Selby

Just 15 miles to the south of here,  along the Ouse as it becomes tidal, lies the town of Selby.  The town has been around since the Romans, perhaps before, but its heyday was in medieval times when it was dominated by prosperous monastery founded by Benedict of Auxerre in the 1069.  While William the Conqueror was subduing the North, his wife Matilda gave birth to their fourth son in Selby in 1069, just as Benedict was arriving, watching three swans land on a lake, and thinking, "this is the place."  That baby went on to be king Henry I, reigning from 1100 to 1135.  William and Matilda jointly chartered Selby Abbey and consequently it had a cathedral sized church, much of which survived the dissolution in 1539.  (The Abbot in 1539 was a friend of Henry VIII, so maybe got off easy).  The architecture is mostly Norman, like Durham, and it bears its age with dignity and pride.  A beautiful place.

Stars and Stripes

The glass is mostly gone, victim to fires or iconoclasts, but there's an interesting (mostly replaced) Jesse window at the west end and, in the choir clerestory, a remarkable coat of arms, that of the family Wessington, later Washington, ancestors of our dear George.  The coat of arms features stars and stripes.

Ruth and I rode our bikes down to Selby, about an hour and a half mostly along a converted railway line (so straight and level).  The Vale of York is beautiful at this time of year with the fields very green with cover crops and forest muted but budding up.  The ride back north was complicated by a northerly wind, but we still completed the whole trip in four hours.