Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Grand Old Duke of York



The all-day-Saturday trip to York proved even more popular than the trip to the Peak District. Our multi-cultural group filled six large coaches.



Soon we were zooming along on the M1 - yeah, driving on the left! - to "the NORTH".



York is a beautiful old town, full of old buildings - and full of tourists. The city centre was almost as crowded as Istanbul. The circus was in town, and this little boy desperately wanted mum to come see the float that was passing through town.




After our first week of work in a new job, a cruise up the River Ouse was about as energetic as we felt.



On this lovely summer afternoon there were lots of people messing about in boats ... and cars!



There were quite a few teams practicing their sculling skills - apparently there are frequent boat races of all kinds on the River Ouse.



York has a big ferris wheel like the "London Eye" - you only go round once, it takes quite a long time, it moves continuously and people step on and off as it slowly passes at the bottom.



We took an hour to putter down through the town and back again, under a series of well-maintained bridges bearing various old crests, and we heard stories of Vikings and battles long ago on the river and in and around old York.



Then, of course, we had to wander through town and take a look at York Minster.



It's magnificent ( - but we had to admit that seeing the cathedral in Prague had taken the shine off this one considerably).

The place was full of strange and interesting people. Some of them were us, and other tourists, some of them were doing a pub crawl 'for charity' - like these ladies.



Tired and leg-weary we headed back to meet our bus. We saw a group of foreign students also taking a rest, and stopped to chat.



But it turned out they weren't among our 300, they were some of the 50 that had come into York from Newcastle for the day.

Sunday tomorrow - so glad we are in England and not Istanbul! Sunday was always our hardest day, here it is a time for rest and even church.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.