No, not minister...

Last summer, mid-July, I stood atop the York Minster, terrifying.

The Minster is a beautiful and majestic piece of art set in a city filled with remnants of Roman legions of the past, cobblestone streets and tiny medieval-ish neighborhoods with hardly space for a horse and wagon to get through. York is even the home of many ghosts --and is alleged to be the most haunted city in Europe.

One of the ghost stories we heard was from an archeologist who gave us a walking tour of the city --which was really awesome from an archeologist very interested and VERY unbiased in his history -- oh yes, back to the ghost story!

So our guide told us that in the city treasury building, the city official knew that the basement was haunted, but didn't tell some plumbers who had to fix some pipes in the basement. The workers came running upstairs white faced where they ran into the city official who laughed and said, "Did you see the legion?"
Apparently, once in awhile a Roman legion can be seen marching across the basement out of one wall, across the room and into the opposite wall...but only from the knee and up.

Our guide then explained that there was a Roman road that runs through York, but that by now, it is buried several meters below current levels. They estimate that the Roman road runs about 1-2 feet under the basement of the treasury! So the ghosts of the legion is actually marching on the Roman road! Crazy!

Okay, so back from my ramblings....

Our last day in York, we decided to climb the 275 steps to the Minster's tower --in circular mini-staircase we're talking about here. (btw, I just read that the minster "weighs 16,000 tonnes - about the same as 40 jumbo jets!") Anyhow, I hate going around in circles, so that wasn't very fun. There are actually two sets of stairs to climb.

The Minster is built in the shape of a cross, the main entrance is at the "base" of the cross  (left end in pic) and the tower in the center is where you finally get to the top. To reach the center tower, you have to go up by the right arm of the church, (the arm pointing down in the pic) across the roof, then where the roof meets the center tower, another staircase takes you to the top (you can actually take a virtual tour (in good quality) of the Minster here)

So we climbed the first staircase and came out onto the roof (well, there's a little walkway right on the edge with shifty pieces of metal/wood that you walk across since it's basically the gutter I guess). Yeah, so I got up there --such and EXHAUSTING climb let me tell you! -- and thought, okay, kinda scary. Then I stepped onto the little cobbled-together-looking pathway along the roof...that basically completed this feeling of fear! lol. But I was like, "okay, I can take this, I just feel a little freaked about being so high up on top of a building...breath, I can do this..??!!" Then back into the next staircase for another 100 something steps.

When I came out on top of the Minster tower, I was almost dead from exhaustion! lol. Then I got up and looked around....It was a great view, but I was pretty much freaked being on top of that building that I walked around once and then went back down! [I was just reading my journal I kept on the trip, which I wrote in print until I wrote out my thought, "What if the building collapses?!" It was in cursive. Lol, apparently I think in cursive:-P ]

Seriously, never before have I been so scared of being so high up...and I was on top of a building to boot. ...maybe it was the scaffolding and rickety path over the gutter.... I dunno. But instead of awe inspiring, as most found it, I was terrified! *shivers* Apparently I'm more afraid of falling to my death than of being crushed by the building coming down around me....

Interesting what we learn of ourselves as we dance through life.... :-)