Sunday worship?

On Sunday we got up bright and early and hit the road to drive to Stonehenge.  The gates opened at 9am and we thought it would be a good idea to be there right from the start.  Strangely, a couple of weeks of fine summer weather have affected our brains and we arrived to find it a bit cool and quite overcast – and our coats were at home.  With little other option, we hardened up and hoped it wouldn’t actually rain on us.

We are among a dozen or so people waiting for the gates to open, and we delighted to get (slightly) fast-tracked as we have English Heritage membership.  This not only got us in for free, but got us in the quick gate.  Armed with our audio guides, we went to look at the stones.  Sadly, years of petty vandalism in the form of etching one’s initial and/or chipping off a little souvenir have resulted in the stones being roped off; the closest tourists can get now is about 20 metres or so.  I believe participating in solstice rituals gets you close up but that’s not really us.  We settled for a slightly distant view, which is still quite a bit closer than all the cheapskates who parked outside the fence with telephoto lenses! (“Cheapskates” is probably a bit harsh; since we got in free I didn’t pay any attention to the admission prices but I understand it’s pretty steep given that you aren’t allowed close)

It took us about 40 minutes to wander around the outside, listening with fascination to the possible histories, uses and construction methods.  It may be a ruin now but it is mind-boggling to think of transporting and raising such huge stones by hand – what you can see is only about 2/3 of the size as the rest is buried in the ground to keep them upright.

We left, as always, through the shop where we stopped buy the guide.  We are getting quite a collection of such souvenirs but I always enjoy reading about a place more than I do listening to audio guides.  We were quite amazed to see the queue as we left – it was close to 10m long and three people deep!  There were at least half a dozen coaches now parked up, and more arriving.  Clearly getting there at 9am was a very good idea.

 

We felt that simply driving straight home when we were so close to Salisbury was a bit silly, so we decided to balance our pagan visit by detouring down to check out the cathedral.  We didn’t know much about it, so we were delighted once we parked to find ourselves in a charming little town (I know that having a cathedral makes it a city, but it's town-sized).  The fast-moving river was home to more than a few beautiful white swans, and there are some gorgeous old stone buildings now housing High Street shops.  We found a nice café and stopped for brunch (getting to Stonehenge by 9am had meant not having breakfast) before going to find the cathedral.

 

 Salisbury Cathedral is extraordinarily beautiful.  We wandered in the cloisters and did have a short look inside the church.  There was of course a Sunday service on and while I thoroughly enjoyed the singing (enhanced by glorious acoustics), we felt a little uncomfortable disturbing the worship even though there were plenty of other tourists doing the same.  We have decided to go back on a Saturday so that we can take a full tour of the cathedral including the tower and the roof.

It was fascinating to stand outside the cathedral in beautiful sunshine (see, we didn’t need our coats after all) and look beyond the city; there was clearly downpours happening in several places around us but we were dry.  We even got home dry to meet Mark, Paula and the girls who had come for lunch.  Grant and Mark went to get pizza for everyone – and I ended up on a rescue mission in the car as the rain finally caught up with us.

Salisbury's resident dragon