Taking a break

Mo and I have taken a few days away from teaching and building to visit Jo and Nicky in Leeds. We had an early start this morning (5am) and, after saying our goodbyes to Sam and catching a Jet2.com flight, were in Leeds by 9 o'clock. We made our way to J&N's flat and had a quick cuppa before heading out to York for the day. Jo was at Uni so Nicky, Mo and I made the half hour trip to York by train (the first time any of us had been on a train for a long time!).

We had been told by a friend that when we made it to York we had to have lunch at "Betty's" so first priority was to hunt it out! That proved not too difficult but when we got there we discovered a long queue waiting to get in. We persevered, in spite of the cold (about 6 degrees) and the wait was well worth while. We had a lovely meal and very nicely presented. Betty's is probably York's equivalent of Bewley's in Dublin.

After lunch we wandered through some of the quaint little streets and ended up at Yorkminster cathedral. What an amazing building! They started building it in about 1240 and it took 274 years to build. It replaced an earlier cathedral and incorporated some of the stained glass windows from it - so some of the windows we were looking at were over 1000 years old. In the 1960's while doing some work on the foundations they found the remains of a Roman building dating from the time the Romans established the city in 71ad. York seemed to be the roman headquarters in this part of the world and the Emperor Constantine (a christian) had been proclaimed as emperor in York in 308ad.

Yorkminster is the second biggest Gothic cathedral in the world - after Seville in Spain and has more medieval stained glass than any other building in the world. Just to give you some idea of the magnitude of the windows - one in a gable wall was bigger than a doubles tennis court! They are going through a process of restoring some of their windows at the moment and it's going to take 10 years and 23 million pounds to restore that one and it's surrounding wall! The whole building was extreemly impressive - especially when you consider that it was built on soft ground with no piling and no cranes to lift the enormous stones 100's of feet up to their positions.

I guess such buildings were erected to bring glory to God - I wonder if He was impressed or if He was more concerned about the hardship which the common people were put under to contribute towards the enormous construction costs. I'm sure that some of the planners of these buildings did so with worthy motives but I'm left with the feeling that they are more of a monument to man's capabilities than they are items which draw attention to God and His glory. Maybe that's my reformist background speaking - probably those from more traditional roots would find those comments quite heretical!

Anyhow, we had a great day out and, after a visit to another lovely little cafe, Made our way back to Leeds where Nicky and Mo cooked dinner while I caught up on blogging! I think we plan to watch a movie tonight or maybe play a few board games - very relaxing and just what we needed.