Day 170-avoiding the floods

   June 22-We woke to the sound of rain falling on the skylight/roof window in our room.  The accompanying overcast skies helped shield us from the Sun as well, so it made it very easy to sleep in.

"Primrose Cottage," our palatial accomodations these past couple of days.

Barley Hall was hosting a temporary exhibition about
clothing of England from the 1500s through today.  The
clothes on display had been used in various period movies.

   We checked out and drove back into York to see Barley Hall.  This building was
“rediscovered” about 30 years ago when someone bought it to remodel into office space.  When a few feet of accumulated wall coverings were removed, original walls were uncovered that dated to the 1300s!  Since this is the oldest known house it York (until another remodel reveals something else?), the York Historical Society bought the place and restored it and set it up to look the way it did when the Snawsell family lived there in the late 1400s.  Since the head of the family was an important man in town and since this was during the War of the Roses, it was interesting to see how he switched sides as the War progressed.  The house itself was built by the Nostell Priory and was later rented out as they needed money to continue to function.

This is the Great Hall of Barley Hall. The Snawsell family would sit on the raised dias to the right during mealtime in a specific arrangement based on the importance of each individual. The servants and other individuals would sit at the other tables. Important people sat on Snawsell's right, hence "right-hand man."  The bricks in the middle were the hearth, where an open fire would burn to provide the room's heat..

 

The raised portcullis in the Bootham Bar gate/tower of the
York city wall.  A gate has existed at this location in the
wall ever since it was a part of the original Roman wall.

   Once we completed our tour of the Barley Hall, Shan went to the car to pay for more parking and then walked the portion of the York city walls that had been part of the Roman walls.  Meanwhile, the rest of the family went shopping for tourist trinkets. 
   After that we were off.  The waiter for our first supper in London joked that 40 days of rain in the Bible was a catastrophe.... in England, it is summer!  For the most part, we could not complain about the weather in England, but today our luck completely ran out.  Of course, for all of our friends and family dealing with the heat and drought in Colorado, this sort of weather would be a godsend.  We never saw temperatures over 80 degrees in all of our travels and rarely was it over 70 degrees.  When we had checked out of the cottage this morning, the owner was wearing her down coat!

Heavy rains and right-hand drive, but we surrvived!

   Everyone has been complaining about the rain this spring, and today’s weather brought home to us the reason for these complaints.  We drove through the middle of downpours that ended up delivering a whole month’s worth of rain to northwest England and southern Scotland!  We saw news video of some of the flooding later one, but luckily we missed it on the highways we took to drive over to Bury, which is north of Manchester.  Nonetheless, the heavy rains and the heavy Friday afternoon traffic still combined to make our trip last twice as long as it should, but we finally got to our hotel. 
   James and Gill, Sally’s friend from her time studying at Lancaster University from 1990 to 1991, had arrived a short time before us.  We had not seen them since they were in the U.S. for Paula and Stan’s wedding in 2001, so it was fantastic to see them again.  We talked for a short while and then decided to eat in the hotel’s restaurant, since it continued to rain outside.  The food was pretty good and not terribly expensive, so it worked out pretty well.  Afterwards, the kids went to bed and the adults sat around and talked for a short while before we also went to sleep.