one night in York

Technology is a wonderful thing… here I am, on a train on the way back to London after a night York, typing up my latest blog entry… and yet I am frustrated that can’t get the laptop to connect properly to the wireless network on the train… therefore I can type the blog… but not post it until I get home… not that it really matters… but while technology is marvellous… the more marvellous it gets the more opportunity it has to frustrate!

But, ranting about technological inadequacies is not the point of this post… its all about the City of York

I travelled up on Friday for a one day seminar for work… the company very generously put the attendees up at a very pleasant hotel and fed us… and boozed us… so I figured I would take the opportunity today (being Saturday) to look about the city…

York is a charming place… narrow, twisting, cobbled and car free streets lined with ancient shops and houses. York is home to a very impressive cathedral, well a Minster to be precise. With a few colleges from work, who had the same idea as me, we climbed the 275 steps the top of the tower to take in the panorama it offered of the city. It’s a view over a city largely untouched by the second world war, which means it still has much of its old city intact including most of the city walls.

Only having a few hours I was limited in what I had time to see, and after the Minster, a 45 minute tour of the city on one of those open top tour bus things (they are kind of cheesy but they do show you a city quite quickly) and a bite of lunch headed for the Nation Rail Museum. It’s a bit of a boys museum… full of giant bits of shiny metal on wheels… but I think anyone who has any interest in history would find it a great place to lose a few hours.. I only had 2 and barely had time to take even a cursory glance at the exhibits… although I did linger over a few of the more famous bits, the great blue streamlined Mallard (which still holds the world record as the fasted steam train, set in 1938), the various carriages from royal trains, and the Flying Scotsman which is currently in pieces all over a workshop floor as it undergoes a full rebuild.

2 hours here is no where near enough and of course 1 day in York is not nearly enough either. I didn’t even get to Shambles Street. – not that it looked all that messy as I whizzed by on the tour bus. So I guess it gets added to the ever-growing list of places to go back to.