Yorvik!

[diffrentcolours]

This weekend just gone, cosmolinguist and I went to York during the Viking Festival. We'd been talking about having a weekend break for a little while, but we'd both been too busy and tired to actually organise one. Finally we managed to pull this together. We stayed in an AirBnB in the Rowntree Buildings, where Joseph Rowntree was born. It was nice and central, and comfortable enough though a little soulless in decor.

We arrived in York on Friday evening, just in time to attend the Brianna Ghey vigil in St. Helen's Square, outside Betty's Tearooms. The square was packed, and the large and sombre crowd was confusing a lot of Friday night visitors and revellers. We were asked if the event was a vigil, from a passer-by who'd clearly heard of the murder. "Such a shame", she said, almost in tears as she walked off. We didn't stay very long - there was no PA, and we were far enough back that we couldn't hear the speakers. So after we'd been there long enough to seem polite, we headed off in search of dinner.

We found The Punch Bowl on Stonegate, a pub I've visited before on a Manchester geek trip to York Railway Museum. We sat out front and enjoyed people walking past. I had an excellent game pie, and a couple of pints of Yardsman's Belfast Pale Ale which was yummy. We then went to The Last Drop Inn, possibly my favourite York pub, and were delighted to confirm it has a tiny beer garden so we could sit outside. I was so full from my dinner that I only managed a half-pint of a "Coal Porter" here, which was exactly as it tastes. Back at the flat we tuned into Virtual Goth Night's third birthday stream.

On Saturday, we got up early to go back to St. Helen's Square for a "Viking storytelling" session. We were a couple of minutes late and could see no sign of it, which was a shame. We pottered around Parliament Street where there was a "Viking encampment", a mixture of trading stalls and demonstrations of Viking life. We admired a great raconteur / storyteller who was keeping the crowd going with story and song, while a woodturner created a bowl using a fairly primitive lathe, with a leather strap between a foot pedal and a springy branch to provide motion. We then watched the Viking Parade, from the Minster to Yorvik.

By late lunchtime, we met up with old Oxford friend A. We sat in the beer garden at the Phoenix, a pub I was familiar with from conferences at the nearby Barbican. It was great to catch up. A lot of beer was drunk, spirited conversation was had, and there was a good amount of putting the world to rights.

Sadly, we hadn't managed to secure tickets to the evening Battle Spectacular, so we headed out to eat at Spark on Piccadilly. Much like Hatch in Manchester, this is a bunch of small foodie places in shipping containers, with a central ordering system. The seating was under a big marquee with plenty of airflow, so we felt comfortable enough eating there. I had a Brazilian hot dog with steak strips, and E had a white pizza, along with more beer. By the time we got back to the flat I pretty much fell asleep straight away. I woke around midnight to sit up, rehydrate and so on before going back to bed, but sadly E was up most of the night.

On Sunday, we had to check out of the AirBnB by the frankly unreasonable 10am. Which we did, then dropped our bags back at the car before exploring more. We went to the Merchant Adventurers' Hall where there were various Viking stalls. I tried to interest E in nalbinding, and we picked up a bunch of business cards to peruse later. After this we headed over to the Shambles to visit Portal, York's queer bookshop. I picked up Shon Faye's "The Transgender Issue", mostly because I want to try and lend it to my Mum, along with Vaneet Mehta's "Bisexual Men Exist". We also got a very cute little canvas for mother_bones with a little cloud vomiting a bi-coloured rainbow, and some badges and stickers. I grabbed lunch and E had a cuppa at Sandwitches, which has literally one two-seater table on its tiny little pavement.

Finally, we headed up to the old York wall at Bootham Bar, on the north side of the city. We walked along the wall clockwise, behind the Minster, and then walked along Foss Island Roads where there is no wall. We climbed back on at Red Tower, and followed it all around to the Fishergate Postern Tower. This is a reasonable chunk of the wall, and I'm glad to have seen York from this vantage point.

Overall, it was a nice break. A good mix of the thing we came to see, catching up with friends and just chilling out by ourselves. There's still a lot more of York to see, so I'd be happy to go back some time, but for a short break, it was pretty great, except for E not getting more sleep.

Comments

[davidgillon]

Nice! I've spent a lot of time in York, though not recently. We used to borrow a cousin's caravan just outside town for the week of the Ebor race meeting. Dad went to the races, my mother, sister and I would amuse ourselves in town.

I always used to like the walk around the City Walls, though that would be slightly more awkward nowadays!

I suspect the lathe was probably a pole lathe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_lathe A friend's sister's ex was involved with reviving it about 30 years back

[apiphile]

Nalbinding is something that's interested me for a while! I'm glad you got to go to York for all this, it sounds a combination of both relaxing and interesting.

(Also if you've posted pics on Masto I didn't get to see them because it eats my entire timeline when I'm away for a while, and I can't get on it during my work weeks).

[diffrentcolours]

I'd put them here but uploading pictures to Dreamwidth is STILL such a huge pain in the arse.

[apiphile]

You could send me the link to the masto post? It's just not on my feed.