Yorkshire

York is either the biggest nightclub in the west or has a vastly bigger red light district than we thought. Despite the bedazzling (but hopefully not vajazzling) local young women, York is just about the prettiest town we've seen. More like dickensian London than industrial hub, York is full of quaint cobbled laneways with kooky shops and pubs named things like "the slug and lettuce". 

Our hostel is also definitely different. It's clearly been recently refurbished with bold painted street art on the walls. Apparently connected to the bar and restaurant downstairs it seems to be run entirely by hipsters. There's a blacklight on the wall in our room. It makes the fluoro stencil art in our bedroom glow. 

I'm still sick at this point having almost completely lost my voice (the perfect wife, some might say) so we've slowed down a bit in hope that i may recover. 

Yorkshire is home to one of my favourite authors, James Herriot, who wrote stories about his life as a vet in the yorkshire dales in the 1930s. The town he lived and worked in is Thirsk, about an hour north of York. The house from the stories is still there as a museum to James, his work and the BBC series that I think was made in the 80s. After a quick lunch we thought we would head across to a "Folly" garden made a bit like Alice in wonderland before shooting across to Scarborough for the afternoon. Neither of these things happened because Yorkshire buses suck. Even though the garden wasn't that far away there was no bus that went near it and the tourist office couldn't believe that we didn't have a car. They even admitted that they lived in a public transport black hole. So we gave up and caught the bus back to York. 

We did visit Scarborough the next day which is equal parts scenic seaside village and skanky bogan town. The castle is at the pretty end, the station at the other. Apart from reading the bus timetable wrong and waiting for it in the wrong spot it all went rather smoothly. Scarborough castle accounts for nearly 3000 years of history between the Britons, the Romans, the Vikings and the Normans it's been quite a popular destination. Anne bronte is also buried there.
 Our final morning in York we stopped at York castle which is mainly just the Keep or tower on a huge "motte" (huge mound of earth) the motte is so steep, the have to use abseilers to mow the grass. There we also met some Canada geese which decided that the motte was a good place to bring their goslings to much on some turf. Canada geese have very atrractive markings and their young are vy sweet. We also met some more standard farm geese as they decided to halt traffic by standing the middle of the road. I feel i now should have a scout's badge or something for geese herding.