Incidentally, York is the mother city of what we know as New York City in the state of New York. It was named after the original settlement of York when the English came to America to begin settling the colonies. There were great intact medieval streets to walk down and also a vey beautiful cathedral that sounded it's bells twice while we were there.
By the way, did you know that churches were only given the distinction of a cathedral if there was a bishop in residence? If not, then the church would only be referred to as a chapel or Abby if there were only nuns present for the later distinction. I took a walk along the existing Roman wall and took some great pictures from that vantage point.
After our very brief visit in York we were off again to see a rather famous forest that is said to have been the home of a famous thief. Sherwood forest was so much fun to traverse.
If you can imagine walking under a canopy of such dense foliage that lends a tint of green to everything underneath it than you can somewhat put together an image in your mind of the type of feeling and atmosphere that one encounters while in Sherwood Forest.
To finish off the image imagine such old, wide and gnarled trees that would appear to have facial expressions on them and then you would have an approximation of what I experienced in Sherwood Forest.
You'll have to look at the pictures of the trees I took and see if you can find faces in them. The highlight of the jaunt was the finding of Robin Hood's tree.
It is so old and large that the branches have to have to have help from stilts and well placed wires. Since this tree would naturally break and die from the weight of it's limbs, can you guess how old the tree is thought to be?
Lastly, to finish off the day, we all went back to our B&B's to eat dinner and get ready for the first play of the tour. At the Royal Shakespeare Company they have three different theaters they use to present plays to the public. The play we were to see was being shown in the newly refurbished Black Swan Theater. It was a very small, but intimate theater that allows the actors to be close to the audience.
The play that we saw was "The City Madam" by Phillip Massinger who was a writer employed in the same writing group as William Shakespeare, The King's Men. It was done well, but a bit hard to follow on my part since I had not had an opportunity to read or study the play before seeing it. I really enjoyed it, especially since it was done in an original interpretation with the period fashions an language being used.
It was a very enjoyable experience that left me looking forward to next days activities and the next performance we would see in the next couple of days.
As a side note, the B&B we stayed at provide breakfast and dinner for us and what was really great about that is that each morning we could look forward to a full English breakfast and then spectacular dinners that immediately included a fabulous English desert that was usually an English pudding of some sort. Because I enjoyed the deserts so much I went in search of some cookbooks that contained those same recipes that I could bring home and make for my family. I was successful in obtaining two and am very excited to try each recipe. I'm hoping that my family will enjoy them as much as I did!
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