Best places to park in York with a Blue Badge, plus tips

[Lindy2]

We're planning to visit York soon. We're staying about an hours drive away.

I just wanted to pick people's brains about the parking situation. My child has a blue badge which sometimes helps with parking but it's not always possible to find a blue badge space these days.

Can any local MNetters advise on where would be a good place to park or is it really tricky.

Any suggestions of what's good to do would also be welcome. 2 adults and 2 teens.

Thanks!

Not local but we visited over Xmas and new year. A lot depends on where you want to go. Some stuff is out if the city centre.

there were disabled parking spaces by Clifford’s tower but not many and the car park got pretty full pretty quickly.

Blue badge holders can park for free in any of the council car parks or on street pay and display spaces (just display the blue badge). If you need the extra space a dedicated disabled space has, your options are more limited though.

This site is very informative about blue badge parking in York;
https://www.york.gov.uk/BlueBadgeParking#map

It depends on where you’re planning to go. If you’re in the city centre, some of the pedestrian zone can’t be accessed during the restricted hours, even with a blue badge, as shown on the map someone has linked to above.

Some of the attractions are not wheelchair accessible due to the age of the buildings, and a few shops and cafes in older buildings have limited or no wheelchair access. The Jorvik Centre is fine, York Minster is mostly accessible, and the Railway Museum and Castle Museum should be fully accessible, though I haven’t been recently.

Places to go:

we drove out to Whitby. The museum at the abbey is wheelchair accessible and you can get up to the site from there in a wheelchair. Mostly grass.
very good cafe next door (part of the youth hostel) also wheelchair accessible.

we also went to the minster. Had a mooch around the shambles - lots of interesting shops.
we had lunch one day at a Japanese tea shop which was lovely if somewhat expensive - https://yorkvisitorguide.info/business/ippuku-tea-house/

tea house not wheelchair accessible I transferred to crutches.

Thanks for the information and suggestions. They're very helpful.

We're OK with some steps. They don't use a wheelchair but do need reasonably easy access to things.

Coppergate car park puts you right by Jorvik and Castle museums.
There are 18 dedicated Blue Badge parking bays which are available for Blue Badge holders only. In addition, Blue Badge holders can park in any bay in this car park, free of charge, for as long as they want.

It's also very close to https://www.sparkyork.org/ which the teens might like.