York

A day without driving! Something for Phil after fifteen consecutive driving days.

The guest house we are staying in is about a five minute walk from the walls of the old city of York, so we headed off on foot early and spent the day wandering through the narrow maze of streets. 

We first went to a huge antiques shop and browsed through all of their cabinets with an amazing collection of stuff ranging from Roman relics to modern day stuff. It would take weeks to go through it all thoroughly. We then made another trip to Betty's Cafe for coffee and cake - nice to be back into the morning coffee and cake habit.

After coffee we parted ways for a while, with Petra concentrating on wandering around the shops. She had "a very pleasant morning" lingering whenever anything caught her interest and without the pressure of an impatient husband.

Meanwhile Phil set off on a mission, first to a musical instrument shop with the most eclectic range of musical instruments he's seen. Being very restrained, he didn't buy anything although he was sorely tempted by a shawm (a kind of recorder with a reed like an oboe). After that he made his way to the castle (predictably) and the Castle Museum, where there were some fantastic displays of life in York, including a whole Victorian era street to walk through...

He then went on to the Yorkshire Museum, where there were more traditional displays of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Medieval relics.

We met up again at lunch time - not in a pub, surprisingly - and wandered around some more in the now pretty steady rain. This didn't stop us from walking along another stretch of the town wall before we returned to the guest house late in the afternoon. Then we went to the pub.