For today, we are resuming on 21 June 2015, the day we bid adieu to Scotland and made our way to Newcastle. This aspect of the trip was a little bit of a bust; we had planned most of that day around going to Washington Old Hall, because our dad is a big George Washington buff (seriously — if a biography has been written about him, my dad has read it) and we knew he would be upset if we went to England without visiting the Washington family estate. But tragically, it was closed! I made that discovery a few days prior, when I was trying to find admission prices, so suddenly we had a block of time wide open and we had to decide how to spend it.
There are lots of things to do around Newcastle, and I’d researched a few of them, but the alternative was a drive along the eastern coast. Since the man, the myth, the legend Rick Steves had recommended Staithes and Whitby as good towns to visit along that coast, plus Kathleen had her heart set on seeing Scarborough (to get some parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) we opted for the coastal drive.
Our one night in Newcastle was our first hotel stay since Boston. It was at a Travelodge by the highway, and we felt less like backpackers and more like… normal travelers. It was structured like an American rest stop with the addition of a hotel, so we had the feeling we were staying with a lot of overnight commuters and such. Basically, we missed the intimacy of meeting hosts and crashing with locals.
We checked out early the next morning, fueled up on petrol and coffee, and then started our coastal drive. Unfortunately, the only time it wasn’t raining was at our first stop in Sandsend.
So while our eyeballs had our fill of Staithes and Whitby, my camera didn’t have any fill at all. Oh well. It was actually a pleasant drive despite the rain, but I didn’t know at the time how treacherous the Ring of Kerry would be in the rain, ha.
After the coast, I had a quirky stop to make in a village called Goathland.
It may seem like any other village in England, but we were interested in its train station. It wasn’t easy to find (there isn’t clear signage and it’s down a hill) but once we did, we were all thrilled.
Do you recognize it? If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you should! It’s Hogsmeade Station.
That’s the cool thing about researching movie filming locations — you end up off the beaten path, even though other fandom nerds make the same trek all the time. If it hadn’t been for Harry Potter, we never would’ve seen this gorgeous, quiet, and secluded train station.
Since we hadn’t been able to spend any quality time in the coastal towns earlier in the day, we had time to hang around and wait for a train to come in. We even had tea in the tearoom! It’s pretty cool, structured with old train cars that are connected and set up as odd-shaped tables and booths.
We proceeded to Scarborough but we had to drive through that, too. Without anywhere specific to stop, we didn’t want to get out and wander in the rain. Such is the nature of bad weather, but it’s not like we didn’t know what we were getting into when we planned for 20+ days in England. We are still just glad it didn’t rain the entire time!
We headed to York (we stopped at a couple more castles along the way, but as I didn’t tour them, I don’t have any pictures) for a four-night stay. More specifically, we stayed in a converted farmhouse in Stillingfleet, and our host was an antiquities and archaeological buff. He was invaluable in providing us with great places to see around York.
But you know, when in York…
… eat Yorkshire Pudding! We ordered this at Hare & Hounds in Riccall, again on the recommendation of our host. I loved that pub, it was full of locals with thick Yorkshire accents who treated us like welcome guests instead of outsiders.
Growing up on southern cooking still didn’t prepare me for the richness of a Yorkshire pudding, however. I couldn’t handle more than a few bites, which is sad because it was delicious. It’s also something I want to try to recreate at home for Justin, because I think he’d be able to handle its richness just fine.
The next day, our plan was simple: park in the center of York and walk around. We made a beeline for the Shambles.
It’s an amazing and somewhat haunting area. I accidentally ended up in the middle of a walking tour where the guide went into gruesome detail about the execution of Saint Margaret Clitherow, who was crushed to death. After hearing that story, the remaining butcher hooks and divots in the streets for the blood from butchered animals took on a more sinister tone.
We got lunch at a pub right beside the Shambles Market.
The pub itself freaked Kathleen out — the floors are slanted, uneven, and creaky, and she was sure it was going to collapse beneath us at any moment. Mum and I enjoyed the charm of the different floor levels and sloped ceilings. And all three of us loved the Knickerbocker Glory!
This pub gets very mixed reviews, it seems like your experience can vary wildly depending on which day you go, but we had a very good meal.
After that, we explored more of the York city center, including a stroll along the River Ouse. We also debated going to see Jurassic World at the local theater, which got surprisingly heated. I was staunchly on the side of not using some of our limited sightseeing time to go sit in a theater for two hours, and Kathleen was adamant that it would be really cool to go see a blockbuster movie in a foreign country. Mum refused to take a side (this is kiiiind of how all of our debates went) and in the end I think Kathleen still resents me a little bit for not relenting.
For the record — I went to see Jurassic World with a friend as soon as I got home. I liked the movie, but I’m also very glad that I saved that experience for when I was stateside again.
We had dinner at a different pub in York and after weeks of chicken and salads, I was craving some red meat. I should’ve resisted the craving.
It wasn’t inedible, it was just… tough and dry. When I sent this pitiful picture to Justin, he promised me he’d cook me a good ol’ American steak for my first meal home. I had dreams about it later that night.
The next morning we went right back into York, where they both had a bit of an ordeal at the post office. A couple hours later, that was sorted out, and Mum and Kathleen went to tour another abbey. That gave me some time to explore on my own, so I walked the Dame Judi Dench walk first.
The symbol is the letters A and V intertwined, for Albert and Victoria. Aww! The bridge also has the York rose symbol along the top.
I also walked along a good length of the old city walls by myself before meeting up with the other two. It’s so cool that we could do that!
And then we made our way to Yorkminster.
Talk about impressive! There was a lot of restoration happening around it, under the careful watch of good ol’ Constantine.
Constantine the Great, that is, not Constantine the cancelled NBC show.
We also loitered here for, I’m not kidding, about fifteen minutes in an attempt to get pictures of the Roman Column. I have 10 pictures of it with two women just sitting on it like it’s a bench and part of me really wanted to HISTORY SHAME them by posting their faces here but naaah, my anger wore off, so here’s a cropped version.
(Seriously, people, don’t sit on the ancient landmarks.)
We got tired of waiting for a clear shot and had to move on, which was good because we were hungry. To the medieval drinking hall!
We weren’t even dubious about lunching at a place called House of Trembling Madness. What could possibly go wrong?! Turns out — nothing! Mum and Kathleen got some beers and I got something that wasn’t a salad.
They’re called “Viking Willy Salami” and they were good! This was also in the midst of my “oh my God, everywhere in England serves ginger beer!” rampage, so I was ordering that left, right, and center. (Great. Now I want ginger beer.)
We wandered around York some more, this time in search of snickelways.
They’re narrow alleys between buildings, dating back to medieval times, but York’s particular alleys are called “snickelways.” Some of them are very historic, like Grape Lane.
It was originally named, uh, something unsavory because back then, streets were named for the activity that occurred on them. For instance, Swinegate (which joins up with Grape Lane) was where swine were kept, except Swinegate never had to be renamed due to its less than reputable nature. Anyway, Grape Lane used to be where people could pick up prostitutes, so a snickelway was probably pretty useful for those purposes.
Then we walked down to the Ouse once more to check out the King’s Arms, aka “the pub that floods.”
Kathleen wasn’t suuuuuper into it, but at least we went in!
We ended the day with a visit to the York Castle Museum. I’ve said before that we didn’t plan very many museum visits, but we were convinced by our host to make an exception for this one. I wandered it and didn’t take many pictures because it’s easy to get immersed.
The first section, called Kirkgate, is a completely reconstructed Victorian-era street, complete with shops you can enter and actors hired to play locals and shopkeepers. That’s where I got this sweet photo of a phrenology bust whose name is probably Angus:
There’s also a section about life in the York Castle prison, which was chilling. The exhibit on World War I was very revealing (I didn’t know Germany had paid restitutions for it until 2010!) and finally, the section about the Sixties was… random. We left thinking they just had a bunch of Sixties stuff lying around and needed a way to fill that space.
After our museum tour, we walked along the Dame Judi Dench walk together and debated where to get dinner.
Kathleen’s got that knee pop, eh?
We settled on the Bay Horse, where the dinner was good and the dessert was even better.
I snapped this picture of our last sunset in York. (Okay. Technically Stillingfleet.)
The next morning we were up bright and early so that Mum and Kathleen could tour Selby Abbey before we left York. They were in there for nearly two hours and really seemed to enjoy it. After that, we were headed toward Nottingham and Cambridge.
I’d nearly forgotten about a stop I wanted to make along this route, and boy, am I glad I remembered! I would be kicking myself right now if I hadn’t made sure we stopped to see Chatsworth House.
You might know it better as Pemberley, the house that belongs to Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. It’s widely believed that Jane Austen based the fictional house on Chatsworth, and visiting the house and gardens was on my bucket list.
Well, it’s still technically on my bucket list, because we didn’t even go into the gardens. Turns out Chatsworth isn’t cheap (nor should it be) and with our budget already fraying at the edges, none of us could justify paying the entry fees. It’s something I’d want to spend more than half a day touring anyway, so I wasn’t too disappointed to leave it without seeing the interior. In fact, I was pretty darn happy with the view.
So we proceeded to Nottingham, got very lost and frustrated with the traffic, and promptly left Nottingham. If there are any Nottingham lovers reading this, please tell me what we might’ve missed.
We stayed at another Travelodge overnight, this time near Cambridge, so that we could be in close proximity the next day. What we didn’t know was that we would be there on graduation day.
So the city was packed with graduates and their families, it was kind of a circus. It was cool to see, but it made sightseeing nearly impossible.
I sent that picture to Kara telling her to apply.
We managed to get a couple of quality shots of the architecture, but what you don’t see is the swarm of people that seemed to be behind us all the time. Every time we found a quiet street, it didn’t stay that way for longer than a minute.
We debated punting, because it’s A Thing in Cambridge. I’m all for tours on the water, but I kept insisting that if I had to choose one water tour to splurge on, I wanted to do a canal tour of Bruges later in our trip. I talked about it constantly. I was really, really excited to do the canal tour in Bruges. (Can you sense the impending disappointment?) So ultimately, I convinced the other two to skip punting in favor of paying for the canal tour later.
That evening was bittersweet. We had to say goodbye to our beloved Audi and to merry old England, at least for a little while. We stayed at a hotel at the Stansted Airport outside of London and ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, where I learned with horror that neither Mum nor Kathleen had tried Boddingtons before.
Whew, 23 whole days in England before they bothered trying the iconic beer? I was very insistent that they order it.
Our flight to Germany was at 7:15am the next day, and it was our first Ryanair experience. That’s where I’ll pick up in my next post.
You, Me, and Ollie! 