York

Street scene recreated inside the Castle Museum

On the way over from Kirkcudbright we called in at Lockerbie to visit the memorial for the people who died in the air disaster of 1988. There’s a small visitor centre at the front and the memorial plaques are in a separate area at the back of the village cemetery. Reading about what happened and looking at the names and stories of the people who died is all so sad. I suppose knowing we’re going on a long flight ourselves soon and after two recent horrible air disasters I’m a bit scared to be going on a plane.

Our first day in York we visited the York Castle Museum which is in the original prison building which makes the displays seem more realistic. It showed life in the olden days in York and how hard it was and how people lived and worked and died. There was a whole street recreated as it would have been in those early days of York and people in costume dressed as they would have been in the olden days.

On our second day in York we had planned to do the 4km walk around the top of the city walls and visit the gardens but the day was rainy and cold and instead we ended up going to see the The Jorvik viking museum. It was interesting but it was a bit too brief for the money. The museum is housed over the archaeological digs where they have found a whole viking village around about 900BC. Everyone gets to have a ride in a little motorised cart with audio describing each scene. There is also a whole skeleton of a farmer laid out in a glass cabinet and there’s a description of his injuries leading to his death probably defending his land and property. Again I liked how the staff were dressed in viking costumes.