The road to York

Motoring from Hull to York can either be the most boring and tedious journey or the swiftest most pleasant 40 minutes you may wish to spend on a trunk road. The 35 mile drive is steeped in history and mystery and cannot fail to amaze and entertain. The first leg passes under the Humber Bridge feeder road at Hessle. Although well down the league table of suspension bridges by length it remains a striking exhibition of constructional engineering. The A63 skirts Welton and then Brough, now a sprawling residential estate, but historically a major Roman port and shelter for the North Sea fleet as guardians of the Humber as a gateway into much of the hinterland of England. The roads inland from Brough show their Roman origins through South Cave and then following an undulating course at the foot of the East Yorkshire Wolds which were populated with a scattering of Villas and farmsteads. Sancton is nestled in a shallow hollow and then on to Market Weighton by pass. The main road is then full tilt sometimes with a glider overhead at Pocklington and with small villages either breezed through or passed by with reference to ancient names and settlements, Fangfoss and Wilberfoss being strongly Norse. A road sign points to Stamford Bridge, the battleground for Harold before his long straggle to Hastings.
The City boundary for York is reached long before the urban development and with a small packhorse bridge being a surviving feature of the old narrow road at a crossing of the River Derwent. The final approach to York from the east is understated with a large junction with the A64 and the Park and Ride at Grimston Bar. There is a mad rush to get out of the bus lane overlooked by a Cyberman and Daleks on the roof of a petrol station. The first houses are suburban but soon  the mellow brick Victorian houses are in view and then the first sight of the City walls. The motorist is probably as relieved to reach York today as the roadweary Centurion was some 1800 years in the past.