A foggy day in London town...: A royal day out in York

On Monday 6th December I headed off to York to see the famous York Minster and the beautiful town of York.

Originally I was going to get there around 9/9.30 so that I could join a walking tour of the city. However, when I woke up at 8 and started getting ready I thought I would quickly check the temperature in York for the day. At 8am it was -15 degrees. I took off my clothes and got back into bed.

At 10am I got out of bed and tried for a second time. The temperature -13 degrees...lucky I bought long johns the day before! So off I went, all rugged up, to the train station. The train journey is only about 20mins as York is so close to Leeds (the obvious reason why Leeds is part of Yorkshire). However, due to "adverse weather conditions" (something I am getting painfully used to hearing) we were delayed by about 20 minutes. Where our train happened to pull up just outside York was next to a diesel engine called the Queen's Messenger. I thought, "how patriotic." I continued looking at the train, only about 2 or 3 metres away, and then I saw the Royal Insignia of Elizabeth II imprinted on the side. It was then that I realised I was sitting within a stones throw, literally, of THE Royal Train! I may have had a minor panic/excitement attack in my seat as I realised this was probably the closest I would ever get to the Royal Family. So very very very cool! I didn't know who was on it but it was an impressive feeling sitting side by side with the Royal Train for 20 minutes. Eventually we parted, like one of those black and white movies with the steam train pulling out of the station, and I arrived in York.

I met up with Liz and Diyana who had taken an earlier train and we managed to find a place selling kangaroo burgers for lunch. They were both impressed with the taste. I was telling them about my Royal Train experience and someone mentioned to us that Prince Charles was in York attending a service at the Minster. We dropped what we were doing and ran to the Minster only to find that he had already slipped out the back door and hopped aboard mummy's train for London. Never mind!

The girls headed back to Leeds and stuck around discovering York for a few more hours, spending some time in the Minster and the crypts below. Temperature check when I boarded my train for Leeds: -10 degrees...it didn't get any warmer than that all day!