Yorkshire Dales

Getting around England by train still remains a mystery to us.  Here's what happens when we arrive at the Lancaster train station to pick up our tickets.  Play the video for collecting tickets to Harrogate.

Here's what happens next.

Last week we used our weekend to visit our friend Amanda at her cottage in the Yorkshire Dales.  It was cold, snowy, and quiet enough we could hear individual raindrops splishing and racehorses heading from their stalls to their grassy track for practice.  There are 20 stables in Middleham.  800 race horses take turns running the track every day.

View from Amanda's living room window.

View from our bedroom.

Across the street from Amanda's is one of Richard III's castles.

Richard III's house (background) and his little red car.

And fields.

Richard III castle viewed from up the hill.

Stone wall that's probably been there for centuries.

After breakfast we hiked quickly in the Nidderdale Area of Natural Beauty and toured the Theakston Brewery (1832).

Breakfast at Amanda's.

Taste testing at Theakston's.

A natural beauty in an Area of Natural Beauty.

We shopped for jams, had dinner in a pub (an experience everyone should have probably every week), and shopped for cheese, just like Wallace and Grommet, a the Wensleydale Cheese factory.

A small portion of the jam selection in Leyburn, England.

Ordering a pint.

The Black Bull. A pub.

Some of the cheeses to sample at Wensleydale.

Our weekend came to an end as we headed home past the Ribblehead Viaduct.

Ribblehead Viaduct.

Banking

Banking in England, as we had been forewarned by Fulbright, is an ordeal.  In the United States, if you show up at a bank with some cash, most banks would happily take it.

"Hello, Bank of America, I'd like to deposit this suitcase of $20 bills with non-sequential serial numbers."

"Sure, no problem."

By contrast, Susan and I had to make three visits to Nationwide, the bank we selected rather arbitrarily here in Lancaster.  We delivered two official notices of my employment and documentation that we lived in a house.  Because only I could get a letter from Lancaster University verifying that I work here, and oddly enough a University claim by the administrative assistant that I had an address was sufficient, only I can open an account.  No joint account for Sue because she has no bills mailed to our current address.  How would someone that needed a bank account or a debit card in order to turn on the electricity in a new dwelling ever manage to get an account with the electric company?

By the third visit we had graduated to a videoconference with a representative somewhere in Scotland.  She was a lovely lass with a Scottish brogue so thick I feared I might sign up for a home loan without ever realizing it.  Nevertheless, an hour later we had an account, or I did anyway, with no money in it.  They never asked for any.  But I did hear something that I thought I would never hear in all my life.

Said the Scots-woman, "I love your accent."

York

Probably York's most famous building is the Minster, England's second most important (active) cathedral.  (Canterbury is the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican community.)  Construction of the York Minster was begun in the 14th century.

The building is the second largest Cathedral in northern Europe.  

More than 500 feet in length.

196 feet high.

More than 200 feet wide.

The nave is 99 feet high.

We toured an excellent exhibit of the Roman fortress that lies beneath the Minster in its Undercroft (I don't know that I will ever use the word undercroft again in a sentence).  We took a self-guided tour to look at Gothic spires, creepy gargoyles and the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world.

We attended Evensong, the Anglican choir-led service and stood up and sat down when everyone else did.

 



Outside in York we walked the ancient city walls.

Sue walking the city walls.

The moat around the walls.

We froze.

We spent half a day in the York Castle Museum, checked out the shell of St. Mary's Abbey,

Thirteenth Century St. Mary's Abbey (also on top of Roman ruins.)

and the remains of the York Castle keep.  In 1190, Crusade-driven Christians, enraged at Muslims (did Fox News call them Radical Islamic Terrorists in those days, too?) and Jews, chased all of the Jews of York to the castle keep.  Some committed suicide rather than face the mob and those that did not were burned or murdered.

The Castle Keep where trapped Jews committed suicide as seen through the window of the York Castle Museum.

We toured the country's largest train museum and watched grown men fondle brass pipes and lick locomotives while their generally less interested wives corralled children.

 

Grown men wetting themselves as a turntable spins a locomotive.

And of course we ate.  The Beech House has won awards for its breakfast.  We ate the fresh fruit, the homemade yogurt, toast with Lemon Cheese and other jams

before we were asked if we were ready for the Full English Breakfast.

Outside we also had fish and chips (covered in mushy peas), fancy desserts dolloped with clotted cream, and High Tea.

Part of the setting for high tea.  Adjacent were three tiers of sandwiches, scones, and cakes.