York

Earlier this month we spent a week in York in the company of our eldest son Paul and his family who came over from Guernsey, and our youngest son David, who came across from the USA. here are a few photographs of the week.We stayed in an airbnb house on Bishopthorpe Road near the racecourse and only a few minutes walk from the centre of York,

Here we're crossing Skeldergate Bridge over the River Ouse, which was a toll bridge until 1st April 1914......

......and just around the corner is Clifford's Tower which was built in the 13th century, replacing the wooden tower that had been rebuilt in 1190 after the Norman tower built by William the Conqueror had been burnt down.

On the Monday we had a look round some of the shops in the Shambles area of York before visiting York Minster. (I don't know who the young lady is - I didn't see her until I uploaded the photograph!)

York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in Europe, absolutely enormous and apparently taking some 250 years to build. A fascinating place, with an interesting exhibition in the Undercroft, and I'll show more of the photographs I took there at a later date.

The following day we visited York Castle Museum, just behind Clifford's Tower, which is housed in prison buildings that were built in the 18th century on the site of York Castle, another of William the Conqueror's buildings. The museum includes Kirkgate, this reconstruction of a Victorian street named after Dr John L Kirk who founded the museum.

That day we had bought tickets for the York City Sightseeing Red Bus Tour which is a hop-on hop-off service round the city centre with a commentary about the places the journey was taking you past. Anna has another angle on this photograph.

The Red Bus Tour tickets are valid for 24 hours so we used them following day to go into the city, and this is one of the gates, or 'bars' as they are known, that we passed. There are four of these gatehouses around York and this one is Micklegate Bar.

Our first visit that day was to the National Railway Museum adjacent to York Railway Station and here's Edward at the controls of the ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine just inside the entrance to the museum.

The main part of the museum is the former locomotive roundhouse which consists of a turntable round which are arranged a series of lengths of track so that locomotives could be kept inside the shed but easily moved individually to the mainline track by means of the turntable. The first locomotive here is the ex-LMS 6220 'Duchess of Hamilton'. The streamlined casing of this locomotive, as with the other Princess Coronation class locomotives, was removed during the Second World War in 1944 for maintenance reasons, but not re-instated after the war. It's been a static exhibit at the National Railway Museum since 1998, and in 2005 it was decided to re-instate the streamline casing, the work being completed in 2009. Next to that is an ex-GWR Diesel Railcar - Number 4 - which was powered by a 130bhp 8.85 litre 6-cylinder AEC diesel engine. At the end is the famous ex-LNER 4468 'Mallard', the holder of the world speed record for steam locomotives at 125.88 mph. Again, I'll show more of the photographs I took here soon.

The National Railway Museum runs a frequent roadtrain service to and from the museum and Duncombe Place near the Minster, and here's Edward enjoying the trip after our visit......

.....and here's the roadtrain which I photographed a couple of days later in Duncombe Place.

After getting off the roadtrain we lunched in Nandos and this is Eliza enjoying a piece of corn on the cob. I know a lot of people like Nando's, but there was only one item on the menu that I could eat, and I found that caesar salad contaminated with peri-peri isn't a very appetising combination.

The next day we went to an out of town shopping centre which included a visit to a Toys R Us store where Edward was fascinated by a Star Wars character:

Paul, Edward, Eliza and Anna just before bedtime (but not necessarily sleep-time) for the children.

Friday morning it was a bit damp, but we went with Edward and Eliza to the nearby park and playground:

Later in the afternoon we had a last walk round the streets of York, and here's Uncle David with Eliza.

This was taken on the last day just before we left for home. By Edward. Not bad for a not-yet 4 year old.