York and a pub crawl 6

During the night the smile froze to my face.  The newly installed boiler which I was told would keep my room snugly warm was clearly not doing what it said on the tin.  I lay there with the thin duvet pulled up under my chin trying to stop my teeth from chattering.  I lay there for a very long time wondering about the first signs of hypothermia (slurred speech and trouble keeping your balance) and decided that I might just confuse them with the after effects of a good night out on the town and decided to play safe. I dragged myself out of bed with a huffy sigh and began to load all my clothes on top of the duvet in an effort to create more layers and a touch more warmth.  As I did so I sent up a small prayer to St Vivian, the patron saint of hangovers  - O merciful St. Vivian, I ask that you relieve my nausea, soothe my aching head and calm my upset stomach. I also ask that you protect me from any loud noises or bright lights and provide me with the sense to avoid further episodes of excessive imbibing. Amen.  I woke up to a bright and sunny morning feeling remarkably fresh and listened as the bells in the Minster chimed 9 o’clock. St Vivian, I decided, was a bit of a star. I dressed, avoided looking at myself too closely in the bathroom mirror and headed down to breakfast putting my slight lack of balance and moderately slurred speech down to the mild hypothermia that I obviously hadn’t  caught quite in time. But I knew a good breakfast would set me up for my journey home and St Vivian appeared to have been remarkably accommodating to my late night appeal for clemency. Breakfast, however, had finished.  I got a similar response to my request for a table for breakfast at half past nine as I had got when I had asked for a table for one in the restaurant the evening before. Breakfast was finished I was told, as it was half past nine (what hotel ever finishes breakfast at half past nine on a SUNDAY?). Isn’t the whole point about being away at a hotel (and the Coach House does advertise itself as a hotel) for the weekend that on a Sunday morning you should be able to come down clutching the papers at any time between 8am and midday and still get a freshly prepared plate of bacon, egg,  fried bread etc?  A good and hearty Sunday morning breakfast served at a hospitable time is a prerequisite before sticking your head out of the door to see if the world is still in the same state you left it the night before. And with the sense of liquor still swilling about inside me I knew I had to have something before St Vivian’s intervention started to wear off.  Ordering tea and toast (they’d run to that) I wandered over to the sideboard and helped myself to the remaining egg and bacon which showed signs of having been hanging around under the gantry lights for quite a long time.  A young waiter, obviously picking up on the distress in my eyes and the dejected stoop of my shoulder came over and apologised.  But still they couldn’t run to providing anything fresh other than tea and toast. I sat and ate until the liquor stopped slushing around in my stomach and I could focus on people without having to really concentrate and then I went upstairs to pack my bag.

York and a pub crawl 2

Forty minutes later I was back outside my hotel.  Not you understand because my business for the afternoon was concluded in truly efficient style or because I’d decided that the Minster was nothing but a big church anyway and I might as well come back and read the paper.  No, not at all.  I was back at my hotel because in following my nose I had got hopelessly lost in an area of back-to-back houses and skulking cats that made me feel like I had dropped into the opening scene of Coronation Street. Every time I attempted to rectify my directional errors I was stymied by either 1. York City Football Club ground or 2. the railway track.  Not having a ticket to one and not wearing the right shoes to attempt to breach the other I decided that as much as it might pain me, my only option was to try and find my way back to the hotel and start again.  Which I did.  And on turning right this time, out of Marygate and onto Bootham heading in the opposite direction to before, within five minutes or so I found myself in the shadow of the mighty York Minster. Oh how I let out a merry chortle as I beat myself around the head for such earlier stupidity.  But this was quickly forgotten as I found myself gazing at York Minster which is truly spectacular and is one of Europe’s greatest gothic cathedrals.  Sitting in a plaza with gardens beyond, the Minster we see today has evolved over fourteen hundred years and survived in one guise or another through the invasion of the Romans, Vikings and Normans.  It’s strange to think of real life toga parties being held in the Roman Basilica beneath the Minster and Centurions wandering around scratching their heads and wondering where they’d last parked their chariot.  The Vikings followed the Romans, the Normans followed the Vikings and generally the Saxons didn’t get a look in.  The cathedral as we know it was mostly completed in about 1100 but since then bits have fallen down, bits have gone up in flames and over the millennia other bits got added.  For the full details go to www.yorkminster.org.  I didn’t want to go into the Minster because I would have to pay and if I went to Evensong later I could get in for free instead.  I clearly have some Yorkshire roots.  Instead I wanted to revisit the Jorvik Viking Museum and if I had time go to the National Railway Museum for which York is rightly famous.  I had about two and a half hours to fit this in before I came back at 5.15pm.