York, England

In which I encounter sauces, Shambles and Snickelways, and fall head over heels in love with England.

{York, England}

“Do you want any sauces with that? “

This is our third meal in England and the third meal in a row a server has asked this very question. The first two times I just respond no thank you, but this time I decide to be brave and ask: what kind of sauces? And the server looks at me like I am absolutely crazy.

“I don’t know, red sauce, brown sauce….you know.”

Actually, I don’t. I have no idea what brown sauce is. Red sauce I guess is similar to ketchup, but are there other sauces? And if so, what are they?

I google it, but the results are inconclusive.

This is, of course, the first of many times I will resort to googling when trying to order food in the UK. What is a bap? What is a traybake? What is a parkin? What is a flapjack? Are mushy peas different than regular peas? How? What is gammon? What do you call bacon in the UK, because I think I know what bacon is and that’s not it. (answer: streaky bacon) What, for the love of God, is a fat rascal?

We’d arrived by train to the north of England for a month-long stay in York the day before, after taking a ferry from Calais. I have never been to England before, and to say that I am excited is an understatement of epic proportions. I am thrilled with absolutely everything as I step off of the train…thrilled with the man who blows a whistle when the train is clear. Thrilled with the large Victorian clock atop the stairs. Thrilled that the money dispensed from the ATM has Jane Austen’s picture on it. Thrilled that there is a pub inside of the train station. Thrilled that the outside of the station is adorned with cheery little window boxes overflowing with flowers. By the time we walk through the doors of the train station I have a full-blown case of Anglophilia.

Mickelgate Bar from the wall.

York. Even the name thrills me.

After we leave the station we cross the street and walk under the medieval town walls into the heart of the city.

It was the town walls that drew me to York in the first place. Built in the 13th century, they are the most complete medieval town walls in England. There are four original gates to the city built into the walls, and they are still standing: Mickelgate Bar, Bootham Bar, Walmgate Bar, and Monkgate Bar. Why are they called bars? There is a joke in York that the gates are called bars, and the bars are called pubs…but the truth is simple: the gates “bar” people from entering the city walls.

(Speaking of pubs, York is also famous for being rich in pubs - according to tradition there are 365 pubs in the city limits, one for every day of the year.)

Our apartment is close to Mickelgate Bar, historically considered the most important bar of the four. It was the bar that all visitors from the south, including London, would approach…but more importantly, it was above this bar that the decapitated heads of traitors would be spiked and displayed. If you follow the wall around from Mickelgate Bar and turn slightly north, the wall goes over a hill and ends, temporarily at a small tower. This is the end of our street and the hill is not just any hill, it is a man-made mound. It is called Baille Hill, and it was built by William the Conqueror. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. Right down the street from our apartment. That is the kind of history that you don’t really find in the American Midwest. The fortification that topped the hill didn’t survive, but we have an idea of what it would have looked like, because William the Conqueror built another fortification in York, right across the Ouse River from Baille Hill. It is now called Clifford’s Tower - named for Richard de Clifford, a 14th-century English baron, who took part in a rebellion against King Edward II. He was executed for his crimes, and his body was displayed on a gibbet at the castle. Again I google: what is a gibbet? It is like a gallows, except it is built solely for the display of executed bodies. History is pretty gruesome, sometimes.

There are some things that have surprised me about York, but nothing so much as the fact that I am having almost as much trouble understanding people here as I did in France. The difference, of course, is that while I only know a little bit of French, I’ve been speaking English since I was two years old. The Yorkshire accent has definitely thrown me for a loop. I find myself pretending that I am slightly hard of hearing, in an effort to get people to repeat themselves.

I mention to a shopkeeper that I’m finding the Yorkshire accent a little difficult to understand, and his response is: “Have you been to Newcastle yet?”

(And it’s true, the quizzical look on my face when chatting with people in York is nothing compared to the deer-in-the-headlights look I get when confronted with Newcastle’s Geordie accent.)

It has been sunny and warm almost every day. I laugh when a “heatwave alert” scrolls along the bottom of the television, because the weather has been delightful. Curious as to what constitutes a heatwave, I find out that technically speaking, it is “three consecutive days above 25-28 degrees Celsius”, which for us Americans is 77-82 degrees Fahrenheit. That would be a cold snap in Provence. Another reason to love England, honestly.

The temperature does continue to rise, though, and after several more days in York, the UK experiences its hottest day in history. It gets up to 100 degrees in most parts of the country, and 104 in Lincolnshire. Again, the news reports make me giggle a little. I screenshot a report on my phone from the Telegraph, a reputable news source in the UK, that reads: “UK heatwave: Cars burst into flames and runway melts as England nears record.” I mean, I know from experience that cars don’t burst into flames at 100 degrees. It is hot, but it’s not spontaneous combustion hot.

The Shambles - York’s most famous street - is lined with half-timbered buildings, some of which date to the 14th century. It was reportedly one of the inspirations for Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley, and during the day tourists wait in long lines for their chance to get into little storefronts with names like “The York Ghost Company” and “The Shop that Must Not Be Named”. Take a little closer look, though, and you’ll notice that there are large metal hooks hanging over the windows of some of the shops - and that many of the windows don’t have sills, but shelves in front of them. That’s because for centuries The Shambles was home to York’s butchers. Keeping with today’s gruesome theme The Shambles is the shortened version of The Great Flesh Shambles, shambles being an archaic word for shelf.

After butchers slaughtered their animals, they would hang the carcasses on hooks in front of their shop and wash the blood and offal into the slightly sloped gutters of the cobbled street where eventually it would be carried away by the rain. Unless England was having a heatwave, of course.

I like The Shambles, but if I’m honest I like the snickelways even better. Not every city has snickelways, but every city should.

Actually, most cities do have them, they just don’t call them snickelways. Most of us call them alleys, or sidestreets, or lanes. Not York, though. In York, they are snickelways, and they have names like Hole-in-the-Wall and Nether Hornpot Lane. Mad Alice Lane is probably the most famous snickelway, said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who murdered her husband after years of abuse. She was hanged for the crime (at Clifford’s Tower, of course) in 1825.

Lady Peckett’s Yard, a snickelway in York.

One evening, wandering through the medieval shopping streets that surround York Minster - York’s beautiful cathedral - I hear the cathedral’s bells start to chime. I expect them to peal for a minute or two, but instead they go on forever…what seems like hours.

The bell-ringers are practicing.

The bells of York Minster are generally recognized as the finest set of bells in England. According to the York Minster Society of Change Ringers, there are 56 bells in the cathedral, the largest of which weighs 3 tons. It takes a team of 25 bell-ringers to play them.

These bells, it seems, are kind of a big deal.

I don’t know any of this when the bells start to play, of course. I just know that the sound is lovely. Glorious, in fact…one of the most beautiful things that I have ever heard.

It is unique to England, this particular kind of bell ringing. Called “change ringing”, it requires bells that turn a full circle of 360 degrees. There are 5750 sets of these bells in the world, and 5500 of them are in England. Bells are rung here for church services and to keep time, of course, but also on special occasions, and for events of national importance.

Do the people of England know how lucky they are to have this sound as part of the fabric of their lives?

I know as I walk that I’ll never forget this moment in York, ducking into snickelways and cutting through Shambles as I listen to the bells of the Minster chime, and that I will remember it whenever I hear the peal of English church bells…and when that happens, I’ll stop for a moment to think about this quirky, historic, beautiful city where I first fell in love with England.