Today’s plan was to visit the National railway Museum in York, visited it many many years ago and have been meaning to make another visit for a good while. Up and about in good time and then our host Ron again very kindly dropped us off at the Grimston Bar Park & Ride which worked out really well. Didn’t realise until we got there that there are designated spaces for motorhomes to park in (free), according to Ron York is the best place in the country in terms of provision for motorhome drivers!



The service into York runs every ten minutes which is great, two return tickets came to £5.80p and given the potential hassle that this avoided this seems to me to be a great option, certainly the service was well used. just goes to show that if public transport is reasonably priced and reliable people will use it.

Soon arrived in York (Piccadilly) and was immediately surprised by the degree of pedestrianisation there now is in comparison with when I was last here. Makes for a very pleasant experience and the place was really busy, there looked to be some sort of university graduation ceremonies going on, nice atmosphere all round.

About a 15 minute walk to the National Railway Museum and we were soon in amongst the exhibits. Sent a very enjoyable 3 hours in there taking photos and generally enjoying the experience, it has definitely improved a lot since my last visit and it was well worth returning.

What were our highlights? Both really enjoyed the world record breaking steam engine "Mallard" which was just big, blue and very beautiful, a real slice of history there. We enjoyed the exhibit covering "Hospital Trains" which really brought home the horrors of war, we had no real idea of the tremendous role that the railways played during both wars. Great to see Stephenson’s Rocket (albeit a replica of the original) which was the true start of the railway. The engineering skill that went into designing and building all these trains is simply staggering, also fascinating to see the Royal Carriages and to compare what at the time was absolute luxury with the present day, in many ways we now live as well as the royals did.



Online photo album of our visit to The National Railway Museum available here.

Rounded off a nice day by walking down to York Minster (£10 to go in so didn’t bother, £20 seems a bit steep to get into a place of worship) and down The Shambles then back onto the Park & Ride bus. Collected by our pal Ron and we were soon back at the One Hundred Oaks campsite for tea by the lake and a relaxing time before heading back up north tomorrow. Been lucky with the weather as it’s been good again today, in the end you just have to go with it and take your chances and this time we won hands down on the weather front.

Sitting around the lake peering through the binoculars we saw again the small flock of visiting greylag geese, the oystercatcher and our friend the brown hare going about his business. Nice way to spend time this, never switched the TV on at all and haven’t missed it one little bit.

The Exide Gel leisure batteries I installed in the motorhome before we came away seem to be doing their job nicely with no more of the problems I had with the old batteries that I inherited from the previous owner which were swollen and knackered. All in all we have been very pleased with this vehicle and we hope it will serve us well for a good number of years.