A lot of things to share today. First, I left my hotel early in the morning, walking the 600' from my hotel to the train station. About halfway there, I tripped on some uneven sidewalk and fell literally flat on my face. Luckily, nothing was broken, but I did bruise my right knee. I kept walking and moving it, but it has gotten a lot stiffer and more sore as the day has gone on. Anyway, I took the train to York to pick up my rental car and spend a couple of days in the North Yorkshire town. Nice breakfast and unlimited drinks came with my first-class ticket, by the way.
Some background: When I first planned this trip way back in October, I knew a rental car was critical, so I did some price checking. I discovered that renting an automatic at Heathrow Airport for 25 days would cost over $4,000. So I checked out renting at Edinburgh, and the price was better, about $2,800, but still way too expensive for me. Finally, I checked an Enterprise office in York, which I knew was not too far from the small town of Danby where I planned to spend some time. Cost there was only $1,167, which was MUCH better, so I made my reservation there.
I did not want a car in either London or Edinburgh because of the problems driving in those two cities or parking it there, so this turned out perfectly--I would visit those two big cities and then pick up the car in York. Also, I had bypassed York the last time I was in England, so I figured it was a good place to spend a couple of days.
Took a cab to the Enterprise office and had only a brief wait for the car. However, soon my problems started. The rental agent spent considerable time showing me how everything worked on the Vauxhall Corsa I rented, including the GPS system. We typed in the address of the local Viking museum, and off I went, to try to drive this car with the steering wheel on the wrong side!
It is always a little scary to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, but this time was made even more scary because the GPS routed me directly through the center of this touristy town. This means it took me through the most narrow streets with the most pedestrians it could find.
And what it worse is that it kept trying to route me through places where cars were not allowed. For example, this arch shows a road going through it, right?? Nice yellow lines on both sides, though the street is very narrow.
However, and this photo does not show it well, there is a steel post in the concrete in the middle of the roadway in the arch, preventing anyone but pedestrians entering. I am guessing the post is removable for special situations and deliveries, but that does not help a driver like me.
This is actually the gate to an old Roman fortress. (I took this photo later when I was walking, by the way.)
When I drove past the gate, I had no choice buy to take this street. It is a perfect example, of a two-way street in the UK that is only one-lane wide. Few cars drive on it, but legally, they can, so if a car comes toward you, one of you has to pull over onto the sidewalk, which of course is full of pedestrians. My speed through this was about 15 MPH!!! The good news is that I did not have to worry about staying in the left lane, to say the least!
I eventually found a parking lot, with no help whatsoever from the GPS, which kept trying to get me to make u-turns or to go around a block so I could go through the arch or down another dead-end road where I barely had room to turn around!! (Went down two dead-end streets and had barely room to turn around, which was embarrassing.) Happy to find a public "car park", but it is not easy to park in UK lots because they are so small. This was made even harder after the stress of trying to ignore my GPS. I ended up parking in the first lot I could get into on the theory that I had to park somewhere, no matter where, because I was getting tired of driving in circles around York.
I ended up not too far away from the massive cathedral, called the York Minster. Paid for a tour and went in. Any port in a storm, right???
Actually, I had planned to see this anyway, just not today, but it certainly was impressive.
This photo is looking up through the massive central tower. You can take a tour up there, but it was 289 steps, and I did not think my bruised knee could manage it.
There is a museum in the Minster basement. The church was built and rebuilt over the centuries, but much of the foundation was from the 12th Century, and in the 60s, it started to crack, so these bolts were used to stabilize it. The docents told me that occasionally they get someone who just cannot resist trying to take one of the nuts off of the bolts!
Back to walking part of the street my GPS originally tried to get me to drive through. There are a lot of similar streets in very old cities. They were big enough for small horse carts from those days, but certainly not appropriate for cars, buses, or trucks.
You can barely see the post in this photo, just to the left of the person in the middle. Cars and very small trucks can lift the post to drive through here late at night or early in the morning to make deliveries, but never during regular hours.
Here is another example of such a road.
Doesn't really look like a thoroughfare, does it? And not a lot of traffic, but you can tell by the view of my dashboard that I really did drive through this after my visit to the cathedral on my way to a nearby town to my hotel for the night. Speed was about 10 MPH for obvious reasons.
At this point, I pulled out my cell phone and started using it as a GPS, however, I could not get the car GPS to shut up, so I had to be careful which voice to listen to. This below is not quite country driving, but it is a lot better than those tiny two-way streets.
Whew! Nice country driving.
Made it to my Premier Inn hotel in Thirsk about 5 pm and checked in. These hotels are very much like a Holiday Inn Express, but with a fairly good restaurant. It did not open until 6, but I made a reservation, took a shower, and put on clean clothes, and then went down for a good meal.
Tomorrow, I go to visit the home and small museum about the life of the real James Herriot, who wrote the series of books starting with All Creatures Great and Small. I plan to make it a short day, but I do need to pick up a few things as Tesco, such as a roll of paper towel and some other minor things. On Friday, I will attempt to get to the Viking Museum in York again and then check into the cottage I have reserved for a week in Danby, where my maternal Great-great-grandparents grew up and were married.
Almost forgot, my Fitbit says I took 7,786 steps and walked 3.05 miles today.
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