Off the record - Craig Box

Google told me the trip from Glasgow to York would take 4 hours 30. "Nonsense", said Craig, "the motorway flows at at least 90mph, whether we like it or not!" (Seriously, the limit is 70, and you get passed if you're only doing 80 in the left lane.)

However, Google knows more than I do. By the time we had a rest break (did you know that in the UK, they make Creme Eggs in chocolate bar format?) and a 90 minute torrential summer rainstorm, we were pretty much spot on the estimate. We also broke over the 1000 mile mark on our trip along the way.

We fairly quickly set about the purpose of our visit to York - 18 months ago Greig came here and bought me back two gifts - a Black Sheep bar mat, and a City of York Historic Pub Crawl guide. We took the map and started the evening.

Half pints were the measure of the day, as we figured that drinking pints at each location would mean that I would get through three measures of spirits before Captain Slow Drinking had finished his. This rule fluctuated throughout the evening. Cathy actually turned on a good performance with the speed, at some points even rivaling Tom! The two got rather competitive after a while.

At least three of the pubs we went to claimed to be the most haunted, or oldest, in York. (One claimed to be both.)

York has a large wall surrounding most of it - sections built and rebuilt by the Normans, the Romans and the Angles - and you're allowed to walk on it until dusk daily. Unfortunately as we got there we met the Keeper of the Wall, who was locking it up for the evening. However, we were allowed to walk along with him as he walked to the next stop in the other direction to lock up, and were given a nice little history lesson as we went. The Keeper is most bodacious.

More pubs, more drinking, some jazz, some karaoke (Cathy gave me 8/10 for voice but 4/10 for stage presence. I was trying to concentrate on all the stuff I'd learned in my vocal training!). The wait for the karaoke (and the assorted hanging, and Cathy mooning some bar chick after she finished work, so we could tick the "Mooned" box on the pub crawl list) meant we couldn't make it to the last pub on the list, but we went to an 80's nightclub instead.

Awesome Cathy really came into his own here. The pictures should tell the story. Tom and Cathy stayed out on the pull and I went back to the hostel, via the closest thing to a KFC tower burger since they got rid of the Hash Brown. All in all not bad for a Wednesday night!

All the attractions in York were very booked out the next day, so some very tired and hungover traveling companions and I made for Manchester.

Tags: travel

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 1:35 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.