One Catherdral, Two Cathedral, Three Catherdral, Four

I could tell you about the train and bus ride to York, on which I met Eliza, a nice young lady who was heading to Doncaster (I keep thinking "medical") to visit her parents. In school, unhappily studying forensic sciences and deciding to take the leap into IT, and with a Canada connection with ancestors who had moved to Sudbury Ontario and subsequently got lost (not that I'm saying anything bad about Sudbury, Eila might slap me), we had lots to chit chat about together as Noah and Jake sat across from us reading their books. I am indebted to Eliza for a pen, which she said I could keep, and which was required to jot down the name Overtoun Bridge, a bridge near Glasgow that has the nickname Dog Suicide Bridge. Apparently dogs that go up on this bridge deliberatly throw themselves over the side to their deaths. And if they manage to survive the fall, they'll drag themselves back up and do it all again.

Apparently it has something to do with mink urine.

I could also tell you about the Fort Boutique Hostel that we are staying at in York, right in the middle of the Shambles, minutes from York Minster, on Little Stonegate, which if I read things correctly is a Snickelway.

I could tell you about Yohhy, from Japan, who now lives in Paris, but is travelling the UK right now. Or I could tell you about Kate, an Australian woman who is in the UK on a two year work visa and is working with an agency that provides short-term live-in homecare. She left yesterday to go care for someone who is suffering from dementia. Or there is a nice young lady who has come here from Camden, Maine, to attend university. You may recall Camden, that's where Noah, Jake, Sherri, Marc and I had dinner at The Atlantica. She worked at a coffee shop near by.

Then there is Isabel, another lady from Australia in her third year at Melbourn U who is taking a gap year. She's the one who came up with the brilliant idea of having a roast for dinner Monday night. So that's what we did. And it was yummy.

Or there's Alex, the med student from Toronto now studying here, or Meriam, the insect taxonomist originally from Spain, now living in London, but here attending a conference on insects. Or there are a handful of other Australians, a couple from Switzerland, and who knows who will walk in the door next.

But I'm not going to talk about all the neat people we have met by staying at this hostel, and the suggestions we've been given on things to do here, and elsewhere on our travels, or the sharing of stories about our various leadership. Those of you who are familiar with Toronto's mayor know what the guys and I would be saying. For a bit of relief in knowing that we're not alone in this I recommend watching the following video about Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Instead I'm going to show you lots of pictures of York Minster.

We've now seen four of the biggies in England: St. Paul's, West Minster, Canterbury, and York Minster.

Noah's order of preference is: St Paul's, West Minster, Canterbury, York Minster.

Jake's order of preference is West Minster, York Minster, St. Paul's, Canterbury.

Mine? I'm not sure yet.

The 'plan' for Monday was to go to York Minster, have some lunch, and then head off to the National Railway Museum. Before finishing up at York Minster though the guys had already concluded that one museum type place was enough for the day. You'll see why in a moment. There was a lot. And we saw it. All. And we read. Most of it anyway.

And the best part? You could take pictures, outside and in. So I did. Lots of them. Noah also got a fair amount, but I don't have those yet. Apparently he is going to start giving me some of them from time to time to include in the blog, and when he does, I will dutifully credit him for them. Until then though, assume they're mine.

The order here is a bit misleading at first, as York Minster has a tower you can climb, and therefore that was the first thing we did. It might have worked out different, but it is a very narrow stairwell up so people cannot be ascending and descending at the same time. You therefore require a ticket (additional cost I will add) for a specific time to avoid traffic jams, and the next time was 10 minutes away. No time like the present.

Anyway, to help orient.

This is the front of York Minster.

As my mother commented on Facebook the other day (yes, she commented on a post - I am very proud of you mummy) she is always amazed by how they can make stone look like lace. This is once again, thanks to good old Gothic. And it turns out that Gothic actually breaks into three distinct periods: Early English Gothic, that starts around 1220, Decorated Gothic that takes over about 1280, and, my favourite of the lot, just because of the name, Perpendicular Gothic, that takes over in 1361 and has a good run of if until 1472, twenty years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Had I been cleverer I would have photographed the entire map that explains which part of York Minster is which, however I did not, I only got the names and dates. Sorry, you'll have to figure it out for yourselves.

Now, if I've got my bearings correct, which is not the easiest thing to do in the streets of York, we're looking at the south side of the cathedral, and at it's central tower, that actually weighed too much for the foundations so that after a few hundred years or so, I believe starting in the 1960's, very clever engineers and archaeologists had to come in and do something about it. That said, by that point York Minster had stood longer than any modern day building has the hope of standing without regular intervention, so ya, I still think they did a good job the first time.

York is a very old place. People have been living in this neck of the woods for a long, long, long, time. York was a very important place for the Romans for example, as it was essentially their base in Britain for all of their campaigns to the north. It's also where the Roman Emporor Constantine officially adopted Christianity as the religion of the empire. So ya, kinda an important spot to put a decent cathedral.

York Minster sits partially on the site where the Roman basillica once stood, part of the large fort and whatnot the Romans had built there. This and oh so much more was discovered while fixing the tower. The Romans had built a lovely little bit right in line with the river and following a nice, orderly, grid pattern. But eventually they left to go focus more on areas of the empire closer to home that were crumbling, and when the Normans finally came along and started on this piece of awesomeness they laid it out, as Cathedrals tend to be lain, east-west, and basically made a point of showing who was in charge now.

All of that to say, with the rivers  Ouse and Floss meandering about town, and all these little streets running higgledy piggledy in all directions, and this Cathedral plunked down right in the middle of it all, it may be the north side. Pretty sure it's south, but I could be wrong. I can guarantee you though that it is neither the east nor the west side.

This is the chapter house. It has it's own street.

End of orientation, now back to the timeline.

These are some of the many lovely flying buttresses. Yes, we're looking basically straight out at them. Why? Because. To climb the centre tower you first have to climb an initial set of narrow winding steps in the south trancept (okay, that shot was definitely of the south side) and then walk across this particular part of the roof to get to the even narrower winding set of steps to get you to the top. Did I mention my thing about heights?

But if Noah and Jake can do it, and they most certainly can, then what the heck. The guys love to climb. You may have noticed them in interesting places in the Iceland photos. You may recall me writing about us climbing the dome at St. Paul's in London. You may not know that Noah laments the fact that we did not climb the dome at St. Peter's in Rome last summer when we were there. I suspect that will be rectified this fall. Do you sense a theme? 

My children are goats. Pleasant goats who, while they may lick an elbow or two, will not eat your favourite shirt, but goats nonetheless.

And they often have the best of ideas. Without the climb, we wouldn't have been able to see this view of the front two towers.

Or this view down onto the Shambles, those higgledy piggledy streets just mentioned.

Or this fine fellow, sticking his tongue out at me for being such a wuss about heights.

Eventually we came down, and once we arrived at ground level we immediately descended into the undercroft, as it's entrance was right there. The undercroft primarily came about as part of the excavation/restoration work that was done to keep the whole thing from filling in for London Bridge in that cute little song.

Now it's a museum, and one that does an excellent job of itself. Like I've said a few times, I really do like these single purpose museums.

The fine print will tell you that Ulf, a viking nobleman, in about 1030, gave this horn to the Minster as a symbol of him committing his land to God and the minster.

Remember Marc building an arch in Montreal. Well, this time Noah and Jake got to do it.

This is the York Gospels, done up in about 1020 and brought to the Minster, and the only Norman book still about at the Minster. As many of you know, I like old books. And no, I did not use a flash you'll be happy to know.

Eventually we got ourselves upstairs to take a look at the Minster insides proper like.

This is the west wall and great door, proving my mothers comment yet again.

This is one of the many, many windows at York Minster. No other Cathedral that we have been in on this trip thus far can compete with York Minster on it's windows. And this is just a little one.

This is Chapter House, and some of it's magnificent windows. By the way, I am no good at taking panoramic shots with my camera. I should probably work at it though, as so many things we are seeing just don't fit in frame, and I can't photoshop it all together for you. I say that now as I'm feeling a bit guilty for not having been able to provide you all with a shot of the interior of Chapter House and all of it's windows.

I can provide you with a better shot of the ceiling though, and that'll give you an idea.

This is the quire. It is still pronounced choir.

You may notice that the symmetry is off, and that the organ (that thing in the middle), while aligning perfectly with the arch above it, does not align with the one you see further back. This is not the fault of the photographer, it is in fact, the fault of the architect. Whether by design or a botched job, the quire does not line up straight with the nave.

People seemed to get over it.

Now, neat thing about the organ. We'll get a bit closer first.

A very useful fact to know about this organ is that were you to lay all of its piping out end to end it would extend about 7km (or maybe it's miles), I think though km. Jake very astutely pointed out later that day as we were walking around the walls of York that, the pipes would loop around the old city about twice, as the wall length was approximately 3.2 km or miles. Clever goat.

This is the screen separating the nave from the quire, it is called the King's screen as each individual represented is one of the Kings under which the cathedral was built, including the Norman ones. It is another very fine example of why I need to learn to take panoramic shots.

We soon departed the Cathdral and proceeded to Dean's Park to eat some lunch and relax for a bit with our books. I instead left the guys and went for a walk around to get the exterior shots that you saw earlier on.

Jake had also informed Noah and I that it costs about 20,000 pounds per day to keep York Minster rolling along. Why so much you may ask? Well, because, it is under constant restoration.

Right across the road from the Cathedral is the Cathedral's stoneyard. Yes, it has it's own yard, right on site, and it's been there a long time it would appear.

Here they do the initial cut of the stone blocks, each to the exact dimensions required to replace it's predecessor. Right now there is work being done to restore the east wall, and it's window. (Okay, can someone please tell me if I apostrophe the "s" of "it's" or not. I'm pretty sure yes but sometimes I doubt, but then it just looks silly without it. So I'll stick with yes and hope for the best. And yes, I can look it up, but I don't want to.)

Anyway, they're doing a bang up job restoring the Cathedral, and it's wonderful to walk around as you can hear the sound of hammers on chisels somewhere in that web of scaffolding as stone masons shape the blocks in place.

And there are Noah and Jake, right where I left them. And not eating the grass. Perhaps they are not goats. More data required.

We then walked about a quarter length of York Minster organ pipes, a new unit of measure I am hoping to introduce. Hopefully one day it will rival the smoot. We'll call it a Yorkilometer and one unit will be equivalent to 7 or so km. Not being a precise unit of measure the "or so" will always remain an important element. I am most certain it will meet with EU approval around the same time they bring back the Mother Cow index. (Won't my cousin John be pleased with that.)

Right, to the wall.

It's not all this narrow, but it happened to be where we started, and looked cool, so there you go. Part of the York wall.

We started our walk near the Minster at Bootham Bar, which is not a bar, but is a gate, with steps, leading to the top of the wall. Hence us being able to walk up there.

Oh, and here's a map.

We didn't walk the whole wall (green lines on map), but we did walk the top pointy bit and then the bottom right squiggly line bit.

And look, it provided excellent views of the Cathedral.

This is Walmgate Bar (middle of bottom right squiggly bit). It has the distinction of being the most intact of the bars (they're all gates) along the wall.

Below are the foundations of a Roman tower right along the walls. Apparently placement of these things is pretty standard no matter who you are.

This is the River Ouse (that's how they write it, I'm not adding capitals just for me).

And this I believe is Monk Bar. Though I didn't take a picture of the accompanying sign, so could be totally wrong. It might be the Fishergate Bar.

And I will repeat one last time for the hard of hearing. If you're looking to do a pub crawl of York, these are not actually bars. They're gates.

This is the River Floss.

And this is the Merchant Adventurer's Hall, a guildhall dating back to the medieval times in York, and I suppose elsewhere, as I don't think the medieval period was too localized (as evidenced by the crusades).

It was then time to head back to the hostel to meet up with Isabel and Kate and go grocery shopping and prepare our roast dinner. So that's what we did. And, as I mentioned at the beginning, it was yummy.