UK 02: York Day Trip

Saturday, January 4, 2025

My parents met Thinh and me in the hotel lobby at 07:15 this morning so we could all walk over to the train station together. They had eaten breakfast at the hotel, while Thinh and I planned to get something either at the station or in York. When we arrived at Waverly Station, we learned that our drain was delayed by half an hour due to a fatality on the tracks! While waiting for our platform to be announced, we got some coffee at a shop in the station.

The train to York departed at 08:30 and the journey itself was only two and a half hours long. The four of us were sitting together and we luckily had the four seats around a shared table. Everyone struggled to stay awake during the journey, but I watched Netflix on my phone and let everyone else nap. When we arrived in York, I was very tired and needed some more coffee to help wake up, so we ducked into a nearby Starbucks. It was quite cold today, so having a hot drink was nice to help us warm up as well.

I then led everyone on a short walk around York, where we visited the impressive York Minster (cathedral), and admired the well-preserved old architecture of the city. We didn’t do a lot of walking around because we had booked a free walking tour of the city for after lunch. I took mom and Thinh over to Pret-a-Manger for lunch, while dad and I went to a nearby Gregg’s.

The free walking tour began at 13:15, just outside of the city walls. Our guide was a very friendly and knowledgeable local woman (the tours are led by volunteers who live in the community). The tour began by taking us through the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, which dates back to the 11th century. Only a few walls and foundations remain of the abbey today, but the area is very pretty to walk around.

We walked through one of the old city gates to re-enter the old town center. York has some of the best preserved old city walls, and the city has more miles of intact walls than any other city in England. Some mistakenly refer to them as the Roman Walls, but this is a misnomer because the city walls underwent extensive changes over the centuries following Roman rule. The remaining walls date to the 13th and 14th centuries.

Our guide took the group over to the York Minster and gave us quite a bit of information about the building. My parents, Thinh and I had wanted to visit the interior of the cathedral, but it charged a steep entry fee, which we refused to pay just to enter a church. The minster began construction in 1398 and was completed nearly a century later.

The group then walked through the Shambles, which is one of the most historic streets in the city. The street is lined by numerous well-preserved timber-framed medieval buildings. The narrow street is now packed with tourists who come to visit the many local shops along the street. It’s overly touristy and a bit kitschy, but the buildings themselves are very impressive.

The tour ended at the opposite end of the Shambles. In all, it had lasted nearly three hours and we had all thoroughly enjoyed it, due in large part to the outstanding guide. At the end of the tour, she told us that it was a volunteer-based tour and that tips are not expected whatsoever! I was truly surprised by this. One couple tried to give her a tip regardless, which I overheard her trying to talk them out of doing.

We still had several hours until our train back to Edinburgh departed, so I led everyone over to see Clifford’s Tower. This tower is all that remains of the old medieval Norman castle in York and it situated atop a small hill. We then walked back through the Shambles so we could take our time walking along the street (we had been slightly rushed earlier). The crowds were a bit overwhelming along the narrow street, but it was nice to be able to properly admire the old buildings.

Everyone was tired from walking and getting hungry, so we set off to find somewhere to eat for dinner. This turned out to be far more difficult to do since no one could agree on where to eat. Thinh and I found several places that looked good, but my parents’ silence upon viewing the menus told me that they wanted to find somewhere else. Slight exasperated, I finally found two pub restaurants and told them to pick one of them for dinner. The one we went to was very busy, but we managed to find a table tucked away in a side room. To order, we used a QR code on the table and the pub’s website, which was much more convenient than waiting for a waiter to come by on such a busy night. The food was good (standard pub food) and we had sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

I led everyone back to the train station at 18:30 so we could catch our return train. The train departed Yok at 19:00 and, by 21:30, we were back in Edinburgh. As with the morning’s journey, most everyone napped – I struggled to stay awake myself and dozed off a couple of times. The four of us were exhausted after the long, but very enjoyable, day. We returned to the hotel so we could get some rest – tomorrow was the big day!