York to Nottingham, the long way

Driving day again, we woke up a little hazy from the night before. I took a quick shower, we packed up and checked out of the hotel. 

The car was lodged into a maddeningly tight parking space, and despite my best 7-point turn, I couldn't seem to get the thing out. A guy exiting the gym came up to my window and offered in a crisp Eastern European accent to dislodge the VW for me – I was a little embarrassed that my de-parking skills had elicited the charity of strangers, but the guy smiled and said he parked cars for a living and this was a no-brainer for him, and he understood that American tourists had a little trouble with the tight spaces. I never really got comfortable with that car. Or most parking lots, for that matter. Car parks, as they say.

We were off to Nottingham. We had contacted a local ghost-hunting team over the Internet months before and they offered to take us out for an investigation. I was excited by the prospect. This whole trip was, after all, the Dead Englishmen Tour, and tonight promised to be dead guys up close, in the dark. Rock Cemetery, the city's oldest municipal burying ground, also looked promising, but I had some doubt we'd have time to see it.

Nottingham is south of York, a couple of hours if you take the fast way, but instead we headed north toward Rievaulx Abbey, Byland Abbey and Helmsley Castle. This was going to be one of our longest driving days; I tried as best I could to re-steel my road nerves, which had slackened the previous day walking around York.

We hopped on the B1363 and headed north out of town. 

Along the way, we came upon Gilling East, an historic and quiet village considered something of a York exurb. We had made no prior plans to stop there, but I spied the church on the main drag, pulled the car off the road and parked. The spontaneity thing again; in earlier years, I had found myself in periods of lethal boredom watching Rick Steves travel programs on PBS, at a time when a trip to Europe was as likely for me as a trip to Mars, but one thing I did take away from them was his unerringly emphatic tip to stop at unplanned places and just walk around. You can’t do that on a bus tour, and I figured this soft morning in Yorkshire was as good a time as any to liberate my Inner Steves. 

A nice lady visiting the church, a local, said hello to us as we entered the churchyard of Holy Cross. She seemed pleased we had stopped to visit, asked where we were headed (“ah, so you’re going north, to go to Nottingham,” she noted dryly) and invited us to go inside. At the entrance to the churchyard stood an immense and ornate memorial archway dedicated to the area’s fallen WW1 soldiers; WW1 memorials are a common site everywhere in England, a reminder of the generation-rending scars England still bears from that war, now almost a century ago.

The church itself was fascinating, dating to pre-Norman times and including the tomb of an unknown knight in the sanctuary. The visitor’s sign indicated he may have been the church’s founder, but the age and identity of the sarcophagus is known only to history. 

The church also housed the tombs of Sir Nicholas Fairfax, 3 times High Sheriff of Yorkshire in the 16^th century and something of a heroic figure in challenging Henry VIII's pogrom against the Catholic establishment, and his two wives.  

Here's a bit we found (after the fact) about Fairfax. 

In Oct of the same year a rising took place in Lincolnshire and 6 days later the rising in Yorkshire began with a great assembly in the East Riding. Fairfax was one of the Yorkshire gentlemen who received a letter from King Henry VIII commanding him to aid in repressing "certain traitors" and "suffer by dint and sword or else so yield that the ringleaders be committed to prison" to await trial. But Sir Nicholas was more inclined to join the "traitors" than to obey the King’s command. Sir Thomas Percy sent for Sir Nicholas Fairfax to attend a muster of 10,000 men at Malton. 

William Stapleton, in his account of the rebellion, says that on Saturday 21st Oct he came to York and heard how Sir Thomas Percy and Sir Nicholas Fayerfax, with the Abbot of St. Mary’s York, had gone to Pontefract (Pomfret) with a goodly band the same day. Meanwhile the Duke of Norfolk was marching north against the rebels. It was obvious that the Duke was inclined to be lenient and begged that King not to reprimand him for any concessions he might make. However, on reaching Doncaster he met a deputation from Pomfret. It would appear that Norfolk was persuaded that he had the inferior force and on 27th Oct an agreement was made, the King’s pardon published and the rebels were dismissed to their homes. The King however demanded 10 ringleaders to be delivered to him.

Fairfax, notwithstanding their promise to the King, moved that the parishes of Dent and Sedbar might rise and raise both Lancashire and Cheshire. It was decided to rally the Abbots of the Yorkshire Abbeys, remembering that Gilling Church had been given to St. Mary’s Abbey, York many years before. On Dec 2nd the rebels held a gathering of lords, laymen, and clergy; the Archbishop of York preached. Among them were Sir Nicholas Fairfax, Sir William Fairfax of Steeton, Sir George Darcy (Nicholas’s brother-in-law), Sir Henry Gascoyne (Sir Nicholas’s cousin), and Mr Palmes (perhaps a cousin of Sir Nicholas’s wife). At this meeting they accepted the granting of a full pardon but no conditions as to the arrest of ringleaders. Sir Nicholas succeeded in making his peace with the King and was pardoned on 18th Jan 1537. He took no further part in a subsequent abortive rebellion: he had had enough.

The connection to St Mary's Abbey was a coincidence (we had just walked around the place the day before) that we were unaware of until after we got home. You can walk around and photograph the history, or you can bury yourself in it; thankfully, there's plenty in between. Gilling East was a small place, not necessarily on any tourist-guide must-see lists, but if we go back to Yorkshire, I'd like to see it again.

Helmsley Castle was next. 

Built by Robert de Ros in the late 12^th century, the castle is one of many in the care of English Heritage, although it is privately owned. Most of the fortifications are in ruins, having suffered significant damage during the English Civil War (c. 1640’s), although the manor house and apartment buildings are in good shape, and some of the 15^th century rooms are still intact with original wood furnishings and trim.

The place was intriguing; our first real exposure to mostly-intact medieval interiors (apart from the churches), and it took some time to see the whole facility. There was a light scattering of fellow visitors as well. Ruined castles play tricks on your sense of time and space – large open areas, laced with occasional exposure of foundation, peripherally marked by large and irregularly ruined keeps or houses, usually from different eras and betraying different building styles. 

Your mind wants to associate them all to a single notch on history’s timeline, but it’s actually a little more like stratography, where you’re seeing the passage of centuries, a sequence of building and destruction, re-building, remodeling, neglect and restoration. The reality is that you have to de-compress the centuries and understand these sites as processes. Just because what you see is hundreds of years old doesn’t mean it existed whole at any one time.  It challenges a two dimensional view of these sites, and all the large historical ruins we visited were like this.

Then came Rievaulx (pronouced REE’ voh).

A massive Cistercian ruin, once one of the largest and most prosperous Cistercian Abbeys in all of England, this enormous mission was established in 1132 and fell to ruin at the hands of Henry VIII in 1538, and is considered second only to Fountains Abbey in renown. The place absolutely dwarfs the ruin at Whitby which we saw two days earlier, and is far larger than the view we got from the road that day.

Many of the ruined abbeys were scavenged for their stone by neighboring villages (much of the lead and other metals were plundered by Henry’s troops), but Rievaulx stands far less pillaged than many of the others in part due to its location deep in a river valley in North Yorkshire – it was simply too difficult for  the area villagers to remove the massive stone blocks up the steep banks of the valley. The road in was by far the steepest and one of the narrowest we drove the entire two weeks in England.

Rievaulx is a shattering experience up close. The monks working this property diverted the river Rye three times out to accommodate their building projects, and they also built a prototype blast furnace at nearby Laskill, producing smelted metals of refinement far beyond anything else being produced at the time. It has been said that the closure and dispersion of the Rievaulx mission delayed the onset of the Industrial Revolution by two and a half centuries.

The church columns and arches are largely intact, and the chapterhouse, dormitories and other buildings are at the very least well defined around the church itself. In some respects, it is a difficult place to photograph; the scale and breadth of the place is absolutely vital to the experience. 

A nearby building features an exhibit of the life of the Cistercian monks, and a tiny village adjoining the abbey property – thatched roofed cottages with satellite dishes and Range Rovers out front – summons a slightly airbrushed resonance of medieval life outside this massive religious site. Walking through the abbey itself, you hear almost nothing except the bleats and moos of nearby livestock. Rievaulx is haunting, intimidating, compelling. At the risk of overstating it, any tourist traveling the North Yorkshire countryside would be out of his mind to miss this place.  

      

 Byland was next. Another Cistercian ruin, only 5 miles away as the crow flies, and a very impressive place. A good deal less of the primary buildings remain at Byland, giving it the impression of being smaller than Rievaulx, when in fact the site is actually larger by land area. Byland also has one of the most extensive collections of in-situ medieval tile work anywhere in Europe. 

It felt different from Rievaulx – less overtly compelling, the space being less well defined, the connection to the past more tenuous. The tile work isn’t really fenced off, although there are signs requesting visitors not to step on them. The cemetery lays behind the church itself, although you’d only know if you looked at a site map – it’s just a grassy field. Byland is a less well-known site than Rievaulx (and much less than the famous Fountains Abbey, also in Yorkshire but not on the itinerary for us, for reasons owing as much to planning neglect on our part as anything else) and it is visited less than Rievaulx, while only being a fifteen minute drive away. Its charms were more subtle than Rievaulx or Whitby, but a beautiful and haunting place nonetheless. 

Three large outdoor ruins in quick succession; it was early afternoon and I was beat already. I had it in my mind that we’d go crawling around on our way south to Nottingham to find more villages and churchyards, but the clock was escaping us and we had a group to meet somewhere (we didn’t know where yet) in Nottingham, a good hundred miles or so to the south. So after a fun and slightly weird conversation with the lady at the entrance office, and laying out for a little tourist swag, we climbed in the VW, made our way west toward Thirsk, stopping off at one church along the way. A minor indulgence at my request; All Saints Church, at Kirby Hill. The name is actually fairly common in Yorkshire, and a little digging suggests it is derived from the old English (or Norse) word for "church". 

We shot the cemetery (the church was locked) and then blasted down the A1, one of Britain’s superhighways, clutching the slow lane as trucks and Mercedes’ passed us at autobahn-worthy speeds. By this time, I was grateful for highway driving – no roundabouts, no tricky off-camber turns. Just find the slowest guy and get behind him. I don’t think I actually passed anyone until Day 8.

Nottingham, of course, is well associated with Robin Hood (who may or may not have even existed), and Sherwood Forest. What’s left of the forest is a protected park, we saw signs for it along the highway as we approached Nottingham, as well Robin Hood this and Robin Hood that. There’s an undeniable allure to the legend, especially to anyone even mildly sympathetic to the notion of fleecing the rich on behalf of the working class, but we really had little interest in seeing the Robin Hood exhibiture. And exhausted from a long day, I managed to get us lost off the highway on the way to the hotel. GPS, my ass – I can get us lost anywhere. Here, watch this drive.

But we did eventually find the place – it was a Best Western, and we were okay with the notion of staying at bland chain hotel that night, since we weren’t going to be in town very long. Instead, though, we came up to a gently restored and modernized 16^th century hunting lodge once owned by King Charles II, an absolutely beautiful and slightly foreboding property set in the woods on the north side of town, in a little subdivision called Bestwood. 

Place had a hedge maze in back, and much of the Elizabethan interior was unchanged from historic times. It was a surprise for us – the staff were terrific, the property was quiet and well-kept, the grounds were elegant. After Thornbury Castle (that’s coming up), it was probably the nicest place we bunked in – we were disappointed only in that we didn’t have more time to enjoy it. We wolfed down a hurried dinner outside in the cooling summer evening, by ourselves, headed back to the room and jumped on the internet to get our directions for the ghost hunt. Sharon was in no mood for it – she was exhausted and looking forward to a quiet and uneventful evening, but I pressed her on the ghost gig. This we had to do.  

Had enough yet?            

York Pt 2 - The City

We descended the stairs from the Minster Tower, which was frankly only a little easier than going up, re-entered the Minster itself for a longer look around. 

There’s a visceral sense of the place’s history, though for me it lingered just over our heads, out of reach and buoyantly unsullied by the mass of tourists around us. One cannot escape imagining being in the place alone, at night, the dense stone walls shutting off the sounds of the modern city humming around it. An experience, I suspect, very few people get to have.

The exit takes you through the tourist shop, we clutched our wallets tightly, and made out way back into the city. At the suggestion of the gentleman we met at the top of the Minster, we headed off next to The Shambles, the ancient market street in York.

Essentially a walking thoroughfare, the place dates to pre-Norman times, although the street now is mainly lined with buildings from the 14^th through 18^th century, and typical of York, it’s a weird blending of the ancient, the trying-to-look-ancient and the modern. Cell phone stores next to rustic old pubs, next to trendy fashion nooks, next to cautiously signed fast food stops. It was loaded up with tourists – they were the ones walking at a leisurely pace – and Sharon popped in York Glass to pick out a lucky glass cat. The cat is an ancient totem for York; it is thought that cat statues were commonly placed around the city as a means to ward off plague-carrying rats, as well as evil spirits. We saw a number of cat statues during our walk around the town, as well as plenty of real ones, most looking well-fed and thoroughly incapable of catching a rat. 

We also saw a poster bill for an upcoming concert...

Rock on, Dave.

We stopped to rest after the Shambles on the wall outside the ancient St Crux parish church, 

across the street from the Golden Fleece public house. The Fleece is reputedly one the most haunted locations in all of England, let alone York, and we considered spending our hotel time in York at the place. But there was no parking (that again…) and while the Tudor-era building looked awesomely creepy (and structurally dubious), we made the right choice. We’ll stop in for a pint next time we’re in town, but staying there looks like a serious and noisy PITA. 

We headed down Pavement St for a few blocks, figured out that we were lost, and eventually after rotating our city map a dozen or so times and looking generally clueless at an intersection (I was just happy to see a traffic light), we re-found the city wall and following it southwest to York City Cemetery. I was in some discomfort that day: a pulled and irritated abdominal muscle on my left side, and of course I’d get this on our longest walking day. It was mostly just an inconvenience for me, having to sit and take some load off at regular intervals, but I will say it bothered me enough to make the second half of the York explore-day a bit of a trial.  

York Cemetery immediately recalled Brompton, urban Amazonia run wild. 

The place was founded in the late 1830’s; like most English cities at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the city churches could no longer accommodate the growing numbers of dead, and DIY burials were making a gruesome mess of the city centers, especially during floods (get the picture?). It was originally set up as a investment deal for a number of the area’s wealthy, but the problem, of course, is that when you run out of room (and that sort of thing happens in England, on a lot of different levels), you can’t bury anyone in the place anymore, revenues and ROI fall, and the place turns into a neglected money-loser. Which is exactly what happened to the York Cemetery by the 1960’s – the place had become so derelict and vandalized, it was taken over by the Crown, and is now maintained by a public trust. It is still used for burials, although  lightly from what we could tell. The heart of the place – narrow and overgrown passages bounded by large sections of mature trees, deep weeds and grasses - was ferociously atmospheric and evocative, one of the best cemeteries we found in England.

Back into the city center, we visited Clifford’s Tower, one of York’s main tourist attractions and another Heritage Site. 

The tower as it exists today was built by Henry III in the middle of the 13^th century, surrounded by a moat and was considered one of northern England’s most important fortifications. The thing stands on a small but very steep hill – called a “motte” – which was first constructed by William the Conqueror in 1068. The stairs up were packed with school kids, goofing around and waiting for instruction from their harried field trip leader – I was worried we’d have to share our visit with all 50 of them, but they took off as we ascended the stairs to get inside.

There isn’t much left of the keep itself, just a large, vaguely circular area with a few chained-off staircases and some windows. The tourist shop, oddly, is placed right in the middle of the structure, but there were some stairs to climb and a second level above the floor, offering a nice view of the city. The place was small but a cool experience and undoubtedly a must for York visitors.

Late afternoon by this time, and we wandered over to St Mary’s Abbey, the skeletal remains of a Benedictine mission founded in the 11^th century and dedicated to St Olaf II of Norway. A good deal less of the historic structure remains than most of the other abbeys we saw. Like virtually all of the Norman-era abbeys, St Mary’s was closed and substantially demolished by Henry VIII in the 1530’s as part of the Dissolution Of The Monasteries – it doesn't take long exploring historic religious sites in England to appreciate the magnitude and viciousness of Henry’s rage against the Roman Catholic establishment – but surrounded by immaculate gardens, peaceful walking paths and museums, the site is one of York’s true treasures. A large stage was being set up for something or other within the loose embrace of the abbey’s nave, scaffolding and lights and generators, but whatever it was we weren’t going to be around long enough to see it.

We followed the wall along the north for a while longer, as it ran behind shops and B&B’s, the Minster’s Tower never out of sight, and we ambled back into town, satisfied we had walked more or less the whole thing. The tourist book said it takes only an hour and a half to walk the entire length of the wall, but even having done it in segments, I’m skeptical.

We headed over to Thomas’s for dinner and libations. 

Mary, the thirty-something proprietor of only six months or so, came over to our table and chatted us up casually, asking about our day and what was on the itinerary for us. We mentioned Shrewsbury, and after poking some fun at my pronunciation (I guess it sounded like ‘Shroos Berry’ to her; proper English would be more like ‘Shrews Bree’ ), she told us it was actually her home town (“why would you want to go there”, she asked, to which we replied…well, it’s a long story). She spent her college years in Wales (another recommendation to go to Wales), and she complained with some faux-bitterness that her sister still lived in Wales and had adopted something of a Welsh accent, which Mary found irritating and entirely unacceptable. She tried to illustrate the difference between an English and a Welsh accent, but I really couldn't hear it, and certainly didn't apprehend the cause of her distress over it. There’s a thing between the English and the Welsh which undoubtedly extends back many centuries, and I suspect that sheep have something to do with it. We’ll leave it at that.

A club sandwich for me (with deviled ham?), and bangers and mash for Sharon, 

a few rounds of drinks at the bar (Mary proving herself a skilled and somewhat dangerous barkeep), and promising we’d return, we headed out into the night, the city now quiet except for a few groups of swoozled and boisterous college kids out barhopping.

Over the river and back on Skeldergate, we popped in at a tiny pub, the Cock and Bottle, a couple of blocks up from the hotel. No tourists here, just a handful of locals drinking at the bar and pitching a game of darts. A girl with spiky blue hair and matching darts-tournament shirt seemed to be winning. We were hopelessly out of place, but no one paid a second glance at us, we finished up and went back to the Lady Anne.

Helluva day.  

As a side note, York endured some pretty bad flooding a mere three weeks after we were there, and the good folks at the Cock and Bottle persevered in true British fashion (i.e., keep drinking !) 

York Minster

Rested up after a long day of travel, we set off again by foot into York for dinner – the town was still busy with traffic and tourists, as well as outflow from the many pubs, and we landed at Thomas’s for a bite. It was probably the first time we really felt comfortable at a table in England. The place had a locals-but-tourists-ok vibe to it, a couple of video game tables and some music in the various rooms that comprised the restaurant. A nice meal, some good chatter with our waitress and up to bar for a few drinks. We really liked the place and decided we’d come back the next night.

Back at the hotel, we went out to the smoking area for a nightcap and chatted with a group of middle aged guys from Cardiff up for a week of golf in the area. Volleyed a bit back and forth on traveling England, the necessity for us to visit Wales (“maybe next time” I offered, which may have sounded dismissive, although we really would like to visit Wales sometime) and field a remark or two about  “your Mr. Romney”, to which I replied “the guy’s been insulting our intelligence a lot longer than he’s been insulting yours…”, and we went off to get some shuteye.  

Wednesday came, our Day Without Driving, and I was personally grateful for it. I got up early enough to pop in at the hotel's fitness center – I had made it a preference, in picking out hotels, that we found ones with gyms, although this turned out to be the only one I managed to visit while on the road. The place was light and a little small, a tall blond girl with freakishly developed biceps made me sign a form (I didn’t have my glasses with me, so for all I know I deeded my kidneys over to her) and I did an hour of rowing machine and treadmill, the latter a little weird since it prompted me for my weight in kilograms and preferred distance in kilometers, and I just had to guess.

We headed into town on foot. It was a workday, so the narrow streets were bustling with trucks and cabs, and the sidewalks were full. York has a certain kind of buzz to it, sort of like a big city squeezed down and tamed by old passages, modernity grudgingly yielding way to the ancient.

There was a guy hawking a lame joke book for a charitable donation to some athletic program – we gave him a few pounds and he tried his best American accent on us. Also lame, heavy on the Texas, but probably no worse than my own lame English accent I rolled out from time to time, and the guy was funny and friendly. We also met an American busker, a twenty-something kid who looked like he needed some sleep, setting up for a morning of guitar-case gigging – he was from California and playing in a four piece band called the Buffalo Skinners, bouncing around the country and, in some cases, sleeping on the streets. York was a temporary stop for him, but he said it was one of his favorite places in England. He gave us a CD (“I’m the only American in the group!”) and we parted ways.

Along the way to the Minster, the girl with the biceps walked past me and popped into a bank. Small town, I thought.  

The Minster.

Jawdropping in scale and majestically poised in the middle of the city center, the place defied description. While it is still used periodically for special ecclesiastical purposes, the soaring 12^th century cathedral (it’s technically neither a cathedral, nor a true “minster”, as few locals pointed out to us) is really more of a museum. Walls lined with 15^th and 16^th century memorials, plenty of graves in the floor, huge doors, staggering stone carvings, a few sarcophagi dating to the 12^th (!) century, workmen and tourists and a light sprinkling of smiling, welcoming clergy.

After a quick lap through the immense ground floor, we gathered for the tower climb. The signs warned that the experience was only for those physically fit and undisturbed by narrow stairways, and they weren’t kidding. The climb, 275 steps up two ancient and impossibly narrow spiral staircases, was taxing. I was sweating when we reached the top – Sharon had to stop a number of times to get her breath. The view from the top, 360 degrees over York and toward the Yorkshire countryside extended almost as far as Leeds, thirty miles to the west. A local gentleman pointed the Kilburn Chalk Horse almost 30 miles to the North, remarking how clear the air was that day to be able to see it, which I only managed with the telephoto on Sharon’s camera. The shot's below, the horse is against the hillside above the orange bus to the left of center of the picture, but don't feel bad if you can't see it. I was there, and I couldn't see it.  

  

We've got more pictures of the Minster on the Cemetery Gallery site.

North Yorkshire

We had three nights at the Lady Anne, and had planned one day driving around the area, and one day to leave the car parked and just explore York. We decided that Tuesday, our first full day in Yorkshire, we’d drive.

Navigating our way out of York, back more or the less the way we came in, we skipped onto the A64 toward Scarborough, the ancient seacoast town and site of Henry II’s famous castle (oh yeah, and the namesake for an old English ballad, popularized by Simon and Garfunkel). More roundabouts – it was early in the trip and I still hated them. Cut a lady off in one due to a bad entrance-lane decision (sorry about that, ma’am), but otherwise kept it together.

We needed gas, finally. The spunky little VW had gotten us halfway up the country, but it was time. We pulled into a petrol station and did a couple of weird three-point turns, not knowing which side the gas door was on. Then, staring at the pump, I realized I had no idea what grade to choose (yeah, that’s all different, too), so I went inside the station and asked the lady behind the counter, my clueless-Yank routine now fairly well polished. We filled up, tried to pay by credit card, but her handheld swiper would have none of it, so I got Sharon to come in and do the cash thing. Gas is extortionately priced in England, but somehow paying for it with unfamiliar currency, by the liter, seemed to mask the effect. We budgeted for gas, and having planned an ambitious driving tour around the country, the cost of gas wasn’t going to trouble me – the VW got something like 40 MPG on the highway, anyway.  The locals have been paying dearly for it for so long, they don’t even notice.

Getting around in Scarborough immediately recalled my two-way-traffic, inhale-while-being-passed experience in Louth the day before, but we managed to make it to the car park down the hill from the castle. It was an absolutely beautiful day – sunny and warm – and the town was busy with locals and tourists, so if I had taken a minute to consider, it would have seemed suspicious that there were several open parking spaces in close proximity to the castle entrance, while the parking further down the steep hill was completely packed. And there was a sign, saying something about two hour blue-dot parking. Sharon looked at it, said it was all ok, and we went up to the castle.

The nice gentleman at the ticket office suggested, when he learned we were at the front end of an historic-site tour of England, that we buy a 12 day pass, which would gain us free (or greatly reduced) admission price to all the other English Heritage sites in the country. One of the best decisions we made on the fly over there – the pass paid for itself by the third day out.

The castle is largely ruined, in part by time (being 800 years old, and on a steep hill over the ocean – the mind reels at the ferocity that winter weather must deliver up there), in part by a siege it endured during the 17^th century English Civil War, and in part by German shelling in WW1. Much of the keep remains, and long sections of the south-facing curtain wall and its various rooms are relatively intact, but the interior sections are marked only by floor stones or roughly outlined depressions in the grassy soil. 

The rough remains of a Roman signal tower near the cliff edge and a Saxon chapel nearby belie the site’s pre-Norman history. 

Below the cliffs, we saw fishing boats and sailboats heading out onto the North Sea, seagulls trailing many of them in search of an easy lunch.

After an hour and a half, we headed back down and visited St Mary’s Chapel, just below the suspiciously un-crowded parking area where we had left the car. 

 The church has a long history as well, pre-dating the castle, and is also known as the final resting place for Anne Bronte.

Outside the church we caught what we believe to be the oldest headstone we saw outside anywhere in England, dating to 1563. 

The lady at the concession booth inside the church gave us a recitation of the church’s history and burial practices – like most of the folks we met at the historic sites, she was warm, knowledgeable and very friendly.

When we got back to the car, my suspicions about the parking area were finally confirmed. The ‘blue dot’ thing was a reference to a special parking permit issued by the town (available from local merchants, evidently), and of course, we didn’t get one. So, they slipped a parking ticket under our wiper. Twenty five pounds, which we paid online that night. As it turns out, even if we had gotten one, we’d have gotten a ticket anyway, as we were there close to three hours. Oh well.

Next stop was Whitby Abbey, a huge Cistercian ruin (c. 1135) on a hill above the seacoast town of the same name. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula while living in Whitby, and the famous steps in the novel are still there in town. But we were there for the Abbey.

Coming up the road, we both caught a glimpse of the place, stark and solitary on rise not far from the cliffs descending to the beach below. For me, it was like a punch in the chest. 

We parked the car, got our tickets (thank you, Heritage Pass) and made our way up the path through the long grass to the Abbey ruins.

Whitby was the first of several Norman-era monastic sites we visited, and for me (probably because it was the first) the most evocative. Elegant lines and arches, grand in scale, skeletal in its presence but deeply powerful in its summoning of ancient English religious life. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it – and at the risk of conjuring a flat triviality, pictures just don’t convey the immensity or psychical gravity of the place. Several weeks later, on a certain level, we still haven’t shaken the place.

The light was terrific so we spent longer than we probably should have taking pictures and chatting with some locals. I had it in my mind that we’d head off next to Rievaulx Abbey, another huge Cistercian ruin west of Whitby, about an hour’s drive. Sharon agreed, reluctantly, and we took off. 

But in what was probably our only real scheduling error, we hadn't counted on the fact that these huge outdoor sites closed their entrance doors 30 minutes or more before the site closing, and on the way we got stuck in some unexpected traffic backed up behind farm equipment, arriving at Rievaulx too late to get in. But we did see the place, much larger than Whitby, from the tiny, narrow lane leading to the site entrance. We made friends with a curious, pasturing horse in the field before the abbey, chatted briefly with a young German family along the lane who had also gotten there too late to get in, and at least got to see it. Sharon said we had to return on our next travel day, I agreed and we headed back to York.

Along the way back to York, we stopped off at St Everilda’s Church in the tiny hamlet of Nether Poppleton, shot some pictures in the churchyard (the church was locked), and headed back to the hotel.