York

Visited 14th June 2003--------

Report by Midgey & Shimmer

York was the furthest afield went this year, it took 10 hours on the road for 5 hours there! After disembarking the coach the first thing we checked out was the impressive town wall, a good deal of which remains since ancient times.

We had hoped to look round the castle, unfortunately it's now home to a museum of mainly Victorian artefacts. As the entry fee was quite high and the period is too late in history for either of our tastes, we decided to give it a miss and go up the steep steps opposite to Cliffords Tower, which dated from the 11th Century and had much more of a medieval feel to it. The Tower has a interesting history, although it's most famous for being used as a jumping platform by a bunch of jews who took their religion very seriously. Inside there was a lady in medieval garb passing on stories of how the tower was used and a neat model of how the tower used to look. There were steps going up inside the wall of the now open-roofed tower that allowed me to get up on the battlements and enjoy the view. As the steps were on the treachorous side, especially on the way down, I advised Sarah to say on the ground. The view was good, but not worth risking your neck on the way down!

We then visited the Jorvik Viking centre, I wasn't really sure what to expect here, possibly something like the St Albans Roman museum we had visited last year. Sadly, it turned out to be more for kids that I was expecting. After recovering from the extortionate entrance fee we were ushered down a flight of stairs and told to take our seats in "The time machine". Hmm, started to get the feeling that we'd paid for a turkey at this point. The room went dark and we were shown "an interactive movie" that was supposed to make us belive that we were sitting in a time machine that was rushing backwards through time until we reached the Viking age. Frankly I wasn't fooled, despite the authentic shaking seats (it only needed roundels on the wall, we cudda bin in the tardis!).

As we were rushed out of the time machine, after being told that we had gone too far back in time, I noticed a distinct lack of available buckets. This made me pity the cleaners as we couldn't be the only two made nauseous by the seat shaking!

Since we were supposed to now be in pre Viking times, we were some what surprised to discover that we had actually been transported to a cheap, rip off version of an Alton Towers ride. After taking our seats in the suspended cars (seats five people) and choosing the correct language for the speakers directly by our ears! (Well Steve's at least as Sarah was too bloody short again!) we were off into Viking York!! Yipee! This bit was surpisingly interesting, although it mainly consisted of manky looking waxworks and dodgy smells...but that could have just been Steve! Unless Paul stowed away that is.

After clambering out of the car, before it raced off for more vict... er passengers, we looked at a few authentic tools and weapons that were found on site and Steve was instructed how to make chainmail by an alleged Viking woman...(wow she looked great for her age! And spoke remarkable modern English).

Around the corner from this Viking woman, there was, surprise surprise, another Viking woman! She was explaining to folks that she was a servant and went on to explain money in Viking times. Last stop, and probably most important to Sarah as she does claim to be a woman, was the shop. Quite an impressive shop actually where much money could have been parted with...if we had had any to start with!

We then windowshopped in the Shambles (some lovely stuff there if you can afford it) and had a look around York Minster, which looked surprisingly good considering it had almost been wiped off the face of the earth by the fire ten years or so ago. The restoration must have been brilliant as it looked perfect to us. However, I have always been suspicious of churches that have shops in them, especially shops selling statues of viking raiders, so I wasn't too impressed with that.

The only disappointment of the day was that we didn't get the time to visit the York Dungeon. We didn't realise until on the way back to the coach that it was down a road just by Clifford's Tower, nevermind, gives us an excuse to go back when we are rich! (well the London Dungeon costs a fortune to get in, I expect the York one does too!)

Since our visit to York, I've found out that the City of York Council are planning to build a shopping mall next to the ancient monument of Clifford's Tower and the Castle Museum! This is a very silly idea indeed and the good folk at The Castle Area Campaign Group are valiantly fighting against it. Please check out their website at http://www.yorkcastle.com/ for more info.