within the British Isles than I've ever been before. I don't usually go a bundle on these country estate type places, but Castle Howard was actually something else. For starters it's absolutely huge, I imagine it would take at least a day to walk around all the grounds open to public (it does have four lakes), but it's also quite a captivating place.
Unfortunately time constraints preventing speeding more time there, but it is a place that I would recommend a visit to should you ever be in the area. On the way back to Cheshire we decided to have a further stop over in Harrogate, a place that I knew little of other than it sounded like a nice place - primarily because I seem to remember knowing someone from there who said so - and so it proved. Almost. It's a little hard to describe, it had a certain Llandudno quality to it in the Victorian adornments abound, but it didn't have the same 'pride' that York had. York seemed to be a smart town proud to be so. Harrogate seemed to be a smart town trying not to realise, or at least, promote it. But nonetheless it was still a nice place to spend a few hours with some really outstanding gardens around.
And so came to end two weeks of travel and visitations around Cheshire, Wales and Yorkshire, and perhaps the busiest August I think I've ever had.
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