York - A Resident's View - British Guild of Travel Writers

York smells of chocolate. The bittersweet aroma seeps, in certain seasons, from factories on the city’s skirts; unlike the finished product, you love it or hate it. But from my favourite seat in the Café Concerto, just inside the medieval city walls, the scent isn’t from cocoa beans. It’s coffee.

Students, tourists and workers create a friendly fug in this bohemian café. Some are there for the coffee and cakes; others for the location. Because outside the door, across a cobbled yard, soaring above shoppers hustling through narrow alleys, is the York Minster. This is one of my little city’s low-key juxtapositions: old alongside new, tradition and conservatism tucked tight against contemporary living.

While the Minster is one of the North’s true wonders, its cream-stone walls complement the city’s own defences. These are remarkably complete, a rugged loop with Clifford’s Tower and the elaborate ‘bar’ portals as constant reminders of a turbulent past.
Back then, everyone wanted a piece of Eboracum – Vikings, Romans and Scots among them. Today’s visitors are more amenable, merging neatly with the locals as they explore the old centre.

York, a city in name, has a bijou heart best sampled on foot. Bicycles are more welcome than cars; while shopping centres are ubiquitous on the fringes, the centre remains pedestrian-friendly.

It’s not all bliss and gloss. York has the same problems as most modern towns, of traffic congestion, high living costs, a slow-down in commercial growth. But the headline grabbers - violent crime, for example – are still more likely to happen elsewhere.
It’s a safe city; friendly, compact, open to leisure and culture. The River Ouse oozes gently through – sometimes literally; as the watermarks in riverside pubs testify, the Ouse is prone to flooding. Gardens and parks inject greenery into daily life, and well-patronised theatres provide cultural stimulus.

For a resident, York is both comfortable and challenging: like the river, it changes subtly with the seasons. For a visitor, York is the most satisfying stop-over, ticking all the tourist boxes, with extras - sugar-coated or otherwise - for those who care to look.

Judy Armstrong

Judy Armstrong lives in York and was Women’s Editor of the York Evening Press before becoming a full-time travel writer and photographer. She has just won the ABTOF French Travel Article of the Year, but also writes regularly about the joys of travel closer to home.

Walking along the Harris coast, by Sue Anderson

(Click photo to enlarge)

“Slow, slow wanders the train, past minarets and mosques, out onto the plains where women dressed in black work in fields that are as neat as a grave on the day of its digging. There are plum trees and pear trees, half-built churches and telegraph poles that wait for the new season’s storks.”

By Nicky Gardner, writing about spring in northern Bosnia in the May 2008 issue of hidden europe magazine (page 15). Courtesy of hidden europe magazine (www.hiddeneurope.co.uk).

Link to our general newsfeed...