Stained glass in York Minster
I just deleted Tumblr for iPhone from my phone. GOOD RIDDANCE to my least favorite app ever. Is it that slow and useless for everybody? I’d apologize for the upcoming lack of posts, but since everything I’ve tried to share on that app in the last few months has gotten lost in the vortex, I’d say the difference will probably be minimal.
Yesterday was yet another trip to Knaresborough, and no, I am nowhere near tired of that town. This one was excited because it was guided by Bob Woosnam-Savage, who is a curator at the Royal Armouries and was a consultant on the fight scenes in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. We toured the castle - which I’d never been inside - and the sallyport, which was a hidden exit through the moat that would only have been used in an emergency. (Sidenote: medieval moats were NOT filled with water. They were medieval trashcans/plumbing, PLUS shards of broken pottery and jagged bits of metal, so that just in case you weren’t deterred by the idea of walking through human excrement, you would stay out of the moat for fear of being sliced up.) Anyways, not a lot of sallyports survive, and many of those that do are just doors in the sides of the castle walls - the one at Knaresborough is an original medieval tunnel with added Victorian stairs. The closest castle that also has a surviving sallyport is Nottingham Castle.
After the castle I got a quick lunch at the Lavender Rooms (above Ye Oldest Chymist Shoppe) with Natalie, Marina, Sarah, and Mark. We ate Yorkshire Rarebit, which is delicious thick bread with a melty cheese/mustard/ale sauce on top, and drank tea. Mmmm! Then it was off to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Crag and the cave of Robert the Hermit. I really enjoyed the Shrine, since I am quite fascinated by religious structures and, well, it’s a chapel carved out of a cave. That was my favorite bit of the trip. After the cave, Natalie and I walked back to the Lavender Rooms and got more tea and cake! I had a delicious Lemon Drizzle cake and Natalie got the Cherry Coconut cake. All in all, a fabulous day!
You can always see more pictures on Flickr (start with that one and click “Next”), and also you can click on these pictures to enlarge them and see captions.
Hi, y’all! I’m still alive, I promise. I know I’ve been neglecting Tumblr recently, but the Long Yorkshire Summer has just come to an end; that, along with my schedule over the last couple weeks, has prevented me from posting frequently. Summer was nice, and now we’re back to cold and rain (just in time for Jubilee weekend and this week’s fun English vacation), and then I had parties to throw, old friends to show around, and another visit to Knaresborough.
The party won’t be documented on Tumblr because, while I hear it was quite nice, I put so much effort into throwing it that I had to peace out early for Migraine Treatment, AKA meds and sleep. But! More importantly than fancy parties, I had an old old friend come visit this week! I have known Sarah since the beginning of second grade and her family still lives a block and a half down the street from my/my mom’s house. She came in on Wednesday evening and we had a nice dinner with too-spicy chickpea tacos courtesy of yours truly.
But anyway, Thursday, we went to York and toured around and did some highly entertaining things, like getting rained on for several hours and going to the Richard III Museum in Monk Bar. That website makes it look super sophisticated and informative, but it’s way cheesier/better than that. It looks like a third grade history class project exploded on the inside of this medieval gate. So amazing. We also went to tea at Betty’s and Evensong at York Minster. The Evensong was the highlight of the day, and possibly a Top Five highlight of my year in England. It was one of those experiences where time stops. The choir was all male, and the minster was so quiet and empty, and the sun came out toward the end of the service. It was really beautiful.
Friday we had an exciting tour of the Royal Armouries, guided by Marina. I am not super into military history or weaponry, but I was really glad to get to see it all with an expert such as Marina, who is writing her dissertation on horse saddles - we got to learn a lot about the objects in the collection that isn’t presented on the museum’s little placards. For example, a lot of the trends in armor followed trends in fashion - some later armor that sort of sticks out in a point on the belly is actually a reflection of Elizabethan fashion and the billowy shirts that were popular at the time. So that was super cool.
All the pictures in this post are from York - remember, you can always see more pictures on Flickr (start with that one and click “Next”), and also you can click on these pictures to enlarge them and see captions.
