European Vacation, 2004 (part 4 – Whitby and York)
Day 11 – May 25 (Tuesday)
Today was tourista day. While Matt was off at work, Lauren drove us around Yorkshire. We started at Ripley Castle. It’s a nearby manor home with deer park, formal gardens, and 900+ years of family history. They have a great tour, showing off about half the formal rooms of the house, including an incredible armorial window (filled with a stained-glass coats-of-arms family tree). One of the best rooms was the Armory, where they recently found a priest hole hidden behind one of the wooden wall panels. One of the family ancestors was a Catholic priest, back when it wasn’t such a hot idea to be so in England, and this was where he’d hidden while troops searched the house. There was also a room where Cromwell (“may he rot in hell forever, yada yada yada,” as Andrea likes to say) was once a “guest” of the house. The story was that Cromwell and his army came to spend the night while on a march, and the mistress of the house, being a royalist, agreed to let him stay, but she spent the night watching over him with pistols in hand.
There are still bullet holes in some of the walls where troops carried out executions. The gardens were quite extensive, and featured genuine California Sequoia trees (which, though “only” a hundred years old were still quite massive). The family still lives in the house, though they pretty much keep to the top floor of the house (which is still a fairly big flat).
Then, time for our ritual stop at a McDonald’s. Ritual, that is, in that we had to stop at one at least once (we tried it in Germany and weren’t too impressed, though the beer was nice). It was actually quite good &emdash; perhaps having fresh ingredients makes a difference. After that, we drove a good distance to Whitby. Whitby is a seaside town on the northeast coast. It’s best known, perhaps, as the setting for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the book, not the movie). Also, Captain Cook sailed from there, and it was a whaling town for some time. The town is built in a narrow cleft between two cliffs, one of which is the site of abbey ruins (we didn’t climb the steps to the ruins, though). We took in some of the sites, shopped a bit, and walked along the beach looking for jet. Jet, which we didn’t know before we got to Whitby, is a semi-precious stone that’s basically fossilized coal. When cut and polished, it’s a deep, glossy black. It’s also very soft, and quite light &emdash; doesn’t feel like a rock at all. Anyway, almost all jet is mined right near Whitby, and it washes up on shore from time to time.
On the way back, we took a detour northwards to a town that David had found on a map. See, David’s family’s last name wasn’t always Schuetz &emdash; when his great grandfather Albert came over from Germany in the mid 1800’s, he changed his name to Schuetz from something else. We think that his old name was Loftus (and that his father was “Count John of Germany” in Alsace-Lorraine, married to Elizabeth), but we’re not really sure.
Anyway, we noticed this town of Loftus on the map, so we drove through it on the extremely remote chance that it might have been founded by his ancestors (or at least cousins of theirs). It turns out that the name Loftus dates back in York to the Norman Conquest. Still, it was a fun drive. We made a quick stop a little later for some food, had tacos back at the house, watched some West Wing, and went to bed.
Day 12 – May 26 (Wednesday)
Another tourist day by ourselves in York. We got up late, and ran to catch the train, which (fortunately) was late. Upon arrival in York, we searched far and wide for a nice little spot to eat breakfast, and finally settled on a bakery/coffee chain. Not great, but we were hungry.
We found our way to the Guildhall, one of the oldest and best preserved guild halls in England. It’s really old, and pretty much the same as it was originally, with uneven floors, painted ceiling, and a basement that’s had its floor “raised” a few feet due to a rising water table. It’s also one of very few guild halls that’s got its own chapel.
After that, we went to see Clifford’s Tower. That’s the last remnant of the old York Castle, and it stands alone on a hill (or, really, just a very small and incredibly steep mound). The castle was sort of odd, in that the “keep” of the castle was at normal ground level, and the tower, well, towered above it. Anyway, the tower was built in a “quatrafoil” pattern (four overlapping circles, it almost looks like a clover in cross-section). All the wood (floors and roof) is gone, but you can walk around the top wall, where you get some great views of the city.
We then returned to the old town center, to have lunch at one of the oldest pubs in the city. After that, we were a little tired, and didn’t really want to do much more sight-seeing.
So we went back to Monk’s Bar, and instead of turning left, we turned right, and finished the walk around the entire city passing through all the remaining gates.
By the rail station was the York Railway Museum, which bills itself as the largest railway museum in the world (and it looks it). We spent about an hour looking at all the massive locomotives, and really enjoyed seeing the various Royal cars on exhibit. Then it was a mad dash back to the train station so we could get back in time for a nice dinner at Mario’s in Knaresborough. This town is just one train stop west of Harrogate, and the restaurant is one of Matt and Lauren’s favorites. After dinner, we drove up to the hill overlooking the town to check out the ruins (lots of ruins in this country), but it was getting late and was actually fairly cold. So we went back to the house, finished up our laundry, and packed for the next big trip.