I’m back home now, after my various travels. As well as going to London last week, I spent the weekend with Christine and some friends from university in a bunk barn in the western Yorkshire Dales, near the Howgill Fells (a range of hills on the western border of the Yorkshire Dales National Park).
Thanks to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, we got not one, but two public holidays in a row, so yesterday was spent in the lovely town of Keswick (pictured above) and on Latrigg, a hill overlooking it. As for today, I was in York for RailFest 2012 at the National Railway Museum – and I’ll be blogging about that visit tomorrow.
Photos will be forthcoming, but I have quite a backlog of pictures to upload from earlier on in May – I’ve just put up the latest set from the May Day bank holiday weekend in York, which are mostly pictures of owls, as it happens. Hopefully the rest will appear there shortly – as I’ve mentioned, I took over 200 in London alone, and nearly another 100 since.
I spent the weekend being a tourist, twice in my home town of York. York is a city that, since I no longer live there, I have actually come to appreciate more. Whilst growing up there you took the historic buildings for granted, and the hordes of guided tours just got in your way. But now I see the city in a very different light.
On Friday afternoon, we spent a bit of time at the National Railway Museum – one of my favourite museums as a child, but my last visit was in 2007 (although I blogged about it last year). The main attraction is the return of Mallard, which spent many years in the main hall at the museum but was recently sent to the Shildon Locomotion Museum in County Durham; however, it’s in York on a brief visit and presently takes pride of place on the main turntable. The museum is undergoing a lot of renovation at present, which includes a new entrance hall, so there are fewer attractions than normal – the station hall in particular was rather sparse, which was a shame.
On Saturday, we eschewed York and headed up to the small market town of Helmsley, on the edge of the North York Moors National Park. In particular, we visited Helmsley Castle, parts of which date from the 12th century but has been mostly ruined since the British Civil War in the 1600s. It’s now looked after by English Heritage, and for a little under a fiver each for adults you can spend a couple of hours wandering around. There’s also a museum section, which shows some of the finds that have been excavated as well as information about the castle’s history and how it would have looked over various key periods in its history.
Finally on Sunday we went back into York city centre, partly for some sightseeing but mostly for shopping, for which York is very good. Whilst there aren’t many large branches of chain stores (with the exception of a large Marks & Spencer, split across two sites), there are plenty of smaller shops and thankfully most don’t sell tourist tat. There’s now a sausage shop on The Shambles, and we also called in at Betty’s for some of their fondant cakes which change regularly. We were hoping to go to the Jorvik Viking Centre – again, despite living in York I haven’t visited this in nearly 20 years – but it’s rather expensive unless you make a day of it and go to the other museums (DIG, Barley Hall and Micklegate Bar Museum) – a £16 ticket lets you into all four.
In a way, it’s refreshing to be a tourist in your home town. You can take time to go to the places that you walk past every day, and maybe discover things that you never knew existed. At the same time, you have the advantage of knowing your way around and knowing the best places to eat, or what to avoid. Whilst not every town is set up for tourism, if yours is, give it a try. You can even do it in places like Bradford.
I’ve been sent a package by the PA to the National Railway Museum’s Director of Fun, Sam Pointon. While it may not seem odd for a museum which is popular with families to have a director of fun, Sam is only 7 years old, and he’s been there for a year now.
Sam, or rather his PA, has asked me to write about my experiences with the museum and tell you about some of the events that are being held this summer, so here goes.
Like Sam, when I was his age, I was also very keen on trains – having a father who worked for British Rail helped as it meant lots of free rail journeys. I also grew up in York, home of the National Railway Museum and was a regular visitor. At one time, my mum took me almost every Sunday, even when there wasn’t free entry like there is now. My earliest memories were of its ‘Great Rail Exhibition’ in the former York Goods Station, as at the time the main hall was receiving a new roof. Now both the main hall and goods station are used for the museum and open to the public. Further expansions have added a workshop where you can see classic trains being overhauled and restored, as well as access to some of the museum’s archives.
Moving out of York in 2002 has meant that my visits have been sadly less frequent. My most recent visit was in 2007 which included a trip on The Yorkshire Wheel, a London Eye-style big wheel which was unfortunately only a temporary attraction and is now elsewhere. As well as seeing classic trains from both the UK and overseas (there’s a driving car from Japan’s Bullet Train, for example), there’s plenty of information about the history of Britain’s railways, and various interesting artefacts.
This summer, a sand sculpture is being built from 20 tonnes of sand by the same people who created a sand sculpture of Charles Darwin in Centenary Square in Bradford last summer. There’s also a major 1930s exhibition, linked in to the recently restored streamlined steam engine the Duchess of Hamilton, which you can see in the photo at the top of the page.
The National Railway Museum is a really great museum and you can easily spend a day there. There’s plenty to do, whether you’re a young child or a grown-up child like me. Best of all, it’s free, and only a few minutes walk from York station. You should go and visit it sometime.
What? No updates for two days? Yes, I know – I was a wee bit busy yesterday, what with visiting Northumbria University and then watching the pantomime at The Theatre Royal. That, and Blogger suddenly stopped working, so what I had spent 10 minutes typing never got posted. So here’s what should have been posted yesterday:
Just posting since I have a few free minutes. Northumbria was okay, though the accommodation didn’t impress me – the catered accommodation looked okay but being a slightly picky eater (I don’t go for junk food) I wanted to go self-catering, and their offerings looked rather too basic. And there are no in-room facilities for accessing the university network/internet – not even a phone socket. That means a trek over to the computer work areas – a minimum of a 10 minute walk, and there you have little freedom about what you do (checking a Hotmail account was specifically mentioned as being banned…. great…).
The course looked good, though; like most university computing courses it concentrates on Java but seems to offer experience with Windows NT 4.0 (which is what the University network uses) and some form of Linux – it used the KDE desktop environment anyway. It’s quite industry based too, and the third year is a compulsory work placement (I’ve applied for a four-year sandwich course).
I’ll be able to give a better judgement once I’ve been to a few more universities though – Newcastle is next. I also need to apply for my student loan pretty soon too, to make sure it’ll be there in September.
The pantomime was very good too – unlike most other pantos in this country it doesn’t rely on D-list celebrities and gladiators to use what little acting talent they have to prance around doing the same regurgitated plays every year. This one uses the same 3 actors and 2 actresses it uses every year (plus a few extras) and is written by Berwick Kaler (who always plays the dame); although it loosely placed on a traditional panto, it never truly follows the story.
Take this years, for example – Jack and the Beanstalk. Although there was Jack, a beanstalk and a giant (also played by Berwick) who said “Fe fi fo fum”, it was based on a mountain in Skipwith (note: there are no mountains in Skipwith – in fact its almost totally flat). Most of the jokes have a local theme (some of the jokes made reference to the A64 roadworks and the selling of York City) and Berwick rarely takes it seriously (spraying water at the people inside the pantomime cow, for example). Overall, three and a half hours of great entertainment – and only £8. What’s more – it runs from the beginning of December to the end of February, so you have little excuse to miss it, though on most nights the theatre is full, so you need to have your skates on and book in advance if necessary. Oh no you won’t. Oh yes you will. It’s behind you…
Manchester University gave me an offer of a place for next year, taking my total number of offers up to 5 (out of a possible 6 – Edinburgh have yet to get back to me). Although it is the university I most want to go to, I may have to turn it down since they require an ‘A’ grade in Maths – something which I don’t expect I’ll be able to offer them. At the moment, UMIST (the neighbouring university to Manchester) is my first choice, followed by Newcastle, but this may change since I have yet to visit either university. But at least both have achievable entry requirements.
