There’s something appealing about a city you can walk round. York is especially undemanding in this respect, being girt by an almost complete circuit of city walls. You can literally walk around York in about two hours.
The walls give you an elevated view of some of the city’s other attractions. On the southern side there’s one of the most conical castle keeps you will ever have seen; on the southwest the magnificent railway station, the largest in the world when it opened in 1877; and along the west side the Museum Gardens and the Minster.
From time to time the trail returns to ground level. There are three short stretches where the walls have gone, and a couple of areas where they proceed without the trail, presumably for safety reasons. Then there are the gates, or bars: at one or two points steps descend on one side of a monumental gateway and go back up on the other side of the road. It’s a small price to pay, on reflection, but at the time it feels like an imposition.
Doubly so if you encounter traffic. The staircases are one-way without passing places, and that goes for sections of the wall trail as well. Here the girth not of the city but of the citizens comes into play. You will either have to give way or compress yourself against a battlement. Or, in favoured spots, there will be a bastion to retreat into and contemplate the world below.
The River Ouse on its way to a junction with the mighty Trent interrupts the circuit at two points and the River Foss at a third. How was security maintained at these points when the walls served a serious defensive purpose? In south-eastern York it looks as if castles were the answer. The one on the north bank remains, but the ‘Old Baile’ south of the river is no more than a mound now. Where the Ouse enters the city, the defences seem to have been towers: Lendal and Barker Towers facing each other across the river.
Masonry is a recurrent feature of York’s attractions but there are gentler lines to appreciate. Animal shapes rendered in artificial turf turn up all over the city. Some are close to obvious tourist spots – outside the Castle Museum, for example – but others will take tracking down. Beyond the Edible Wood, itself an annex of Museum Gardens, you’ll find a snail and a duck. Who knows where the rest of the collection is to be found. Perhaps the tourist information office will be able to help, but from the online explanations it looks as if the project is fairly informal. Not all are animals, either: in Minster Yard, behind the Minster, people take pictures in front of the letters of York in man-sized green block capitals.
In the Yorkshire Museum, a section devoted to topiary would have had a snappy caption: The Grass Menagerie, perhaps. The museum delights in such things. A sequence on worship is headed ‘Northern Soul’, and of course there’s ‘Living in the Past’. This is unnecessary and quickly tiresome. Also, having done that kind of thing for a living for decades, I’d have to add that it does nothing for the copywriter’s soul.
Besides, when you’ve got the Rydale Hoard and the only British statue of a Roman emperor, what need have you of cute captions? Constantine the Great, the first emperor to embrace Christianity, was acclaimed emperor by the army at York (then Eboracum). He does not look like a man to be trifled with.
Elsewhere in Museum Gardens you’ll find plenty of scenic ruins. The Abbey of St Mary is perhaps the most atmospheric. At one time the abbey church would have counterbalanced the Minster, a couple of hundred yards away, but Henry VIII applied his own brand of dissolution and now only the walls of nave, crossing and cloisters remain.
A Roman structure called the Multangular Tower was a part of the legionary fortress. It has 10 sides and represents a missed opportunity, in my view. ‘Multangular’ is a clumsy designation, imprecise and apparently missing a vowel; they could have called it the Threepenny Tower, which would have been far more memorable. Granted, the pre-decimal threepenny bit had 12 sides, but who would know?
Down by the river is the Hospitium, associated with the Abbey but not too closely – it was where lay visitors were put up. Now it earns a living as a venue for weddings and other events. Between the Hospitium and the river, by the way, is the Dame Judi Dench Walk celebrating a famous daughter of York.
(Where glorious sons of York are concerned, you’ll notice many references to Richard III around the city. The dispute over where Crookback Dick belongs has long since been settled in favour of Leicester, but York continues to press its case.)
Opposite, at the top corner of Museum Gardens, is the Edible Wood. Planted in 2015, this is some way off maturity, but it’s already worth a look for the ingenuity of the planting. Visitors are asked to “take inspiration from the garden but leave the produce for everyone to enjoy”.
The Museum Gardens are without the city wall, so to speak. Likewise the Art Gallery, just to the north, and the National Railway Museum across the river. Most of the rest of York’s big set-piece attractions are within the walls and therefore just a short walk from each other.
There’s too much in the Minster to do it all justice here. Don’t miss the stained glass and one of the most camp memorials – Grinling Gibbons’ rendering of a former archbishop – you’ll ever see.
Walking south through the famous, teeming Shambles will bring you to the Jorvik Viking Centre. According to the reviews on TripAdvisor it divides opinion. I didn’t go, and cannot express one.
Further south again is York Castle and the Castle Museum. The castle mound and tower survive, rising steeply on a promontory separating the Ouse and the Foss. At their base is the Castle Museum, where another ne’er-do-well called Dick is recalled – Dick Turpin. The cells are just one distinct section: a visit to this museum involves sudden transitions between eras and topics. It is never dull.
York City 1 Oldham Athletic 1
LNER Community Stadium, 29 August 2022