Yesterday was amazing.
Well, except for waking up and finding my laundry hadn’t really dried completely.
Woke up late, avoided putting on damp corduroys for as long as possible, no time for a cup of tea (which may have resulted in a pretty spectacular caffeine withdrawal headache later), surprisingly uncrowded Tube to Waterloo, deciding not to try to get passport photos for a Student Rail Card (they do them in little booths here, which i awesome), train to Salisbury (I fell asleep), tour bus to Stonehenge/Old Sarum that turned out to be completely worth the 15 pounds, and then STONEHENGE, WHICH WAS SO COOL.
It’s amazing: Stonehenge doesn’t even look like it was built by humans. And it’s eerie, there must have been 70 people there and it was still really quiet. And like, there’s no angle from which you can really see the whole thing, so walking around it is constantly surprising. So we were awed for a bit and then tried some mead in the gift shop and got back on the double-decker tour bus and took it to Old Sarum. LITTLE TINY ROADS. THROUGH VALLEYS. ON A DOUBLE-DECKER BUS. I totally thought we were going to hit another car or like, die, on multiple occasions.
Old Sarum is totally different and completely awesome. It was an Iron-Age hill fort first, then a castle was built on top of that for William the Conqueror, which was expanded for subsequent kings before being abandoned in favour of building Salisbury in the valley, which unlike the hill had running water. When it was abandoned they took the facing-stones to build other stuff, and the flint cores of the walls are all that’s left. Basically you can climb all over them, and the hill is really tall, so the view is totally beautiful. The castle is in the centre, and outside on the second tier there’s the ruined floor plan of the first cathedral of Sarum.
THIS IS WHERE HENRY II IMPRISONED ELEANOR OF AQUITANE, GUYS. The Lion in Winter is one of my favourite films. Also the privy shafts are still there, which my History of London professor will undoubtedly appreciate. We talk about poo a lot in that class.
So we climbed all over English heritage, sampled some totally incredible ginger wine, and then hoofed it all the way back to the town of Salisbury because we didn’t want to wait for the bus.
Well, we were going to look at the outside of the cathedral because our tour guide said it was closed for a funeral, but when we got there it was definitely not closed, so we got to go in after all.
Holy shit Salisbury Cathedral is incredible. This thing was begun in 1220 and has the tallest medieval spire in the world (well, the cathedrals at Cologne and Reims (?) are taller but they were finished after the medieval period ended, so there), and also like, the NAVE is probably 6 stories tall and vaulted all the way up and it’s huge and airy and beautiful and really feels sacred, in a way, even to me.
Salisbury Cathedral was never bombed during WWII, despite the surrounding area being a huge military training and deployment ground (apparently it’s where troops were massed for Operation Overlord). When people interviewed Luftwaffe pilots after the war, though, they found out the cathedral was never bombed because the spire was used as an important marker. Once pilots got there, they would figure out which direction to go to bomb industrial areas and do serious damage. I wondered how people felt about that.
On the outside of the church (in the cloisters? that’s the part where there’s a covered walkway around an open square, yeah?) there are wooden crosses that were moved from WWI battlefields that marked the graves of some of the sons of people who worked at the church, including I think two of the Archdeacon’s sons.
Also they have one of four original copies of Magna Carta. No big.
AND THE WORLD’S OLDEST WORKING CLOCK. IT WAS MADE IN 1384 AND IT’S STILL TICKING AWAY. I may have taken a video of it. :D
We also wandered into this other little church, which had a really beautiful wooden roof and some great stained glass.
Every other time I’ve been to Europe much of my time has been spent church-hopping, but I hadn’t really been in any since getting here. It was really cool to see some amazing churches, and to get out of the city. The air was so clean and nice.
Then we wandered back to the train station, but on the way we went through a park and I stopped to stick my hand in one of the rivers. This enormous swan, which while I was crouched was about as tall as me, started hissing at me and stalking over. My friend, who hates birds, kind of started freaking out, but so did I, because swans are HUGE and this one sounded really pissed that I was invading its space.
We finally got on the train and I fell asleep again and had a massive headache but at least my trousers had dried out and IT WAS SO COOL.
