Railway romance was in the air when Gavin Redshaw proposed to his girlfriend Jodie Wallace-Hill on the iconic Mallard locomotive at the NRM. Jodie said yes.

Hopes emerged for a direct Eurostar link from York to France; and MP Anne McIntosh raised concerns about fracking in North Yorkshire after it emerged several licences had been issued in her constituency.

Residents of St John’s House at Kirk Hammerton earned themselves a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest choir in the world, with an average age of 91.

Young musician Rosie McLeish played her violin with a sword during a production of the Civil War play Trooper Jane at the National Centre for Early Music – making for an eyecatching front-page photograph in The Press. And York ballet dancer Jack Cussins, from Huntington, won a place with the New English Ballet Theatre in West London.

Tourism bosses expressed their disappointment at York’s decision not to enter this year’s Britain in Bloom for ‘budgetary reasons’, even though the city’s floral displays were in full bloom.

The controversial six-month closure of Lendal Bridge to most traffic began. The response was predictably mixed. York’s transport boss, Labour councillor Dave Merrett, described it as ‘an important first step’ towards reducing congestion, cutting pollution and improving the reliability of buses. But Conservative opposition leader Coun Ian Gillies said signposting about the restrictions was ‘a shambles’.

A miniature farming scene showing a Land Army girl at work in a field was handed over to the Yorkshire Museum of Farming – making for another notable front page picture in the Press.

But the month ended on a lessthan- cheery note, with York council bosses admitting the authority faced a £3.7 million battle to balance its books.


In national and international news...

...Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a blow to his authority after losing a Commons vote on military action in Syria action by 13 votes.

Edinburgh Zoo’s panda Tian Tian was placed on 24-hour surveillance after hormone tests indicated she could be pregnant (she wasn’t); aeroplanes dropped ‘water bombs’ in an attempt to extinguish wild fires in Portugal; Royal Navy warships set sail for a raining exercise in the Mediterranean as diplomatic tensions grew between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar; and two women – Michaella McCollum, of Dungannon, County Tyrone, and Melissa Reid, of Lenzie, near Glasgow, both 20 – were arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine out of Peru.

The pair were subsequently jailed for six years and eight months each.


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