We left Liverpool and traveled to York on July 13th. Unfortunately we only had a few hours to explore York, and since I had such limited time I only hit a few key sites. The city was founded by the Romans in 71 AD and still has structures intact from that time, including the famous city walls. York is surrounded by a city wall, and today the walls are still in extremely good condition; they are the most in-tact city walls today of all of England. One of the first things I did when I arrived in York was to climb to the top of the city walls and walk along them.
Clifford’s Tower is also a big attraction in York. Clifford’s Tower is the shell-keep of the York Castle. It is a famous landmark in York, but unfortunately I did not have time to explore it further, or to visit the York Castle Museum.
The York Minster is one of the biggest attractions in York, and it is a huge cathedral. From the outside it is very impressive, one of the largest I have seen. I did not have time to enter, but I hear that it contains beautiful stained glass windows all throughout the cathedral.
Another thing that York is well known for is their pubs, it was said (years ago) that you could visit a different pub every night of the week for an entire year and still not run out of pubs to go to! Today there are not as many as there were before, but there are still at least a couple hundred pubs, and York has more pubs per square kilometre than anywhere else in England.
Walking through the streets of York you can see how cute the town is. You can find quaint little stands selling lemonade and other goodies.
There are also many pedestrian shopping streets filled with little stores.
York has a river running through it (the River Ouse), and along the waterfront is very beautiful. (As a side note: in every city in England we’ve been to so far – London, Liverpool and York – we have seen a Ferris wheel! York is no exception and the Ferris wheel can be seen in the photo below)
Finally, York is famous for being haunted. It has been said (and apparently proven) that there are more ghost sightings in York than anywhere else in the world. In the evening we did a ghost tour of the city in order to learn about the different areas of the city that are haunted by different ghosts. It was an interesting tour, but I’m not quite sure I believe in all of this ghost stuff!
I enjoyed my short time in York, I thought it was a quaint city with some cool culture.
The following day we traveled to the Lake District National Park in northern England and we visited Windemere, the largest natural lake in England. Driving through the Lake District reminded me a lot of northern Canada, but specifically cottage country north of Toronto. The area is very green, with lots of trees and wildlife. The Lake District is a popular area for the English to have vacation homes (cottages) and many English travel there for their weekends and holidays.
While in the Lake District we visited Castlerigg, a stone circle built about 4,500 years ago. Castlerigg was used for prehistoric gatherings and ritual ceremonies. The stones were a lot smaller than I had anticipated, but it was cool to see the site of prehistoric rituals, within the stone circle.
Driving through the Lake District we could see many wind turbines, and I found that they added to the beauty of the area:
I enjoyed my time in the Lake District. This was the last area in England we would visit, as the following day we were traveling to Scotland!
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