Weekend in York with family and friends

February 14th-16th

Our grandson Thomas in York, with Clifford's Tower in the background

Living room at the rented flat

On Thursday (13th Feb), I was lucky enough to get a key to the rental apartment we were using at the weekend, where there was room enough to accommodate six of us. It's called a "flat"; in my opinion it ought to be called a "vertical" because the accommodation is on four levels with long staircases joining them. The grandsons came up to join us from London with their parents the following day after work / school, and we met them off the train that evening at York station, waiting under the old signal that stands on the concourse there.

On Saturday we saw a good few more signals at the Railway Museum on the other side of the tracks. To my amazement entry to this museum was free of charge, because the exhibits there "belong to the Nation" as the man at the door explained. It was an obvious place to be on that rainy day (at the start of Storm Denis, the devastating successor to Storm Ciara), so we shared the museum's "sheds" with hundreds of other visitors, many of whom were three generation families as well, mostly from the North of England, as we could hear from their accents.

Chris and the other granddads were wallowing in the nostalgia of it all, remembering their train-spotting days as youngsters when the Flying Scotsman or the Mallard rushed by or pulled into a local station on the London to Edinburgh line. The streamlined, blue Mallard was the first locomotive to travel at more than 100 mph, and its record speed was 126 mph (203 kph). Sir Nigel Gresley, the designer of these engines, was a positively heroic engineer in those days. Chris lived within walking distance of the main line, so frequently saw the Edinburgh or London express go by.

With Jenny, Edith and Bertie, at our table,
photo by Fiona

In the evening (Saturday 15th) we had a party, meeting our long-time friends Sally and Rob, Jenny, Fiona and Bryony with her whole family --- Al and the three children, Arthur, Bertie and Edith. Together with our own three generations, that made 15 of us in all. Sally had booked a table for us at Carluccio's, my suggestion, right in the centre (opposite Betty's) and the management had the bright idea of seating us upstairs, thus keeping our excited group of children away from the other diners at the restaurant, with one patient waiter assigned to serving us. Obviously, the children wanted to move around during the waiting times! Arthur and Thomas, in the same school year, are exactly the same height, so it wasn't long before they were interacting with great glee, vying to outdo one another with their repertoire of jokes, riddles and brain-teasers. The middle generation, now in their 20s/30s/40s, exchanged stories of their working lives, and we oldies indulgently observed these exchanges, helping to keep the children occupied. An evening to remember, a very happy one, that we all hope to repeat before in one way or another.

Viking scene : a potter's shop in the Jorvik village

The queue for the Jorvik (Viking) museum near our flat had been too long on Saturday, so we'd resolved to try again first thing on Sunday morning, which we did with no waiting to get in, this time. Its famous back-in-time "train" ride in the museum reminded Chris and me of the one we'd ridden on at the wonderful Vikingaliv Museum in Stockholm last spring, but with more emphasis on how Vikings used to live in their permanent settlements (such as this 10th century one excavated on Coppergate in the 1970s) than on their explorations overseas. The scenes with their wax figures are so lifelike, with their eyes moving realistically and with barking model dogs, that some visitors never notice that one of the figures is a real human being, an actress playing the part of a girl on a boat. The ride is famous for its simulated old time smells as well. Conditions were clearly unhygienic and difficult in those days (a rat gnawing at the meat cut up by the village butcher, for instance), but Vikings had good survival skills and a well structured and regulated society, it seems. It was morbidly fascinating to see the skeletons that archaeologists had unearthed on this site, now exhibited in the museum. I have mixed feelings about whether real skeletons ought to be on display rather than buried in decent graves, but took a good look even so. At the end of the exhibition a young woman dressed in Viking garb was demonstrating the way their silver coins were minted, selling a few to the visitors, and a series of videos featured their musical instruments, bone flutes and such, and how they used to be played. Eight-year old Thomas didn't respond too well to this museum, being frightened by the not-quite-alive waxworks, I imagine, but cheered up when his mother bought him a (wooden) Viking shield which he wielded for the remainder of the holiday, carrying it carefully home with him on the train.

Sunday in York gave us two more big experiences, the full 4.5 km walk on the city walls taking in the town gates and the views of York's massive Minster, and across the bridges of the seriously flooded Ouse, and our third museum visit in that city, to the Castle Museum, where we also had lunch in the crowded cafeteria.

Rising floods in the city

Walking on the city walls in York

Mid 20th century British kitchen. This looked familiar!

We saw more or less everything there was to see at the Castle Museum, including two special exhibitions, one entitled 1914: When the World Changed Forever and one imported from Zagreb, about Broken Relationships, both of which upset us with their implications. Very well put together, though. The permanent exhibition took me back not only to my visits there with my sister when we were children on day trips from Scarborough, but also to the environments of my youth, seeing the museum's cleverly and painstakingly reconstructed everyman's living room, kitchen, children's bedroom, etc. of the 1950s and 60s with all those old artifacts retrieved from attics or junk shops. This made Chris and me feel as if we ought to be on display in some museum ourselves. Alexander pensively appreciated the things he learned there, and Thomas, on the reconstructed Victorian street "Kirkgate", solved a detective puzzle (called Catnapped) with the notebook provided and his mum's help:

A Victorian feline thief is on the loose at York Castle Museum this February half term and the Police need your help to put the hoodlum behind bars.

View of Clifford Tower from the Castle Museum,
with York's historic Courthouse on the left

In another part of the building we saw the primitive and claustrophobic prison cells in the basement beside the courthouse, where, for example, Conscientious Objectors were confined as a punishment for their attitude during the First World War. My mother's Uncle George was one such.

Sally and Rob joined us for the second hour of our visit to the Castle Museum and did the second half of the walls walk with us.

My goodness, I felt tired at the end of that day! We had done a great many steps without being aware of it, plenty of standing too; my legs ached. I got "hangry" before supper, and interrupted Chris' lengthy explanation and demonstration of his future presentation slides to Emma and Peter (who were asking numerous questions), and had to insist we immediately repair to a nearby fish n chips café for an old-fashioned, high cholesterol meal served with slices of white, buttered bread and a pot of tea. That too was something that brought back the past.