A Few Days in Eboracum

This week I spent a pleasant few days in the Roman City of Eboracum, (Jorvik to the Vikings and York to its present inhabitants). Modern day York is famous for its well preserved Viking heritage and religious eminence (being the seat of the second most important Bishop in the land), but I also found it to be a charming, compact and well organised city centre with a superb range of shopping all within easy walking distance of its centre. [Photos.]

Sadly we were only able to view the York Minster from the outside due to closure for a degree ceremony (pesky students having precedence over tourists—disgraceful!!!!) but the Old Town Walls provided some beautiful views. The Jorvik Viking Centre was thankfully not swamped with small children (the queue is apparently two hours during school holidays) and despite its main attraction being a ride through a re-creation of Jorvik c.875AD, it was informative and delightfully lacking in gimmicks.

With a couple of hours to kill before catching a train, the National Railway Museum seemed worth a look since it was the very exceptional price of “free” and surprisingly it turned out to be rather good: the exhibition on how rail changed society will interest social historians while those with a mechanical bent will be impressed by the gleaming machines that broke land speed records in their day.