York seemed a frighteningly long way away when Lisa suggested it as a possible place to spend a week. This was in the late 1990s and even now I'm still a very poor traveller. Much like Sam from 'The Lord Of The Rings' this would be the furthest I'd ever been away from home.
With me living in Dorset and Lisa in Hornchurch (in other words, some time before we started Living In Sin as the Sheard used to put it), the journey was all a matter of trains and timing.
I caught a train from Salisbury to Waterloo, there meeting Lisa who had come in via the District Line. We'd then cross London and catch the train from King's Cross to York for another long slog. And as it transpired I was about to go down with a heavy cold and spent several days not feeling up to much in the way of adventures.
But York is blessed with all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies, not to mention a wide variety of pubs and museums, so I think we got something out of our first visit, even if I can't remember much about it!
But we found some old photos taken during our second visit, a few years later, which helped jog my memory a bit.
We definitely went for a boat trip with a lot of noisy kids - indeed, we wished that the aforementioned Mister Bronson was on board to tell them "YOU WILL BE QUIET!!!" as only he could.
Clifford's Tower looms large in one picture, casting a dramatic shadow and Lisa stands outside the Joseph Terry sweet shop in the Victorian street at the Castle Museum.
We do have a few snaps from the National Railway Museum, but these are quite dark so they won't appear here. But this is from the time we got absolutely soaked walking (and running) there, arriving looking like the proverbial drowned rats.
I've always been proud of the fact that I seem to be a bit of a cat-magnet, and one certainly took a fancy to me at one point, climbing up my trousers, to end up on my shoulder. After some investigation, this seems to have happened in the vicinity of 29 St Mary's, at least according to Google Maps...
We also struck out even further one day, taking a trip to Scarborough, as I'm always a sucker for a bit of seaside and even more so if there's a lighthouse and an unusual variety of police box you stand stand in front of and have your picture taken. The little bit of graffiti in the shape of a Dalek was an unexpected bonus!
Not sure if any more York photos will surface, but we did also do a short video in which we talk a bit about our visits, which can be seen here.
(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)
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