You Sound Like You're From London: York & Ingleborough

After two weekends of not leaving my house (no joke, I can be lazy), I was determined to get out and about. That was helped this weekend by the fact that there is no more sleeping in until all hours of the day on the weekends. Part of that has to do with there being more daylight, but, without getting too into the details, Kate's job has also had a direct impact on earlier weekend mornings. The parking situation at Kate's new job requires that she get to work really early to get a spot, which led to her joining a gym across the street from her office so that she didn't have to sit in her car for two hours, which leads to her going to bed really early, which has led to the both of us being accustomed to waking up earlier, which has led to more productive weekends.

The plan for this weekend was to drive up to the Lake District on Friday night, sleep in the RwooV, and spend Saturday hiking. Due to some logistical and weather concerns, that didn't pan out. By Saturday morning we had decided to hike in the Yorkshire Dales instead. Upon looking out the window and seeing that it was raining, we finally settled on the Jorvik Viking Centre in lovely York.

Augustine relaxing outside of the worlds 2d largest Gothic Cathedral.

After fighting to find free parking in the touristy town of York, we made our mile and a half walk to the city center. After waiting in line outside to get in to the museum, they blocked the door about 5 people in front of us in order to let a large group of 8-10 year olds in. Not that they seemed like bad kids, but we decided to go elsewhere. We settled on York Minster, which is the giant Gothic cathedral that has many world records to it's name.

"5 Sisters" windows. Probably actually originally called "5 Cistarian" windows because they were paid for by the Cistarian order at Fountains Abbey.

We tagged along on an hour and a half tour given by an old man who was constantly sidetracked by anecdotes going back as early as pre-WWII England. I, for one, am generally pretty happy to listen to old people tell stories, so it was an enjoyable tour. We learned quite a bit about the minster and the trials and tribulations it had gone through. One of the cool things that we were able to stick around for was an evening choir performance. We didn't go into the choir section, but we listened while sitting above the heaters in the very back of the nearly empty building. It was a nice way to end a long day of walking around the cold building.

We sat back here above the radiators while listening to the choir. We were far away from the choir, but the cathedral had great acoustics.

Today, Sunday, we were up early once again and made our way to the Yorkshire Dales for our planned day of hiking. The weather was about as perfect as one could hope. Right around freezing, but with no wind or clouds. It felt much warmer than the snow and ice would have you believe. We walked about 7 miles at a leisurely pace and had a pretty sweet turkey and avocado sandwich to keep us from getting too hungry.

The hike today was part of the Three Peaks trail in the Yorkshire Dales. We climbed to the top of Ingleborough, which is the tallest of the peaks (my altimeter read just over 2000 ft, so nothing to brag about). We had tried the peak once before, right before Christmas, but didn't make it to the top due to heavy fog and impending darkness. When we got to the top today and walked towards the trail we had done before, it seems that we were literally steps from the top last time. Maybe 20 vertical feet. Of course we had no way of knowing that at the time, but it's funny to look back and see how we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Only about 1/3 of the fenced off areas with sheep had lambs. This picture happens to be following the 2/3 rule.

Some of the major highlights from today's trail included Gaping Gill, which conveniently enough, is described as an underground cavern big enough to fit the whole of York Minster. Seeing as we were at York Minster yesterday, that helps us to appreciate just how huge the cavern is. Also, we walked past, but did not pay to go in, the best show cave in Great Britain: Ingleborough Cave.

It may not look like much from this angle, but there is a huge underground cavern beneath that sad looking sink hole.

This reminds me of the cop that gave me a stern talking-to earlier this week because the 1" x 18" rubber faring on my car was loose. He couldn't believe I would operate a car in such a dangerous state. I held my tongue while thinking about the fact that the Brits are seriously considering making kitchen knives illegal because people get stabbed with them and the knives are, therefore, too dangerous to be legal. I think a logical person could argue that more people would choke to death from eating huge chunks of food (that should have been cut to a smaller size with the help of a knife) than from stabbings, but being reactionary and banning knives is kind of fun, in a tragically comic sort of way.