Judith and Garry own a house in a town near the coast called Pickering. They go there every few weekends or so and I was pretty lucky to be at their place on one of those weekends. Pickering is a nice little town that gets quite a few tourists on weekends, particularly taking a train-ride on the old railway, to the coast.
Main street of Pickering - quiet though on a Sunday (& the trains weren't running anyway).

On Saturday I took a train into York - a very important town in England's history and home of the biggest Gothic Minster in Northern Europe. The local Celtics were conquered by the Roman Empire in AD71 and York (then called 'Eboracum') became the centre of the huge area of Constantine's reign and buildings were located at the location of the current York Minster (I'll get onto that in a second). Constantine backed christianity so Eboracum became a Christian city. After the Romans left in the 5th Century, The Anglo-Saxons arrived and because the Saxon king (Edwin) decided to marry a Christian lady, he had to be baptised, thus a church was built (at the site of the current minster) in 627. It was built as a huge minster from 1220 and officially finished in 1472 after the push from Richard II to make York the capital of England. Unfortunately it's been burned a few times with lots of work to restore it. But despite all this history (and because of it!) - it is a gorgeous, historical building. I really loved the stained glass windows - and the glass makers apparently had a lot of free-reign: there's all sorts of crazy stories of monkey doctors and strange animals in the glass. I spent a few hours walking around and also attended Evensong to listen to the church choir.

The western-side of the Minster (wikipedia of course has some great info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Minster)

After walking around the Minster, and the city walls, I walked through the Shambles - the old cobblestone shops and saw some great artwork by the guy in the photo below. I bought a few of his prints - ink drawings of the Minster and York...

What the?

On Sunday Judith, Garry and I (oh and Zeb the dog) drove to the coast to walk part of the Cleveland Way leaving from Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby. It was a wild and windy day and unluckily for us, Judith and I walked into the wind pretty well the whole way! It is a lovely open walk - not a tree in sight most of the way (which no doubt adds to the wind-blown feeling!).
Sheltering from the wind for lunch.

At the end of the walk.

Me almost being blown off a rock overlooking the sea (no, I have not become obese since hitting the UK).

We made it to Whitby and walked around the town there for a little bit. Such a lovely little town (despite being over-run with tourists!) with old Abbey ruins and lots of fishing boats. We spotted the statue of James Cook - complete with seagull on head. He's here because he set off to discover Australia from Whitby!

View of the Abbey

Statue of Captain Cook.

After our walk it was back to Pickering to pack up the house and then back to Tintwistle. I drove back to London on Monday afternoon. Was quite a good drive until I got stuck going the wrong way on the M25 ring-road and ended up in Barnet - about 10 miles to the east of Abbots Langley!!! I remembered the hire-car man telling me about some congestion zone charge that London has and as I kept getting closer and closer to London, the fear was building. He said it was a £50 charge!!! Jesus! However, I've since found out it's like £10 for a day if you don't pre-pay. Talk about stress!! After lots of loud swearing I pulled into a servo to get directions. I finally got out of there and made it back to Margaret's. We then went out for dinner, which was lovely! And off to the interview with Contiki in the morning.