Tag Archives: The Shambles

Day Six ~York to Grassington

At the start of our sixth day in the United Kingdom we had our breakfast at the hotel and decided to take one last stroll around the city of York before we checked out of our hotel and made our way to the Enterprise Car Rental behind the train station in York. This was Wednesday the 20th of September.

It was drizzly to start but soon gave way to some blue skies.

After our selfie we packed up and checked out of our hotel and walked to Enterprise Car Rental over the River Ouse and beyond the train station. It was an easy enough trek with our luggage in hand.

We had some fun interactions with the staff at this car rental location and Norm got us settled into our brand new Mercedes. Laura punched in our first destination which was a car park in Ripon where we planned on lunch and a visit to Ripon Cathedral. Josh did a fine job of driving on the wrong side of the road and we had an uneventful time on the roads and on the roundabouts. When we got to Ripon the easy way to the car park was shut down for road works but we circled about the town and made it. We wanted to eat at the One Eyed Rat but it would not open until four so we regrouped and headed to the Silva Bells which was just across from the Ripon Cathedral. On our way we got stuck in a deluge of rain and were soaked in no time.

We enjoyed our lunch while we tried to dry up a bit.

The rest of day Six will continue in a couple of posts covering Ripon Cathedral and our first evening in Grassington. I’m behind on my research.

Back to the present. We had a wonderful full weekend with Josh and Laura arriving here on Thursday evening and leaving after lunch on Sunday. We enjoyed meals and our annual trek through our local corn maze. Lots to share in between keeping up with my travel journal.

Hope you all have a nice ending to October!

Day Four-Part 3~The Shambles

Continuing on our travel journal we are still on Day Four, our first day in York. Again we packed in a lot on this day. Walking from the section of the city walls that we completed we found ourselves at the Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate that led us through the alleyway to The Shambles.

1-1/2 is a fun address to have.

By the time we got to The Shambles all the shops were closed and that meant fewer people. I’ll share this excerpt from the British Express;

The Shambles is often called Europe’s best-preserved medieval street, although the name is also used to collectively refer to the surrounding maze of narrow, twisting lanes and alleys as well. The street itself is mentioned in the Domesday Book, so we know that it has been in continuous existence for over 900 years.

There is some debate on whether Rowling was inspired by The Shambles for Diagon Alley but stores are taking advantage of the popularity of the series with store fronts and merchandise for Harry Potter fans.

The name “Shambles” comes from the Saxon “Fleshammels”, which means, “the street of the butchers”, for it was here that York’s butchers had their shops. Notice the wide window sills of the houses; the meat for sale was displayed here. Several former butcher shops still have hooks where meat was hung.

We were happy to have seen the Shambles without it being overcrowded as in the photo below that I took from the hop on hop off bus on Tuesday afternoon.

From the Shambles we continued on along streets heading to the Cathedral and wondering where our next meal would be.

We spotted the cathedral off of High Petergate at the end of Minster Gate.

Adding to the history of York is the fact that Constantine the Great was proclaimed Roman Emperor here in 300

We tried a couple places along High Petergate to see if there was room for us for dinner to no avail so we went back to our hotel and regrouped at the House of Trembling Madness where we found a room to occupy and enjoy some food.

We were in the room you can peek into from the upper left window.

Our savory palette was satisfied and we finished off the evening at the Cellar in our hotel for a sweet and a toast to Laura’s grandmother, Wilma.

That was the end of our very full fourth day of travel and first day in York. Tuesday the plan was to tour the inside of York Minster and to attend Evensong there, also.