One Day in York

When telling others about our stay in Manchester we received 3 recommendations for day trips out of the city — Chester, York, and Liverpool. As we had visited Chester prior to our housesit, we pegged York and Liverpool as our targeted day trip excursions. Last week we spent Tuesday in the lovely (even when wet and chilly) town of York. It was an easy excursion by train.  We bought Off Peak tickets and left from the Levenshulme station which is only a couple of blocks from our temporary home. We switched trains at the Manchester Piccadilly station and then were off to York. The whole trip took about 2 hours. It was a full day, as we left on a 9:20 am train and returned a little after 9 that evening.

York is another walled town. After an introductory boat ride on the Oise River, we walked the wall around the main town center. It gave us great views of York Minster (main cathedral), pretty residential houses and lawns, the York Castle (what remains), and portions of the town. It is a fun perspective from which to view a town. As opposed to the Roman wall in Chester, York’s is not a complete loop. Following the town map we had picked up, we walked on sidewalks between the three separate sections.

Views from the boat

Model of full castle structure

What remains of York Castle

The Great Tower built by order of King Henry III between 1245 and 1260 and a scale of the full original structure.

The upside of rain is the gorgeous green grass and flowers that it brings. We saw lots of evidence of this during our walkabout in York and enjoyed poking around the many cute shops in the lovely town center which had many pedestrian-only streets.

Before our return, we stopped in a Spanish tapas (with Yorkshire twists) restaurant and split a sherry flight and nibbled on a few yummy selections.

I know that we could have seen and done more with more time, but it provided a fun day out and a great introduction to this part of England.