Dining Out & Working In

My next four days in York fall into an easy rhythm: breakfast at the YHA, spend the morning editing journal entries and compiling photos on Perry at the YHA lounge, and then out into the city for Internet access and whatever sights seem interesting. I usually catch lunch on the fly at a bakery and go to the Evil Eye Lounge on Stonegate for two to three hours of Internet (extremely cheap at £2/hr), then amble around until I find a restaurant where I can end the day with an interesting meal.

Monday’s supper, for instance, is La Tosca for Spanish tapas, Tuesday at HaHa for a yummy chicken fettuccine, and Wednesday at Ate O’Clock for a three course “B 4 Ate” fixed price menu (£14, instead of £24 for the same meal a la carte). Thursday is at the Evil Eye Lounge—Japanese noodles at 9pm, after three hours of blog posting. Friday, my last night here, is Fellini’s for pasta vodka, which doesn’t taste as good as it sounds.

Ate O’Clock—almost a literal hole-in-the-wall place that you get to by walking down an easily overlooked alley—is the best restaurant for high-end ambiance and quality among those I tried. All the clocks here, big old-fashioned ones decorating the walls, read 8 o’clock. The dining room is cozy and intimate. The proprietor and waiter are very fun and proud of their offerings. I wandered in at 6:30 without a reservation and my table needed to be ready by 8:45...the maitre d’ was actually worried that two hours-plus wouldn’t be enough for me to fully enjoy their dining experience!


Don’t let the idea of a fixed price menu fool you—this is classy food. I started with pan-fried Halloumi cheese from Cypress, with red pepper and beet and mixed greens—salty sweet chewy crunchy yielding oily good. Dinner was salmon on pea and sun-dried tomato risotto with buttered courgette (zucchini) ribbons—crispy salmon fry, creamy risotto. A rosé from the US to accompany the meal, and a vertical strawberry cheesecake (in a glass) and coffee to finish it off. It was one of those nights that I was glad to be living a mile or more away, just so I can walk off the meal.

* * *

Funny. I’ve been walking around York as if I live here, instead of feeling like a tourist. Perhaps the difference is the fact that I’m writing so much, just as I do when I work. I’ve been “putting in” 6- to 7-hr days in front of a computer and barely noticing it, for the wonderful walks around town, the upbeat, funky atmosphere of the Evil Eye, and the walks to/from the hostel. I like this easy habit.

York Minster dominates the city, a fixture that’s easy to use for getting my bearings, or at least the signs to it are. The Minster itself is not always visible despite its spired heights, because most of the streets of York are not only three stories high, but also very narrow and twisty. I feel like a mouse in a high-walled maze as I wind from one street to the next.


It takes me three days and lots of missed turns before I can confidently retrace the same route through the Shambles, find my way back from Colliergate or Coppergate, or point my feet to the River Ouse and know where I’ll end up. I never did find Nether Hornpot Lane again, though.



I visit the Minster, and get treated to the fits-and-starts singing of a choir practice while I wander the vaulted interior. The pipe organ roars and rings along filigreed stone and wood carvings, accompanied by an almost stifling quiet from the rest of us at ground level; the cathedral is so vast that footfalls get swallowed up in a padded hush, the kind you get when your ears are stuffed up from a cold.

The bells toll at night as I walk home from dinner. Bong. Bong. Bong. The Minster looks lovely under amber street lights. I backtrack down a neighboring street that is lined with trees, catching the same viewpoint that Cotterill had used on the chalk drawing he gave me. Except for the cars and streetlights, it’s the same as it was 20 years ago—heck, probably hundreds of years ago.

Another York fixture in my walks has been Michael the Purple Guy, who hangs around the Evil Eye on Stonegate. Let me explain Michael.

Street performer. Paints himself bright orchid. His trousers. His shoes. His face and hands. His shopping bag. His windblown-wired jacket and tie and shoelaces. His inside-out, broken umbrella. All purple. He stands still, mostly—a ludicrous, semi-gloss violet statue with puffed-out cheeks and an imaginary storm in front of him.

Some people pass him by. Some pause, wondering. Some snigger as if they’re not quite sure it’s a real person, but afraid to find out. A few figure it out. A coin clinks into his collection box. Michael relaxes his pose, leans forward, talks with the crowd. No mime is he. He calls a young child over, tells him to close his eyes. Takes a purple-coated paintbrush from a purple-coated paint can and paints the child’s hair. The boy is horrified, reaches for his scalp; the audience laughs—the paintbrush is dry. The child giggles his relief.

Elsewhere, in the twilight hour at St Sampson’s Square with its closed-up stores and the day’s detritus blowing across the cobbles, a grizzled war veteran sits in a wheelchair, one trouser leg hanging limp over the seat. He presses a harmonica to his lips. “Oh Shenandoah.” The same song the busker in Penzance was playing two months ago.

I smile into his eyes and drop a pound into his round biscuit tin. He gives me a husky thanks—more, I think, for looking him in the face than for the contribution. How important it is to acknowledge each person’s humanity. Sometimes that’s all anyone really wants. “See me. Remind me that I’m here. That I count.”

Thursday has me going to the touristy Jorvik (old Norse, became “York”) Viking Center (worth a half hour wait), lunching at the Pret Manger, and visiting the York Art Museum with Carolynne, another guest at the YHA. Carolynne is good company. She’s British, and has traveled a lot around her country—so much so that she can actually pinpoint specific coastal areas just by looking at photos of the beaches.

She succinctly sums up what I’ve sometimes thought on this trip: “Travel is 75% boredom. Just getting through one day after the other, finding food, finding a place to stay, getting from one place to the next, waiting for buses and trains.”

Nonetheless, I’d like to keep this feeling of travel going. This walk around a little, work a little, see a little, be a lot, semi-nomadic lifestyle suits me.

I could, if I chose, view my return to the US not as a return “home,” but as another step in an ongoing travel itinerary. I’ve spent three months in Britain. Now maybe I’ll spend a month in Olympia reconnecting to the stuff I’ve lived with and to my friends there, then maybe I’ll move on to that writing spot I need for six months, and then maybe Patchouli and I will WWOOF together somewhere in the US—a vineyard in California, a ranch in Wyoming...who knows? Then maybe I’ll go somewhere else in this Earth home, to another room where people dance differently and love differently from what I’ve seen so far.

I like this idea that Earth—all of it—is my home, and that I can visit any part of it I like, and that I can work and create and serve in any part of it I like, and that all that I need for living in that part of it is waiting for me, ready.

It means that I’m not “going home” next week—I am home, all the time.

Hmmm. Possible business card: “Audrey—A human, being.”

Everywhere we go is circular, round trip. Across the kitchen and back. From bedroom to bathroom and back. Home to store and back. Desk to conference room and back. Across the country and back. Around the world and back.

Throughout the day we make endless loops, large and small. Tatting our way through time. We hardly notice them as “trips” unless they feel big, like when it means bundling up the entire family to visit Uncle Ted at the other side of the country.

And at the end of each loop, at the end of each day, we return to the place we left.

Or do we?

Is not everything slightly different from when we left it—them, it, and us—even moments before?

Perhaps life is more like an ever-expanding spiral. Outward, ever outward, built through time and billions of nano-decisions that billions of people make every day.

Shall I pause to pet the cat before I leave? Boom. Perhaps I just missed the green light ten blocks away.

Shall I skip the toast this morning? Boom. I just reduced my electricity bill a fraction, saved on toaster wear, gave the microbes in the bread another day to multiply, and maybe put myself at my destination in time to just miss, or meet, a new friend for life.

I remember driving with my dad and his wife in Washington D.C. a few years ago. We were on one of the big loop freeways around the city. Noma said, “Oh, I recognize this. We’ve been on this road before.” Dad replied, “No we haven’t. That big truck wasn’t here.”

Blip. Another light bulb of truth blinked on.

You can’t step in the same river twice. You can’t drive the same road twice. You can’t visit the same city twice.

“Been there, done that” is true only once each moment—we can’t return to “that,” exactly as it was, again. Even as a time traveler (which I believe is possible), to go back to a point in time is to change that time forever, just because you’ve gone back to it.

Douglas Adams had it right, I think.

Farewell Coast, Hello (New?) York

Halfway through the C2C, I decided I would leave my trusty trekking poles behind at Robin Hood’s Bay, propping them at the end of the road for someone to find for their own journey. I write a “FREE to Good Home” sign and attach it to the poles in a baggie and trundle down the slope for what is to be my last visit to the North Sea.


The village is very quiet at six thirty in the morning on a Monday. A few stalwarts are walking their dogs or taking beach photos. Milk has been delivered. Shops are closed. There’s no activity in front of the many B&Bs that bustled with people all weekend. I have the place to myself to explore afresh.



Seagulls caw and squawk and screech from every rooftop. They lift off and float down in clouds of white and gray and brown. The tide is very far out again. Rain clouds hover way out over the sea; a shaft or two of sunlight breaks like a spotlight onto the water before the cloud-mist overtakes it again.



I find some lovely vantage points for views, secluded B&Bs down secluded walkways (including one cleverly signed as Upside Down Cottage), and amazingly teensy gardens at most of the cottages. These gardens are barely 8x6—big enough for a bench and a few pots, and for sharing a low fence with the neighbor’s 8x6 plot. Some also overlook the freshwater stream that flows through town to the sea. Another garden is a mere strip of paving that wraps from the front door to an alcove that’s big enough for a two-person bench. A waist-high fence and gate demarks the spot as private along the main thoroughfare of the village.

I walk home in a misty drizzle that is enough to wet my hair and clothes but that dries quickly while I pack in the room. In my last rite of ending the C2C, I remove the Sherpa Van luggage tag from my bag; no more helpers to haul my pack for me. After mailing my last batch of postcards, I intend to bus to Scarborough for a train to York.

I sit at breakfast writing all this and hear radio reports that bombs are still falling in Lebanon. The contrast is jarring.

Rather than bus to Scarborough, I accept a ride with my fellow B&B’ers Jackie and Barry, from Lincolnshire, about 100 miles south of Robin Hood’s Bay. I said no to their offer at first—my habit of self-sufficiency—and then accepted it with gratitude. No one offers something unless they want a yes, so I’m learning to say yes myself, to graciously accept kindnesses that come my way.

Jackie and Barry visit Robin Hood’s Bay and its area many times a year. They especially like to come during midweek off-season, when it’s quiet. They take me to Scarborough on a scenic route through an old estate that’s now a boarding school, through Fylingdales, around Cloughton, then along the seaside route of Scarborough, which, surprisingly, has the emaciated remains of a substantial 12th- to 14th-century castle that overlooked the harbor.

Scarborough today has a hotel row on the cliffs like Sandown on Wight, and rapidly devolves into a bay that’s fronted with arcades, food stalls, casinos, rock candy booths, entertainment venues, and so on. Lots of flashing marquis lights and bright colors and oversized plastic mascots beckoning tourists in to spend endless time and endless money. It’s like a small-scale blend of Coney Island, Las Vegas, a traveling carnival, and country fairgrounds sticky with cotton candy.

I take the 10:45 train to York. About a week is left of the trip now. I can feel it winding down, and I feel sad about its end, and a little scared of how I’ll handle the next steps. They seem so clear to follow on the map, and then get hazy in the middle distance. Yet I know now that, just as with every step on the C2C, my life is guided with love and adventure, and I’ll find the wayposts as I need them.

The train is very full today; for the first time on the trip, I’m glad to be in a first class seat. It’s quite a contrast, this train is, to the little diesel I took to Pickering. High speed. Quieter. Smoother. Toilets on board. No way to hang out a window, though. Too bad.

The trip to York is uneventful except for the snafu of a family of three who sit at the table across the aisle. They live somewhere between York and Scarborough and were supposed to be heading south to York but got on the northbound Scarborough train by mistake. As we pull up to our first stop—their home town—the husband says, “We’ve been gone an hour and we’re back where we started!” They have a good laugh. “It’s a good day for a train ride, anyway,” he concludes. Indeed it is: sunny and lots of countryside to look at.

The youth hostel in York is about one and half miles from the rail station. Check-in is easy, and the facility is quite nice. Big. Lots of amenities. And I’m locked out of my room only from 10 to 1 for cleaning; other hostels are often closed all day. I’m here for five nights, and I intend to park myself at the hostel lounge to catch up on my journaling and prepare as many blog entries as I can. I find these take time to write, and I want to have as much done as possible before I head back to the US, where I’ll finish them up.

I had spent several days in York on a trip in the mid-80s and know it’s a good place to use as a base. This time, I have less desire to tour the city than to just live here for a while.

I liked York the last time I was here. I’m not sure I like it now, though. It seems a lot more commercialized than before. Big-name stores, and tons of shops everywhere—shops, shops, shops. I don’t remember it being that way then, but maybe it was.

I walk into town and find the Minster under partial scaffolding—again (do cathedral renovations and cleanings ever get done?). Micklegate Bar (one of the five gated entrances to this medieval walled city) has been converted from a lovely artist’s studio of 20 years ago to a cheesy tourist attraction full of cheesy 3D tableaus of grimy mannequin men in a grimy prison, cheesy chopped-off heads dangling on staffs (they used to do that for real from this gate), a cheesy gift shop, and the cheesy chance to have your picture taken as if you’ve been beheaded. I wonder if the bar’s artist from 20 years ago, Brian Cotterill, is alive, let alone still living in York. I still have the beautiful chalk drawing of the Minster that he gave me.



I walk the whole wall walk today, all two miles of it. I hadn’t done that the last time I was here. Part of the walk is no longer walled, but the city has embedded brass medallions in the sidewalks to show the original path. I grab a wall-walking guide and have fun picturing what the missing parts once looked like. The walk offers some lovely elevated views of the Minster, the city, and its environs. Funny to think that this town was once surrounded by fields to the horizon, instead of M roads and buildings.

At the south side, a peculiar motorized vehicle is crawling up and down an embankment, spewing grass in its wake. It’s got four independently moving wheels, a fine sense of balance, and an uncanny ability to assess its environment. Like some lumbering yellow metal turtle, it backs up and sidesteps, revolves a quarter turn, crawls down hill, pauses at a knoll to deliberate its next move, then revolves again and lurches across the hill.

I look around and finally spot the real mind behind the machine: a man standing in the shadow of the wall and pushing levers on a remote control box. Several men approaching on the wall also stop to watch the Spyder (so it’s called), taking photos and exclaiming, “That’s exactly what I need at home!”

In some parts of the walk, placards give interesting detail about a particular spot, such as the building where explosives had been stored and that went up in flames, or the building that looks like a brick igloo, where they used to store ice.

One of the bars (gates) has an original portcullis, that grid of wooden gate you always see in movies dropping down to keep marauders out of a city. It’s stored way up high in a recessed area, but its thick wood, and that of the doors that once closed up to it, are remarkable in their age.

A very non-medieval barrage of breeps and bings emanates from another stone bar. Flickering, high-tech flash of blue light reflects off the interior walls, as if a television were on in a darkened room. Inside, a band of tourists encircles a multimedia video game projected onto a table.

It’s a wall-walk race. Each quadrant of the table shows a fast-forward video of the wall walk, interspersed with stops at various locations for a pop quiz. If you answer the question correctly about where you are, you get to speed along. The one to get around the wall the fastest wins. I do pretty well on my game (237 seconds), but only because I had read the brochure and previewed some of the questions by looking over people’s shoulders before I played.