Salisbury

A good breakfast of muesli and fruit – I can’t stand any more heavy breakfasts of eggs and bacon for a while – and we drove into town, parked in a shopping centre carpark, and walked to nearby Salisbury Cathedral. Rainy, cold weather.

We a got a tour guide to ourselves, an old guy called John, and walked around the cathedral learning about the tombs, architecture – and for some reason the embroidery – in the building. After the tour I left Carol to wander around and joined the Tower Tour, which was just me, the guide, and two other men, one of whom extended the tour by 20 minutes because he was walking with a cane. The tour was fantastic however – up hundreds of steps to see the inner roof timbers of the cathedral, the bell and bell mechanism, and finally the inner wooden scaffolding of the tower itself. Then we went out little doors to stand on narrow stone balconies at the base of the spire and take in the incredible views over the surrounding countryside.

Carol was very patient as the tour took much longer than expected. We had a quick lunch in the cathedral café, then visited the Chapter House to see one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta, the document that is the basis of our modern constitutions. Beautiful.

In the early afternoon we drove to nearby Old Sarum, the original site of Salisbury, originally an Iron Age fort and later a castle with a nearby cathedral. Little remains of the castle, and the cathedral is just an outline, but the spot was beautiful, covered with a soft wet blanket of green grass; and the views of the countryside were spectacular. We walked around the hill, wishing we lived in England and could always visit such evocative and beautiful places.

Back to our room at the guesthouse, and some organisation and internet use, followed by a rest. Then we drove back into town and had dinner at the Haunch of Venison, another old atmospheric pub. The food was kind of average but the setting was great. Before dinner we had a drink downstairs in a little room which had, preserved in a glass-fronted niche next to the fireplace, the supposed skeletal hand of a gambler who had his hand removed after losing a game… Two guys were talking about Joseph Campbell and I had to interject, and we talked for a bit about how lucky they were to live an England with all its history and mythology.