Where to stay in York: inside the walls, Micklegate, Bootham and beyond

Overview

York is a small city with a very large past, and nearly all of it sits inside a ring of medieval walls you can walk on. The Minster, the Shambles, the Roman, Viking and medieval layers, the museums and the narrow alleys the city calls snickelways are packed into a center you cross on foot in twenty minutes. That compactness is the whole point of the place and also its main cost: the old streets fill with day-trippers, tour groups and, on weekends, hen and stag parties, and room prices move hard with the racing calendar. Choose your base by how much noise you will put up with, and check the race dates before you book anything.

Where to stay

The walls enclose most of what a visitor comes for, with the rivers Ouse and Foss cutting through and the railway station just outside the western stretch. Everything inside the walls is walkable from everywhere else, and most of the areas just outside them are ten to fifteen minutes on foot from the Minster. The city is flat, so the real differences are noise, price and how much of the crowd you want on your doorstep.

Inside the walls: the Minster quarter

The streets around the Minster, Petergate, Stonegate and the Shambles are the York of the postcards, and staying here means stepping out into the medieval core before the coaches arrive and after they leave. Stay here on a first, short visit when you want everything on foot and the city at its quietest hours. The trade-off is price and density: this is the most expensive and most crowded part of the city by day, rooms are often in old buildings with small spaces and steep stairs, and the busiest lanes are closed to traffic for much of the day, so arriving by car or with heavy luggage is awkward.

Micklegate and Bishophill

Micklegate is the long street that runs from the station side of the walls, through Micklegate Bar and down to the Ouse Bridge, inside the walls on the west bank. It is the practical base for anyone arriving by train, and the quiet residential streets of Bishophill behind it are a pleasant place to sleep. The trade-off is Micklegate itself on a Friday and Saturday night: it is the city’s best-known pub strip, the route of a weekend drinking circuit, and loud until late. Pick a room on the side streets, not on the main street.

Bootham and Clifton

North of Bootham Bar, outside the walls, Bootham runs out past rows of Georgian and Victorian houses into Clifton, where many of the city’s guesthouses are. Stay here for a calmer, cheaper stay that is still a short walk from the Minster and the Museum Gardens. The trade-off is that you are outside the walls and the evening is quiet: the eating and drinking is back in the center, and the walk out gets longer the farther up Clifton you go.

The Mount and Blossom Street

The approach from the southwest, beyond Micklegate Bar, toward the Knavesmire, where the racecourse is. A strip of guesthouses and small hotels, close to the station and a few minutes’ walk from the walls. Stay here if you want the station and the center both within easy reach at a lower price than inside the walls. The trade-off is the main road, which is busy, and race days: this is the racecourse’s own side of the city, and on meeting days the area fills and rooms go up sharply.

Walmgate, Fishergate and Fossgate

The east and south side of the center, around Walmgate Bar and the Foss. Fossgate is the city’s street for eating out, with a row of independent places, and Walmgate and Fishergate beyond it are quieter and more residential, with the stretch of wall around Walmgate Bar on one side. Stay here if you want to be inside or just outside the walls without the Minster crowds, and close to the restaurants. The trade-off is that you are on the far side of the center from the station, a walk of twenty minutes or more with luggage.

South Bank and Bishopthorpe Road

South of the walls along the Ouse, the terraced streets around Bishopthorpe Road, which locals call Bishy Road, are a residential neighborhood with its own row of local shops and cafés, near Rowntree Park and the Knavesmire. Stay here, often in a rented flat, for a longer or family stay and a sense of how the city lives. The trade-off is distance: it is a fifteen- to twenty-five-minute walk to the Minster, and there is little to do at night without walking back in.

When to go

Spring (April–June) and September–October are the best times: milder, with long light in spring and the walls and riverside at their most walkable. Summer is the busiest season and the Shambles can be shoulder to shoulder by late morning. Winter is cold, damp and dark by late afternoon, with the walls sometimes closed in ice, but from mid-November to just before Christmas the Christmas market fills the center; it is very popular and makes weekends crowded. In February, the Viking festival fills the city during the school half-term week.

Two things matter more than the season. The race meetings on the Knavesmire, which run from May into October and peak with the Ebor Festival in August, fill the city and raise room prices across it, so check the racing calendar before you fix dates. And the Ouse floods, usually in winter: the riverside paths and the quayside at King’s Staith go under water most winters, sometimes several times, which rarely affects a stay but closes the river walks.

Getting there & around

York is a rail city, and the train is the way in. It sits on the East Coast Main Line, with fast trains to London King’s Cross in about two hours, north to Newcastle and Edinburgh, and frequent trains across to Leeds and Manchester. The station is just outside the walls, and the walk to the Minster takes about fifteen minutes, across Lendal Bridge.

The nearest airport has no rail link to York; the usual route is a bus into Leeds and a train from there, which makes it slower than it looks on a map. Manchester Airport is often the easier arrival from abroad, with direct trains to York from the airport’s own station in a little under two hours.

Once you are here, leave the car. The center is small, many of the central streets inside the walls are a pedestrian zone through the middle of the day, and parking is expensive. If you do drive in, use the Park & Ride sites on the ring road, which run buses into the center. York is flat and one of the easier cities in the country to cycle. The other thing to do on foot is the walls themselves: a circuit of most of the old line runs for about three and a half kilometers between the gates, which York calls bars, and is free to walk, open from morning until dusk.

The city is also a good base for day trips by train: Leeds is under half an hour away, Harrogate and Scarborough both under an hour. For the North York Moors and Castle Howard there are buses, but a car or an organized tour is easier.

Practicalities

York is a safe city; the thing to plan around is not crime but crowds, and the weekend nights when Micklegate and the streets around it fill with groups out drinking. Cards and contactless are accepted almost everywhere, including on the buses. Many of the big sights charge for entry, the Minster included, and some of them sell timed tickets that are worth booking ahead in summer and in the Christmas weeks; the National Railway Museum, behind the station, is free.

Many of the most famous streets are best early: the Shambles before ten in the morning is a different place from the Shambles at noon. The snickelways, the narrow passages between streets, are public, and the shortest way between many of them.

For food, the dish to know is the Yorkshire pudding, a crisp, risen batter cooked in very hot fat and eaten with a Sunday roast; ordering it in a pub on a Sunday is about as local as a meal here gets. In the cold months look for parkin, a dense, sticky oat and treacle cake from the county’s Bonfire Night tradition, fitting in the city where Guy Fawkes was born. York ham, the dry-cured ham that carries the city’s name, is better known as a style than as a local product today. And across Yorkshire, a slice of fruit cake is traditionally eaten with a piece of Wensleydale cheese.