Middlesbrough; Wednesday, 27 October, 2010

I’d booked myself on a stupidly early train out of Middlesbrough as I’d wanted to have a full day in York, so it meant having to get up at the same time as if it were a work day before packing and heading over to the station.

I arrived in York an hour later and having deposited my luggage with Europecar (they run the left luggage office, I hadn’t just dumped it in a hire car!), I headed out into the city.

First stop, just outside the station was the city sightseeing bus stop. The last time I had been to York was nearly seven years ago and I wanted to remind myself of the layout of the city (not that much would have changed, not much has changed in York in several hundred years).

After doing the bus tour I then wandered down to the Ouse to go on a river tour. Last time I had visited had been just before Christmas and none of the river tours were running then. The tour lasted about an hour and gave a different perspective on the city from its most defining feature.

I had a long wander around the city centre taking in Clifford’s Tower and the castle area, marvelling at the size of some of the queues for the top museums. I know it’s the half term break, but the queue for Jorvik was in excess of two hours and even the Castle Museum had a queue at least 60 people deep, you’d spend longer in the queue than you would in the museum, and when you got in it would be so busy that it would be impossible to see anything!

The other problem with all the crowds were the number of people wanting lunch at the same time, in the end I decided to try my luck having lunch at half two, and that still left me having to wait a few minutes for a table.

With lunch inside me I headed over to the Minster to have a look around. This was an idea that was very quickly abandoned when I saw the entrance price. £8 just to get inside the Cathedral, another £5 if you wanted to climb the tower. I though churches were places of worship rather than of profit! With that idea scuppered I had a bit of a longer wander around the city centre and over some of the city walls before heading over to the back of the station and the National Railway Museum.

As the museum is free I thought it would be a good (and cheap) way of filling up the final hour or so before I had to wander back to the station. In the end I was only part way round when the started to close the museum down, which was my cue to head back to the station, pick up my luggage and continue my journey south.