Here’s the story. Back in 1505, it was known as Whitnourwhatnourgate. It’s also been called Whitney Whatneygate.
What does it mean? Well, take your pick. In Middle English, it might have meant Nothing at All, or Neither One Thing Nor the Other. Or maybe What a Street!
In the 17th and 18th centuries, this street, the shortest in York, was also sometimes known as Salvey Rents or Salvegate.
That’s quite enough oddness for one day, so the featured image is of York Minster in spring time.
According to my daughter and son-in-law, there’s an old Chinese proverb that says that guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
According to our friend Kalba, it’s Benjamin Franklin who coined exactly the same phrase.
Either way, received wisdom is that nobody can put up with house guests for more than a very few days without losing their patience, their good humour, and the friendship.
Our Ariegeois friends have just proved all that wrong. They stayed ten days, and it was wonderful. Though pretty exhausting, it was nothing but pleasure to spend an extended period with friends whom we value, but see far too little, and a fantastic chance to showcase Yorkshire – or a tiny portion of it anyway.
In my last post, I did a whistle-stop tour of our first few days together. Here’s how the rest of the holiday went….
Knaresborough, with its wonderful 19th century railway viaduct spanning the River Nidd…
Knaresborough Viaduct.
An obligatory coffee-stop at Betty’s, Yorkshire’s most famous tea room…..
Christine and a plate of Betty’s scones.
A meander round the Valley Gardens in Harrogate…..
The Valley Gardens
A trip to the fantastic geological outcrops of Brimham Rocks…
Brimham Rocks.
A day when our friends more than paid for their board by taking charge and getting our wood delivery for the winter shifted and sorted……
Max making a fine job of stacking the wood.
An evening with Ripon’s Wakeman, who since AD 886, has ‘set the watch’ to guard the citizens, sounding his horn at 9.00 p.m. every evening – every single day, whatever the weather, whatever the circumstances…..
The Wakeman and his horn.
A trip to York…..
The Shambles, once the street where all the butchers were, now a tourist Mecca. Wikimedia Commons.
A day in Whitby, fishing port, tourist destination, jet-mining town, and home of Dracula’s author, Bram Stoker…… Oh, and we ate fish and chips. Of course.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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