York - Day 18

Date: September 5th, 2009
Distance: 20 miles (around the area)
Country: England
Song of the Day: Northern Birds - Amateur Transplants (For Jay)

Spending a day in York was a good idea actually. Woke up and spent some time doing laundry. Also got in a couple of blog posts. I wouldn't have spent so much time doing it, but it started raining just before noon, and I didn't feel like biking in that weather.

I did go out to Stamford Bridge. This is the site where Harold Godwinson fought Harald Hardrada just a few weeks before going to Hastings and was defeated (more importantly, killed) fighting William of Normandy. I created my first small video for what I hope to be a little film about the correlations between the Norman Invasion and the Invasion of Normandy. So I am going to be taking videos on both sides of the channel and (hopefully) splicing them together to form a consistent narrative. I will let you know how that goes.

From there I rode into York. Wow, what a cool city. If you get there, spend a morning or afternoon walking the city walls. Yep, they just let you march over them as if you were defending the city. I think it is probably the most popular thing to do when visiting the city. Plus it is free! The walls are still up because apparently the second most popular thing to do when visiting York for the last thousand years was to sack the city.

The walls not only give you a good idea of what there is to see, but also how to get around the city. There are little signs up around telling you about the walls and towers. When they were built and why. I guess the first walls were made by the romans in 71 AD. Then the Normans rebuilt the city in their own style. You can't really say how old most of the wall is though. People have apparently been restoring sections of the wall since the 1500s. Still, it makes for a delightful little stroll.

There are also the ruins of St. Mary's abbey in town. It seems weird that there would be a medieval ruin right in the middle of town. Then again, they still have their city walls up. I guess the people of York are more a "we'll get to that later" kind of lot. There is a museum there as well, but it was closed when I got there. So I don't know if it is any good or not.

There is also a cathedral there, York Minster. Very cool. High Gothic styling with flying buttresses and everything. The weird thing is it seemed like there were three more churches within spitting distance. One right across the street. I know, now, the people of Briton have religious freedoms. These all look quite old, though. Built in the days when you went to THE CHURCH. So how do you choose which one to go too? Is it distance? "I could go to the cathedral, but it is 40 feet further from my house, and I am just not feeling it today." Is is it like the good china? Something that you only bring out on special occasions. I don't know. I have seen that in other places as well, and still don't have a good answer.

After that it was some fish and chips, then off to bed.

-Dravis