Early this week we went up to York for a few nights. York is situated near the east coast of England- about halfway up. 2 hours on the train from Kings Cross station.
York has a pretty interesting history. It seems to me to have been a city fucked over, conquered, attacked and settled by foreingers for the last 2000 years.
It was a very important Roman city and was the place of the fortress of Eboracum. It was here that the first Christian Caesar was proclaimed- Constantine. There is a statue of him outside the church today. Within thirty years of St. Augustine's arrival at Canterbury to convert the country, York was declared the centre of missionary Christianity in the North of England.
Then the Romans pulled out of Britain in AD 400.
Next were the Vikings.
"Jorvik was the name given to York by Vikings who conquered and settled the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. A 'great Viking army' captured York in AD 866, and in 876 the Vikings settled permanently in parts of the Yorkshire countryside. Viking kings ruled this area, known to historians as 'The Viking Kingdom of York', for almost a century. In 954 the last Viking king, Eric Bloodaxe, was expelled and his kingdom was incorporated in the newly consolidated state of England."Then in 1066 the Normans came and conquered ALL of England.
York was also the staging ground for some of the Jacobite uprising, and a major battleground for the Civil War in the 1600's. (I didn't know that there was actually a Republic of England that lasted only 3 years inbetween the reign of Charles 1 and Charles 2,)
York was also bombed by the Germans in WW2.
And in early 2006 it was visited by 2 Australians.
It was a pretty town. You've gotto love a city where you have to go through a portcalis to enter:
Surrounded by a river/moat:
Has cool castle bits throughout:
And is surrounded by a wall:
The insides of the Old Town are like a rabbit warren on narrow streets and cool looking shops, pubs and eating places:
The York Minster Abbey is a mother-fucking HUGE cathedral!
Even a nay-sayer like me has to be impressed by this largest Gothic Cathedral in all of Europe.
Inside is a cavernous area of prayer nooks (like I know what there actually for?!) and impressive stained glass windows.
The other things I noticed about York:
* Lots and lots of Old People running around in fat guy chairs
* Lots and lots of teenagers dressed in Emo-gear.
* They're big on poo. Every museum had some kind of shit-display whether it was the history of the flushing toilet to fosilised Viking poo.
