YORK AND SELBY UNTIL IT RAINED

We got up at 6am in an attempt to beat the traffic over the M62 but that failed and the only consolation was that the queues coming back in Manchester direction were much longer than those going in Yorkshire. Once past Leeds it was a lot easier going, lots of flooding along the river Ouse as we headed in York. We had breakfast at Marks after wandering around looking for disabled parking with a lot of roads blocked by a Christmas market. The light went up several notches as I started around 10am and by lunch time I had just over an hour and it wasn't looking too bad so I decided to take a punt on heading back up via Selby which I'd never visited before but I noted that on destinations it had a bus station and a bus company called Utopia with a lady Santa driving it.

I must say Selby despite the inclement weather produced some very welcoming Arriva staff and certainly broke the trend of hassles which dog visits in other parts of the country such as Hull or Sheffield, Barnsley or Rotherham etc etc, although since they started paying off the bus station staff the situation has eased as has trouble at the facilities which inevitably was usually caused by the mindless idiots they had employed, happy days then. I was impressed by the local people who wanted to stop and chat about their Abbey the park and spring flowering, the Chinese pop star who got married there, the endless coach loads of Chinese who now visit to see said marriage site and it just went on. Any special bus you want to see, are you bus spotting, oh great.. must be something in the air in Selby also noted lots of lorries servicing foodstuff plants or as we used to know them rat farms.

York had a fair bit of flooding but with the Cumbrian situation it obviously had been eclipsed by the greater severity in the west. Buses were as usual much changed in the space of a year, it changes more there than any other spot I can think of other than Taunton perhaps. Well worth a visit and again no hassles at all and on a weekday less yobs as I know them otherwise laughably called students or school children.