Walk, York, Ouse and Foss

York, Ouse and Foss, Approximately 3 mile or 4.7 kilometres

Not quite a cold today, so decided we would leave the Christmas shopping for a day and see where the river Foss flows through the city.  We made a picnic and set off for the Foss, we actually took the long way to get there vie the millennium bridge.  So the start point was the car park on Terry Avenue at Rowntree Park where we headed south (totally the wrong direction but we knew the walk would be too short just following the Foss), for the millennium bridge to cross over to the east side and then head back north.

On reaching the confluence on the Ouse and Foss, we discovered that due to work on the flood barrier sluice gates, the side of the Foss we wanted to walk along was closed off, not much of a problem we just crossed over the Blue bridge and walked down the other side.

 

The first thing we came across that we hadn't seen before was a canal lock and another set of sluice gates.  From there we crossed over Castle Mills bridge to the other side of the Foss, there is not much access to the river along this section, so walked along Piccadilly where we picked it up again near the Coppergate Shopping Centre.  Here the sky turned black and there was a sudden flurry of snow, luckily we were near enough to take shelter in the shops for a while until the weather improved.  The bad weather soon blew over and we set off along the river again.

 

To get back to the side of the river we went down Merchantgate then left over Fossgate Bridge and had find our way via some small alleyways on the right to eventually get there.  Here we had our picnic on a bench under a large willow tree, it was a bit too cold for this and we also attracted lots of hungry ducks.

After lunch we continued to follow the river and crossed back over to the other side via a footbridge at Rowntree Wharf (or Navigation Warehouse or Leetham's Mills), a place we had never seen before in all our visits to York.  From here it was just a short stroll to part of the river we had walked on our city walls walk.   There is a wine warehouse at this point, well worth a look in and they also have beer.   We crossed the road here and looked in to the new Morrison's supermarket mainly for a warm and to use the toilets.  But we actually ended up doing some sopping, getting Christmas cards and some beers.  There is also a cafe there if you want a drink or something to eat.

After our break we crossed back over the road and followed the river to Lathorpe Tower where we turned left over the road bridge onto Peasholme Green and headed back towards the river Ouse through the centre of York.   Peasholme Green changes to The Stonebow, with lots of new developments on the right and then in the centre changes to Pavement, this leads down to to High Ousegate and eventually Low Ousegate,  At the river turn left at the Ouse bridge and down the steps to the river side.

 

This is where Dot and I would usually stop for a rest (for about two hours in the Kings Arms) before following the river to Skeldergate Bridge.  Here we cross over to the west side of the Ouse turn left and follow the river back to the car park.