A walk among old city walls and ghost trails

We spent Sunday and Monday in the 2000 year old city of York. I LOVED this city. It has retained its old world charm as indicated by its intact city walls around the ‘ring road’ and old abbey in the centre of the city.
Yorkminster Abbey is the second largest gothic abbey in Northern Europe, and man, was it impressive! We had to pay to go through, but at least we had a look at the great east window, which at 76ft tall, is the largest stain glass window in the world. We did pay to go into the crypts though, which is essentially a museum about the abbey. We learned that the abbey was built on top of an ancient roman military building, then a saxon cathedral. It was neat to walk among the roman rubble and see how they recreated the past.

It is also a great walking city with pubs and tea shops everywhere you look. We had some fun just wandering the streets. Interesting the city was originally the creator of Terry's chocolates & sweets (as in the chocolate orange) and Rowntree (as in Smarties). Sadly both of these companies have since been bought and moved elsewhere, but the chocolate tradition was rampant in the city. We loved how most of the streets were cobblestone, and the houses were designed in the Tudorian style as below with black and white designs and jettying over the streets.
During that particular weekend we were there it was an annual international sword dancing festival and we also found sword dancers from every country doing their own take on the dance, some more complex than others. The group below in wooden shoes were from Belgium. When I was on a city walking tour I was so distracted by the dancers that I rarely listened to the tour guide!
The best part of our walking tour was the ability to walk along the city walls and get great shots of the city and abbey as well as gaze inside the towers at each corner and picture how soldiers would have defended the city from siege. I especially liked this unique sign upon the wall.
We stayed that night in an ‘inn’ – translation – rooms above a pub called the Exhibition Inn. Our rooms were so cute and cosy and the whole place had such a homey feel to it. The pub itself was also fabulous. It had a huge beer garden out back, as well as a conservatory-style restaurant out back where we had a fab English breakfast as part of our b&b package. I’m pumped that we finally stayed in an authentic inn as Syd and I have been meaning to do that for some time now.
York is also infamous for being the most haunted city in the world, with a total of 504 recorded hauntings according to the Ghost Research Foundation International. Which isn't surprising really, given York's history of conflict and many tragic events. One can even seek to stay in a haunted inn - thankfully ours wasn't one of them!
Multiple ghost tours were available to learn more about this, and we chose the one closest to our inn. It was led by an older fella who has been a guide for over 25 years. He told some pretty interesting stories, including one about a girl in the 60’s who was in Yorkshire Abbey with her dad when she saw the ghost of her brother who was off to war at the time. Only the guide of that tour at the time saw her recoil in fright and recognition of seein a ghost before she fainted. She only admitted to the guide that the ghost she saw was her brother and if her father knew it meant that they would be getting some dire news soon. As it turned out, they received a letter from the army notifying them of the death not 2 days later. Creepy. There were also other creepy stories of children being abused as child labour about 100 years ago in an old industrial site, which is now a residential area where numerous sightings of children ghosts have been seen. All of us enjoyed the ghost tour, even Syd, who is generally skeptical of the macabre.

On Monday we learned all about the history of York through the ages at the York Castle museum at the base of Clifford’s tower. The most unique aspect of this museum was the recreated 16th century york streets – complete with a sweets shop, a candle-making studio, a fire station and police station and toy stores! It was coupled with smells and newspapers and was so neat! A quick glance of what a carriage looked like in the 'street' in the depths of the museum is below.
Unfortunately we had to head home for a long ride back to London, but I could have stayed there so much longer. I’m glad that we made the effort to go up to York as it was totally worth it and I recommend it to everyone.