Saturday 2nd July 2016
Woke to a very blustery day. Nb Lucy was really tossing around. Even after all this time we still get the sea wobbles when on land and this is only going to make it a lot worse for us today. At present there is no rain so that is a blessing.
We headed out about 10.00am to catch the free water taxi to Granary Wharf where the train station is. For a return ticket to York for the day it cost £13 which is really reasonable and only took us just under 25 minutes from city center to city center. Public transport in this country is amazing. Puts places like Australia and North America to shame. There were trains going to York from Leeds about three every hour. We also learnt that you can take dogs on the trains so that will be a bonus for later on as we have some other side trips in mind. We had decided to leave them back on the boat today as were not sure what we would encounter in York. W+M were Leeds bound today so that were keeping an eye on them.
Leeds Central
Certainly lots of train choices.
On our way to the station we passed this little curiosity……hmm….narrowboaters are known to be a bit strange/odd/kooky/queer.
Our main reason to go to York was to visit the Railway Museum. It has the reputation of being the best in the world and IT IS!! Here is a collage of photos from our trip there. They had a large number of engines from around the world (including a huge one from China). They even had an original Bullet Train from Japan. There was also a selection of railway carriages dating back to the commencement of rail – that being horse drawn. Amongst the collection were a few old royal rail coaches which were fun to have a squiz at.
How not to travel lightly
Old Pullman rail stock
Old train names 
One of the original engines for the royals
Broke the first speed record
Replica of Stephensons Rocket
Old royal coach – Victorias time
After a few hours in the museum we headed off to the Minster which is the well known cathedral in York. They wanted £10 to go in – Di has this very strong adversity to giving the church any of her hard earned money so we got a free photo of the outside. Impressive but still not worth the entry fee.
From the cathedral it was a short walk into the old area of town called the Shambles. It was like stepping back in time only the throngs of tourists brought you right back to earth in a hurry. It was Saturday so you couldn’t really expect much else. Whilst on our wander we bumped into Constable Plod. There were a few plods standing around and some were wearing the older style helmet whilst others were wearing flat caps. We asked why this was so and were told it was just preference. Our Constable Plod was very friendly and even had his photo taken with us.
Terrible photo of Di but you get the gist of it.
We were actually in the main square and there was a political rally going on which explained the big police presence. We listened for a while and the idea of the rally was to vote to go back into the EU. Hmm, we didn’t want to mention it to them but they had just voted a week ago to leave the EU. Isn’t this what you call a democracy when you call a referendum so that the populace can vote and the majority get to win the decision and you all abide by that…….
York’s town center consists of lots of narrow cobblestoned streets (rough on the ankles) and laneways going every which way. It was great to just wander around.
You can see by the photo how many people were there.
It was time to head back to Leeds so we walked to the edge of the old part of the city to the wall. York still has a wall in excellent condition encircling the city which you could walk on. We took this route back to the railway station. On our way we passed by the old Norman castle but not a great deal of it left.
We caught the Trans Pennine Express home. We have been seeing this train for the last few weeks from the canal as a lot of the rail lines follow the canal routes closely. We got a good giggle out of the fact it went so fast compared to our current mode of transport. Having said that, we were looking forward to getting back to our 360 square foot of floating home that goes at the top rate of 3 miles per hour. We are enjoying this slow pace of travel.
On our walk back to the boat we saw this beautiful wrought iron bridge that reminded us of one over the Yarra in Melbourne. Note the blue sky but by crikey the wind was blowing something fierce.
On our return Fras went across to W+M’s boat to watch one of the European soccer matches as Germany was playing so he went to support the guys. Meantime, Di who has a bee in her bonnet wanted to get the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle completed that has been haunting her for the last couple of weeks – only one guess as to what the theme is about….. she has another one to do that she is keeping for when Elfi arrives.
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