York: Neither up nor down

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Photos from a trip to England's middle, which has left me far too tired to write anything. Hopefully I haven't posted so many photos that the page won't load.

Happy New Year to all. I hope your Christmas presents were as awesome as mine (Mint Slices and Furry Friends, if you were wondering).

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Photos

The River Ouse, York
My colleague tells me this actually means 'River River', because Ouse is a generic Norse word for river. This photo is from Christmas morning, when only a few dog walkers were out and about.

Mirror, mirror
A goose drinks from a puddle beneath Clifford's Tower, which is not where a hairy dog lived at all, but rather the stronghold of the old castle.

Clifford's tower
The tower again, and still on Christmas Day.

Off to open presents?
A minister farewells his congregation after the Christmas service. We stopped for a while here to listen to the organ music. The minister, coincidentally, used to live in Blaxland.

Rub a dub dub
Boxing day morning in York, when we went for a walk around William the Conquerer's impressive walls. Along the way are brass 'rubbings' which make up, piece by piece, a map of York. We missed a corner, and so had to walk around the 3.5km walls one-and-a-half times.

Sunny day
Kate stops to take a photo of Yorkminster.

Totally posed
A better photo of Kate.

Concentration
We paused our walk around the wall to book a turn on the ice-skating rink, and laugh shamelessly at children learning to skate with penguins on skis.

Ouch. That hurt.
Surprisingly, Kate and I didn't fall over nearly as often as the kids, even though we did resort to penguins. I did, howevr, stack it the following day while demonstrating the funky chicken on icy rock.

Yorkminster
I tried to take a front on photo of Yorkminster, but it's too big. This is taken from the walls. We did go inside, for midnight eucharist on Christmas Eve. The man giving the sermon had a very Monty Pythonesque lisp.

Squirrel!
We tried to find the museum, but it was shut, so we watched squirrels instead.

Caving, kind of
After York we went to Malham, in the Yorkshire Dales national park. We went for a walk and Kate explored some shallow caves in limestone above Malham Cove.

Disgusting
Kate eats some ice laced with giardia.

Money growing on trees
A penny tree, where people hammer in pennies (and a few 20p coins) for good luck.

Cold view
We walked to the top of Rye Loaf Hill (part of our mission to climb all the hills in England named after bread) where it was so cold somebody had built a rock wall for shelter.

Janet's Foss
Where the queen of fairies supposedly lives. And yes, her name is Janet.

Gordale Scar
This valley was left by water rushing of melting glaciers. It was a rather hair-raising climb beside a waterfall to make it all the way to the top of the valley.

Oh my, it's me.
And a cool waterfall, with birds flying in the gap between cliffs.

The scar again
From the top, this time.

Joseph the technicolour sheep
They might not like mulesing, but the English sure do like marking their sheep with psychadelic colours. Joseph was not nearly the most colourful; he was simply the only one that would stand still.

Above Malham Cove
Limestone pavement above the cove, another glacial sculpture.

Comments

[Steve C]

Some tasty pics!!
Coals to Newcastle and Ministers from Blaxland!! All Hail Queen Janet! She sounds real exotic for a fairie Queen with a name like that... Your pics and words make the places you've visited and photographed much more palpably real. Keep 'dem blogs a coming Jacqui!!