Walking the Bar Walls: York's Two-Mile City Wall Circuit

Start with the vocabulary, because it trips up every first-time visitor: in York the streets are called gates, the gates in the walls are called bars, and the walls themselves are usually just the Bar Walls. So when a local points you at Micklegate Bar, they mean a fortified stone gateway, not a pub, although this being York there is usually a pub within thirty seconds of wherever you are standing.

The walls are the longest surviving town walls in England, about 3.4km around the historic centre, and they are free, open from roughly 8am until dusk every day except in icy weather, when the council locks the gates rather than let people skate along a parapet-topped ledge. The full circuit takes about two hours at a relaxed pace, and unlike most historic attractions it is genuinely the best free thing the city offers, not a consolation prize for people avoiding admission fees.

Which way round, and where to start

Most locals would send you clockwise from Bootham Bar, the gateway that stands where the Roman road entered the fortress nineteen centuries ago. Climb the steps and within five minutes you are on the most photographed stretch of the whole circuit: the run to Monk Bar behind the Minster, where the cathedral rises over the Deanery gardens with nothing modern in the frame. In late March and April the grass banks below are massed with daffodils, and that fortnight is quietly one of the best times of year to be in York at all.

Monk Bar is the tallest of the four main gateways and houses a small exhibition on Richard III, whose relationship with York was much warmer than Shakespeare would have you believe. From there the wall runs on to the first of the circuit's two honest gaps, at Layerthorpe. The walls do not fail here; they simply never existed, because the King's Fishpool, a marsh created by damming the River Foss, was defence enough. You drop to street level, follow the Foss briefly, and pick the ramparts up again at the Red Tower, the only brick structure on the circuit, built around 1490.

The southern half

The next stretch leads to Walmgate Bar, which deserves more attention than it gets: it is the only town gate in England that still has its barbican, the walled killing-ground that funnelled attackers in front of the defenders. It also took cannon fire in the siege of 1644 and still shows it. From there the wall swings past Fishergate Bar and the Fishergate Postern Tower of 1440 before the second gap, at the castle. Cross by Clifford's Tower and the Eye of York, then over Skeldergate Bridge, and climb back up at Baile Hill, the mound of the second castle William the Conqueror threw up to control the river.

The final leg runs past Victoria Bar, a Victorian convenience cut through in 1838, to Micklegate Bar, the ceremonial entrance to the city. Monarchs still stop here by tradition when visiting York, and for centuries the heads of traitors were displayed on its spikes, Yorkist and Lancastrian in turn depending on the decade. The last stretch drops you at Barker Tower by Lendal Bridge; cross the Ouse, pass the Roman Multangular Tower in Museum Gardens, and you are back at Bootham Bar.

Practicalities

The walls are a genuine medieval structure, so treat them as one. The stairs at each Bar are steep and worn, some parapets are low, and there is no step-free access on most stretches, which also means the circuit is not one for buggies or wheelchairs; the pavements below make a flat alternative loop. Hold small children's hands on the narrow sections. There are no toilets or cafes on the wall itself, but you are never more than a few minutes from a descent into the city, and the second half of the walk is well supplied: the Blue Bell on Fossgate and the House of the Trembling Madness on Stonegate are both short detours, and both are covered properly in our food guide.

If two hours is more than your legs or your itinerary want, do the single best section: Bootham Bar to Monk Bar, fifteen minutes of rampart with the Minster alongside, then descend and let the snickelways take you back through the middle. Nobody has ever regretted it, and on a clear early morning you may have the whole stretch to yourself.