Pubs within a 15-minute stagger of my flat #1: Mason's Arms

Mason's Arms

Website: http://www.masonsarmsyork.co.uk/

Walking time: 8 minutes 4 seconds

Real ale: Yes

Food: Yes

In two words: Pig out

Welcome to the first instalment of a new series here at Once Upon a Time in York where I'll be telling you about watering holes near my flat. Fifteen minutes is an arbitrary figure (who wouldn't walk fifteen minutes to the pub, even in bad weather?). If a place I want to visit is a bit further than that, I'll review it anyway. The walking time is how long it takes me to walk from the door of my flat to the door of the pub. This can of course vary according to the time of day, the day of the week, the time of year, the number of road crossings, the number of hen parties I have to bash my way through, etc.

Mason's Arms is located between the Foss and the city wall on Fishergate. It's on my way to the grocery store. But then there are probably a dozen pubs between me and the grocery store, making it easy enough for me to fortify myself for a mission to the supermarket.

This was my third visit to Mason's Arms. The first was when Geoboy and I were flat-hunting and we stayed at the nearby Blue Bridge Inn. We walked in on a congenial pub quiz that night.

You can, perhaps, judge a pub by its pub quiz. This was a pleasant one, a small crowd who seemed familiar with each other, with a congenial host, plenty of self-deprecation and laughs, and no cheaters on their smartphones (god! how I hate the douchebags who cheat at pub quizzes. Too bad there are no more gibbets left in York).

The second time I came here was with Paul on a Saturday for a pub lunch. The portions are ridiculously large. So large in fact that I probably won't eat there again. Geoboy had the fish and chips, the sight of which prompted him to remark, "Oh, I seem to have ordered the whale". I got a wedge of broccoli and Stilton pie. That came with gravy. And chips. and three piles of vegetables over-cooked in the finest British tradition. It was enough food for two or three people.

There was a family group with three small children in the pub that day. The kids weren't complete monsters, but still, when you're trying to work your way through a kilo of Maris Pipers and enjoy a pint on a Saturday afternoon, the screeching and gymnastics that the Very Young inevitably perform wherever they find themselves does not exactly fill me with unbounded joy.

Geoboy and I were still lingering over the papers and our partially eaten meals when the family left. "Goodbye, pig", said a child behind me.

I should explain that Mason's Arms has a pig motif: pig statuettes, pig paintings, pig gravy boats, pig wind chimes... They're everywhere. So the sprog was not talking to me but rather a shiny brass pig sitting in front of the fireplace that he had grown fond of in their brief time together.

There were a few people around on the Wednesday afternoon I visited. Mason's Arms has its regulars but I imagine it also sees its share of tourist traffic, it being very close to a large car park, a Travelodge and other hotels, and Clifford's Tower and the York Castle museum. And it does, on occasion, get in a dark-haired Yankee who stops for a pint and a scribble on her way to the grocery store.

Cycling to the edge of the solar system

I hadn't been out on my bike for several weeks, so maybe riding out to Selby was a little ambitious. But I'm not totally unfit and I don't find cycling that taxing. I decided to follow National Cycle Route 65 and see how I got on.

I left the flat just after 6 a.m. and followed the signs. Most of the route is on traffic-free cycle paths through the countryside. The paths were in good condition and well sign-posted. I saw rabbits, pheasants, and flat-capped old Yorkshiremen walking their dogs. I always feel a bit weird when I see a walking stereotype in the flesh like that.

Early on the route took me through York Racecourse. And I don't mean I skimmed a corner of the grounds. I went right through the course. As the Ebor Festival starts today, I was glad I was out early and not under the hooves of the runners of the Symphony Group Stakes.

Between Bishopthorpe and Ricall is a scale model of the solar system. A sign near Ricall (a.k.a. Pluto) reads:

The scale of our model is 575,872,239 to 1. So every 100 metres along the track corresponds to more than 57 million kilometres in space. The speed of light is about 1.16 mph, so it is easy to walk at 3 times the speed of light and to cycle at 10 times the speed of light. Every journey down the cycle track ends before it begins and every time you travel on the track you will become a little younger. 

My GT hybrid had become a spaceship. A damn fast one, too.

I was pleasantly surprised to meet this fella at the bridge over the Ouse at Naburn:

He's called Fisher of Dreams. I don't think he's caught anything.

I didn't know anything about Selby except that it was 15 miles from York. So I was pretty impressed when I saw this thing hulking over the joint:

Selby Abbey

Across from the abbey is Selby Park. It's small and pleasant and even has a crazy golf course, although it isn't particularly crazy. Moody, maybe. I took a break, stretched and chastised myself for borrowing my boyfriend's padded cycling gloves but not his padded cycling shorts. I'd succumbed to numb bum. 

I could've continued the route on to Barnsley, but who wants to go there? So I turned around and went back the way I came, arriving home a little after 9 o'clock. Not a bad way to start the day.

Hello, sailor!

I have just moved to York after five long years in Manchester. My partner Geoboy landed a job in Leeds and we decided that it would be much more fun to live in York, where the streets are stuffed to the gills with history, pubs, and historic pubs.

My time in Manchester was mixed. I liked it less and less as time wore on. Perhaps, having moved, it will become more clear to me which annoyances are peculiarly Mancunian and which are simply English. I have lived in big cities before, and while I met many fine people in Manchester, I also met an extraordinary number of assholes. I have never lived in a more unfriendly place in my entire life.

It was wearying. I struggled more and more with anxiety and depression (my constant companions at the best of times), and I became increasingly agoraphobic. Sometimes I would not leave the flat -- for anything -- for up to a week at a time. Other times I would only leave to go for an early morning run. (A side effect of agoraphobia you rarely hear mentioned: it makes you fat. While I was still exercising regularly, I was doing a lot less walking around. So I'm reasonably fit but a bit chubby at the moment.) I became more and more isolated. I stopped going to my writing group (and stopped writing), I didn't do anything with my running club, I didn't go into town.

In short, I wasn't having very much fun.

A move is a good opportunity to move on. And so far, York seems like a good place to do that. On this blog I'll be writing about what it's like to live in this ancient walled city.

Feel free to comment. If there's any place you'd like me to have a look at, let me know. I take requests. I am not a great photographer, so there probably won't be many pictures on this blog (unless I steal them from somewhere else). But again, I take requests, so if there's something you want to see, let me know in the comments. I aim to post at least once a week.

Agnes, by the way, was a ferrywoman on the Ouse in the Middle Ages. I don't what she charged. But I'll ferry you for free.

My kingdom for a respectable loaf

"Acorns were good until bread was found."

-- Francis Bacon

In any new location, finding decent bread is a priority. I'd been spoilt by Barbakan back in Manchester, and I am a complete bread snob in any case. A life with mediocre bread is not worth living.

Pickings were slim. Tasteless crappy Chorleywood process sponges masquerading as bread line the shop shelves. Places that call themselves "bakeries" tend to sell pastries, or pasties, or sometimes both. It started to look like I'd be making my own bread, which I am not unhappy to do, but I prefer to leave these things to the experts.

An internet search revealed a review of a bakery at the top of the Shambles. The reviewer didn't know the name of it and so simply dubbed it "Mystery Bread Shop". It sounded promising so I scoped it out one afternoon. I knew it would already be shut but I wanted to find it for future reference.

I walked right past it at first. It is a small red building. A sign in the shape of a shield sporting a gold saltire hangs over the street, and wire mesh covers the window. There is no writing on the frontage whatsoever, no pictures of bread or wheat, nothing to indicate just what it is. I have since learned that the bakery's proper name is Via Vecchia.

I wasn't sure what time it opened, so one morning after an early run and some breakfast, I left the flat at eight o'clock to see what I could find. It was a lovely time of day to be out; York seemed more like a regular, if exceedingly charming, town and less like a medieval theme park. Without the throngs of tourists saturating the streets, it only took me ten minutes to walk from our flat to the Shambles.

This time the door was open. Sample loaves of bread, all labelled, lined the counter of the small shop. The rest idled on wheeled cooling racks. A handsome, stoic man in an apron served me. I think handsomeness, stoicism and apron-wearing are all admirable qualities in a baker. And damn if the bread isn't fantastic. No more acorns for me, then.