DAY 58 TUESDAY MAY 22 MUSEUMS

After 12 days in England during which we hardly saw the sun, the cold wind blew most days and the temperature never went above 14 C we listened to the 6am news today which predicted a sunny day and 25 C!  And that is what we got. Straight from winter to summer overnight.  Everyone was dressed in their Bondi summer clothes. We made a list of sights we needed to see before our time here runs out on Friday.

Started with some time watching the stonemasons at work in their open air shed next to the Minster.  Then  we noticed a huge cherrypicker was lifting three experts up to the top of the South Entrance to inspect the condition of the stones.

  Went inside the Minster again and listened to a magnificent performance on the organ.  It sounded extremely loud but because of the size of the interior it was not at all hard on the ears. Thought of our Marsden Road organists and wished they were here to share this with us. Sauntered through the York Art Gallery, had morning tea in the University Refectory next door then followed the history of the city via a great display in the Yorkshire Museum that was mounted to celebrate 800 years since the foundation as a city in 1212.  Came home and cooked up  a British Steak and Kidney Pudding for lunch.  Then went back to the National Rail Museum to look at their workshop where we witnessed a major incident below us as three engineers used  Vernier calipers  to determine that two small bars they were working on had different widths.  Then we went into the warehouse to look at the thousands of articles stored their, dating back to the earliest days of steam engines.

A CANDLESTICK GIVEN TO STEPHENSON BY HIS ADMIRING FRIENDS

 Finally we attended a 30 minute talk on how a steam locomotive works using a cutaway full scale loco as a visual aid.  The "explainer" claimed to be an Arts student but he did a really good job with the technicalities.

 Most days we had walked past a shop called the Milkshack advertising 180 flavours of milkshake and we kept putting it off for a sunny day.  So this was it.  Lyn had a Snickers flavour and Malcolm had a Chocolate and Peanut Butter. If we lived here Malcolm would work his way through  the entire list.