Scarborough District

It goes without saying that Darcy is our favourite York - but the city of York is pretty special too ;)

We had our laziest start ever this morning, made some WhatsApp calls back home and wandered down to breakfast at 9.30am. We checked out immediately after breakfast, took all our bags back to the car (about 10 minutes walk along the cobblestoned streets) and then did a little more exploring of Whitby.
The crowds were building again but were tolerable. The weather was not as cold as yesterday but there was a solid overcast.
Loss and I went exploring separately for a bit (I was interested to see lots of people fishing for crabs off the wharf using collapsible nets with some bait secured in the base), then met up and had a look through the Museum of Jet which provided some interesting background to its use.
It is no longer permissible to mine the material and the jewellery shops are supplied with their raw materials by locals who literally scour the beaches for bits that have been washed up on shore.
Queen Victoria wore a lot of Whitby Jet jewellery during her 40 year long period of mourning after the death of her beloved Albert. This meant that Jet became the choice of Victorian women for mourning purposes but has more recently become a regular jewellery choice alongside any other precious or semi-precious gemstone.
Another claim to fame for Whitby is its 7thC Abbey. Its decaying form and dramatic setting, sprawling graveyard and church surrounded by swooping bats - along with Jet being used as mourning jewellery inspired the author Bram Stoker to write the novel ‘Dracula’ in 1897 after having visited the town.
We climbed the 199 steps up from the old town to the Abbey, took in the view and then returned to our car to commence our drive to York.

The scenery changed dramatically as soon as we left the coast, and we saw on a hillside a very strangely shaped building which was part of a facility signposted as ‘RAF Flyingdales’. This turns out to be something ‘that provides a continuous ballistic missile early warning service to the UK and US governments, ensuring a surprise missile attack could not succeed. The RADAR is capable of tracking objects including satellites and debris, 3000 miles into space.’

We found our accommodation in York without any issues and both the quality and location of the apartment are excellent - in a very quiet little nook but very central to the heart of York.
Once we unloaded ALL our luggage this time (it was time to reorganise the luggage properly and start getting it ‘airline ready’ again) we had a bit of late lunch then headed off to start exploring by foot. We headed across the river, got ourselves onto the old city walls and began circumnavigating the city. The walls are not complete which meant getting back down to street level a few times to find the next section of wall.
We were keen to have a look at the York Minster which is an iconic building but also has some significance as far as Bible history and prophecy is concerned (see the photos).
We were also keen to have a bit of a look inside.
Paid tours had finished for the day but we were invited in to the Evensong service which was about to commence. Not quite sure how it happened, but next minute we find ourselves seated up near the altar and the 40 minute service got underway.
Being the third most important church in the Church of England, it was very much a ‘high CofE’ service and very foreign to us in so many ways.
Never-the-less we got a good appreciation for the architecture and acoustics with the pipe organ and choir in full voice.
Following this, we continued our tour of the walls of the city, bought some groceries for dinner and arrived back at our apartment just before 8pm.Read more