East Yorkshire, July 24, 2013

Today, Marthe and I met my new friend Mary Hook and her friends in East Yorkshire. Mary was the lady I had met on the bus coming back from Fountains Abbey on Sunday, and she had invited us to hike with her today. After a breakfast at Fillmore and Union, we walked to York Merchantgate to catch the x46 bus at 9:00. This one was a double-decker, and I rode at the front, with Marthe a few rows behind. We were in Market Weighton by 9:47, and met Mary and about 15-18 other members of her hiking group, who hiked for about an hour with us before arriving once again at our origination point, a church fellowship building on the square. There, helpful ladies plied us with tea and toast, and all of us gathered around a table to get acquainted. A few words about Market Weighton. It is a small town in East Riding of Yorkshire, one of the chief market towns of the East Yorkshire Wolds, midway between Hull and York. It was granted its charter and became a market town in 1251. A notable piece of architecture is the parish church, parts of which are Norman. Market Weighton history includes William Bradley, the Yorkshire Giant who at age 20 was 7' 9" tall. Another resident was Peg Fyle, a local witch who reputedly skinned a young resident alive in the 1660s and was later hanged for the offence. However, she swallowed a spoon to save herself, only to be finished off by two knights. One more explanation--I am sure that if you are reading this, you are wondering what the term "wold" means, as in "East Yorkshire Wold." A "wold" is a term to describe a range of hills consisting of open country overlying limestone or chalk. After our toast and tea, as well as an introduction to the rest of the group, Mary and her friend and fellow hiker Carol took us around to some very special small but scenic villages in the East Yorkshire area. Towns included the following (note the interesting and iconoclastic names of them): Londesborough, Nunburneholm, Warter, Huggate, Fridaythorpe, Fimber, Wharram Percy, Thixendale, and Millington Wood. The last three were the most important, so I will go into more detail about them. First Wharram Percy, the most famous and intensively studied of Britain's 3000 or so deserted medieval villages. It occupies a remote but attractive site in a beautiful Wold valley. Above the substantial ruins of the church of St. Martin and a re-created fishpond, the outlines of many lost houses are traceable on a grassy plateau. It was first settled in prehistoric times, and it flourished as a village between the 12th and the 14th c., in spite of suffering great losses in the Black Death of 1348-1349. It was finally abandoned in about 1500. The decline came through forced eviction of its inhabitants by the Hilton family, who wished to turn the former village into pasture for sheep. The last four families were removed between 1488 and 1508. Between Wharram Percy and our next destination, we had a late lunch at a pub before continuing on to Thixendale, a tiny village in the Ryedale district of N. Yorkshire. It is located in the Yorkshire Wolds, about 20 miles E of York. The population is 130. The Yorkshire Wolds Way National Trail, a 79-mile trail, passes to the E of the village. We visited the Church of St. Mary there, and Mary and I had orange Popsicles, as it was a hot afternoon. Our final stop was Millington Woods, a woodland reserve and part of the Millington Woods Pastures Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is a beautiful ash wood and occupies Lily Dale, dating back almost 1000 years, to the year 1086. From there Mary quickly drove us to Pocklington to see the school in which William Wilberforce, a champion against slavery who wrote the famous hymn "Amazing Grace," studied. Then she dropped us off at the bus station in Pockington, where we caught a 7:32 bus back to York. Had salmon on toasted bread points and an apple for dinner, at the excellent Fillmore and Union, then trudged home. Tired right now, so will say adieu! Grat day!