York, York Minster and Dick Turpin.

One of the gates to the city of York.

We went to York recently which is about 200 miles south of Edinburgh; it is a city I had always wanted to visit and I wasn't disappointed.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit York was that I knew it was a walled city and I wanted to see the city walls; I also wanted to see the little inky dinky streets with the tiny fairytale like bent buildings and the historic magnificent York Minster; it is a wonderful building and it takes some time to actually walk around it.

There were one or two disappointments and one of these was the appearance of charity/thrift shops and a pound stretchers shop within the city walls and some other franchise shops; but there were only a few of these.

Recently, in our lives, we have eaten a lot of Italian food and we longed for a French meal and found a nice little French Restaurant where the food was a delight.

I will presume there was a French cook but there were local waiters and waitresses and I asked one of them if they knew where Dick Turpin was executed.

Dick Turpin was a famous Highwayman of the 18^th century, famous for the phrase, I suppose, Stand and Deliver; he was also famous for his ride by horse from London to York which is about another 200 miles, in less than 24 hours; his horse's name was Black Bess.

Of course a lot of his exploits were legend and maybe some of them should have been attributed to other highwaymen, especially the ride, and it has always amazed me that a movie hasn't been made about him – he truly is the stuff of legend, like Robin Hood, but, unlike Robin Hood, there is proof that he actually existed.

The waitress in the French Restaurant didn't know anything about him and he was the first thing I thought about when we decided to go to York.

The waitress called another waiter in and he said, “Dick Turpin? - No! They hung him in London!”

Well they didn't – they hung him for being a horse thief at York Racecourse – his body was stolen by body snatchers to add to the legend; so why no movie? There was a British TV series in the 70s or 80s but no movie.

Come on Jack; look him up on Wikipedia and get your script to me!!

The legendary Dick Turpin jumping a 'toll' gate on Black Bess.

Very near to our hotel was the gate of the city and we went around the walls looking through the battlements, imagining we were in the olden days and looking across the (dried) moat to modern cars and life.

The City walls of York - it is a 2 mile walk all around.

There was also a Richard III museum and I almost started to recite 'Now is the winter of our discontent' but stopped through modesty.

It was a rare show of modesty, I might add; when I visited the Taj Mahal, in Agra, I tapped danced on the marble floor and played the drum in a tiny Indian village.

A 'rare' show of modesty which I will fight off the next time it raises its ugly head!!

York Minster Cathedral; completed in 1260.