On the whole, North Yorkshire really is a wonderful place to spend Christmas. York looks like a Dickensian production, there’s shopping and theatre and good walks and racing to blow away the cobwebs. And there’s always the chance of snow.
All the good Christmas Holidays tend to blur together in one big turkey, prosecco and boardgame coma. But Christmases that stand out….often those are the ones where things don’t go to plan. Like 2015.
It was a small Christmas – just six of us. I bought too big a turkey. Mum took the kids for a walk and they came back drenched but hungry, which was lucky. We bought Exploding Hamsters and the boys loved it and we played it on a loop as the rain lashed down. And then we watched a movie – probably Die Hard – as the rain lashed down.
By Boxing Day – as the rain lashed down – we began to realise that a brisk walk wasn’t really on the cards without snorkelling gear. So we formed a plan which involved minimal exposure to the weather but got us out of the house, to drive into York and to watch the new Star Wars movie.
This was good, this was an adventure and we would get out of the house and still be dry.
Ha.
90 minutes later, we were sitting in the cinema and trying to relax after a journey that took 3 times longer than usual, our route into town having been blocked by three – count them – flooded roads. Still, we’d made it, and now we could enjoy our popcorn, and a movie, and maybe a pizza afterwards before we had a more relaxed journey back.
This was the scene that we found when we went to pick up the car:
See, the lock up where we normally park overlooks the Foss river. During Star Wars, the pumps keeping flood water out of the Foss had failed, and now our car was under 4 foot of water and certainly not going to get us home. We stayed overnight in mum’s flat, watching nervously as the water crept up through the town centre. By next morning it looked like this:
Still Dickensian, but now a bit more Thames Marshes than A Christmas Carol. Despite it all, though, York looked fabulous in the sun, and there was an agreeable oddity watching the rescue squads driving their boats up and down the streets, before eventually catching a bus back to Deer Park.
It was a long way from turkey and prosecco, but we definitely had an adventure. And the next time we went to Yorkshire, we bought the Land Rover….your move, mother nature.