One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world, and is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans. Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony.

The car park is located to the south of the stone circles and is free to National Trust members which was nice as we are some. Following the path towards the main village takes you close to the very nice visitors’ centre and while we did spend a few minutes and a few quid there the main purpose of our visit was to wander around the site of historic interest.

This wasn’t our first visit to Avebury’s stone circle – we used to come fairly regularly to pick sloes for gin – and as such we suspected from experience that we might run into certain people who are drawn to the stones and their alleged mystical properties. One of our encounters was with a man with an obvious mental illness who couldn’t look at us directly and instead held a mirror up to his face to stare at us and others in order to shout incomprehensible gibberish. A sad affair but he seemed in otherwise reasonable health. Our second encounter was with a young woman in her twenties who moved from stone to stone, standing with her back to each one and stretching out her hands to touch the surface with her eyes closed. Well, each to their own.

If metres-high standing stones erected around four and half thousand years ago isn’t your thing but sheep are then you’ll be pleased to know that Avebury has you covered there as the land is used extensively by the creatures. This does mean that you need to be a little careful where you walk as you make a circuit of the neolithic monument if you’re worried about getting ovine excrement in your car.

We had to smile as we bought our tickets. Firstly, the woman at the booth stopped me and told me that she loved my t-shirt; then, as we took the tickets and stepped away from the line, another English Heritage employee did a double take and told me loudly that he loved my t-shirt too. For the record, the t-shirt I was wearing was this one: Cthulhu’s Church.

The ticket allows entrance to the visitor’s centre which contains several large displays and accounts of the history of the area and digs as well as a wraparound screen simulating the rise and fall of the sun around the stone circle during the year. We were quite pleased that there was hardly anyone around while we were there as it felt quite peaceful standing and watching the stars and shadows move around us. Beside the centre is a recreation of a settlement of the time.

It’s possible to walk to Stonehenge’s stone circle from the centre but a bus that leaves every few minutes is also available and was ready to go while we were there so we took advantage of it. A short walk from where the bus stops then leads to a path that encircles the neolithic monument allowing you to get fairly close to the stones at points. A fairly low sun because of the time of year and a lot of hazy cloud acting as a great soft box in the background produced some challenging light conditions for photographs but as you can see I took a few regardless.

Wildlife, in the form of birds, played some part in the enjoyment of the visit to Stonehenge. Some of the staff were hand feeding crows and at one point we spotted a kestrel amongst the stones. While it sat it was left alone but as it flew across the circle it was challenged by the resident crows who clearly see the area as theirs.

Lacock Abbey is in Wiltshire but close to the furthest point in Wiltshire from our home in Hampshire so a not unsubstantial drive to get there. The village of Lacock is quintessentially old English in appearance with much of it being owned by the National Trust (we’re members; very much worth it if you like exploring the history of the country). Stone buildings and Tudor-style exteriors are very much the things you’ll see as you drive in and once you approach Lacock Abbey itself you’ll see a similar mix of architectural styles as the building was built and improved upon over the centuries.

Lacock Abbey was founded in the 13th century as an Augustinian nunnery. As with most religious buildings during Henry VIII ‘s Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed into private ownership in the mid-16th century and stayed that way until 1944 when the National Trust took over. Some of its last private owners were the Talbot family and a notable member of that family, William Henry Fox Talbot, was an early proponent of photography. A museum dedicated to Fox Talbot is outside the entrance of Lacock Abbey.

The interior spaces of Lacock Abbey were mostly empty but there were some occasional objects as points of interest, including a large, black cauldron (known as the Nun’s Boiler) with a latin inscription that reads in English: I was moulten or made by Peter Waghuens, of Mechlin, in the year 1500. Praise be to God and glory to Christ.

However, one of the main reasons we wanted to visit Lacock Abbey was because we’d heard it was the filming location for some scenes in both Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets several years earlier. This filming was mostly taken in the cloisters and they were instantly recognisable as soon as we wandered through them. A few years after our visit there would be further scenes shot in Lacock Abbey for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. More recently, scenes for the related movie Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald have been shot in the area. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fanatic, in case you’re wondering, but my wife has all the books and I find the films very enjoyable.

Leaving Lacock Abbey we had a short wander around the village and decided to take some lunch in the Red Lion, a Georgian pub. It is a strange thing but to this day I can still remember what I ate there and why; scampi and chips was the what and the why was because it was the best scampi I’ve ever had. It’s a running joke with us that despite eating scampi in plenty of seaside places around the country it’s still this pub, 40 kilometres from the sea, 12 years ago now, that had the best.

After lunch and before leaving Lacock Abbey and village we popped into the Tithe Barn, a medieval building constructed from limestone. Not a huge amount to say about it but as it’s free to enter and only takes a minute of your time then if you’re in the area it’s worth a quick nose.

As I said at the start it’s fascinating to see these old photos I took when I knew considerably less than I do now about photography and architecture and when I had less of a traveller’s eye for interest and information. Lacock Abbey and village are places we’ve mentioned in recent years that we need to go back to and take another look at and seeing these pictures again has strengthened my resolve to do so sooner rather than later.

We weren’t just going for the cathedral. Near to the church there used to be a place called Snell’s Tea Rooms that we’d popped into once when we’d stopped on a drive towards the West Country when we were first going out together. My wife’s parents had also used it as the place for a treat when they took her and her sister on UK breaks as children. A place with some fond memories, therefore. Anyway, Snell’s was nowhere to be found and it transpired we were four years too late as it had closed in order that the owner could concentrate on the family farming business instead. We would subsequently have to make do with just seeing the cathedral.

Salisbury Cathedral was built in the thirteenth century in the English Gothic architectural style; you’ll see this most clearly in the pointed arches and tall, narrow, stained glass windows, but the vaulted ceilings with four curved ribs meeting at a central point are another key characteristic. Salisbury Cathedral’s cloisters are the largest in the UK and Salisbury Cathedral is the tallest church in the UK too.

To the photos of the cathedral, then, and these are obviously early in my photography-taking period with not quite the eye for composition or care about lighting that I like to think I have these days. The camera at the time was a Canon 350D and the lens was the 18-55mm kit lens. Starting outside the cathedral there are some photos of swans paddling along the River Avon before we come to the typically English cathedral.

Inside Salisbury Cathedral now and first up a few shots of the stained glass windows in that tall, narrow style typical of English Gothic.

This interesting piece of religious artwork is an icon donated from Sudan where Salisbury maintains a link.

If you’re a fan of tombs then you won’t be disappointed with the number of them, with many decorated with likenesses of those for whom they were made. Some were clearly for bishops, others were for knights, and there was even one which was sculpted in the form of an emaciated corpse. And why not?

For all its records – those cloisters and the height of its spire – I can’t recall being very wowed by Salisbury Cathedral, although a lot of that might have been because I was perhaps not quite as into history and architecture as I am now. The cathedral houses a copy of Magna Carta, for instance, but we clearly weren’t interested in seeing that at the time; something that wouldn’t be the case now. It’s probably a church we should try to make a return visit to at some point.

One thing we really did like on this visit to Salisbury in 2007 was the font in the cathedral. This was actually an early version of the one that would be installed on a permanent basis around eighteen months after this trip and you can compare the photos of the prototype we saw below with the finished piece by William Pye here: Salisbury Cathedral Font.

This post – due to the amount of time between the visit and me writing about it on this site – will be a little light in detail because my memory, while never great, is even worse now. I suspect we wandered inside the main building and I suspect that photos at that time weren’t allowed. Consider this to be mostly a photowalk around Stourhead gardens. The pictures here will also be a little basic as photos would have been taken a lot (and possibly exclusively) in automatic mode on the camera, and its pop-up flash would have popped up on occasion, neither activity being conducive to the best of photography. However, it is pleasing to see some half-decent framing in these old shots, and I don’t think I or the camera did a bad job at all.

The estate on which the house at Stourhead was built had belonged to the Stourton family since around the thirteenth century. This was eventually sold to the Hoare family in 1717. Their wealth allowed them to build a house in the Palladian style in which to live and to amass an impressive art collection. The gardens at Stourhead were designed by Henry The Magnificent (if you’re going to have a nickname then make it a good one) and were heavily influenced by classical Italian paintings. The lake at Stourhead is artificial, formed from damming a stream, and the walk around it is punctuated by buildings and follies in classic styles.

The obelisk at Stourhead was erected in 1840, replacing another that had stood in the spot since the middle of the century before. It is made of Bath stone with a metal sun-face on the top.

The 1765 building through the trees and across the lake at Stourhead below is the Temple of Apollo. A similar building had appeared at Kew gardens just a few years before (based on a famous circular temple at Baalbek in Syria) and this was constructed mainly to simply be better. Everyone likes a bit of one-upmanship when it comes to garden and landscape design. It’s certainly lasted longer as the one at Kew was demolished following damage from a cedar tree toppling onto it in 1916.

You weren’t anyone with a country estate in the eighteenth century if you didn’t have a grotto. The shade and cool rocks offered sanctuary from summer heat. Stourhead’s grotto is a circular, domed area, built from brick then lined with rough limestone to more closely resemble a natural cave, and houses statues of a river god and a sleeping nymph beside a natural spring-fed cold water bath.

From the grotto the view across the lake shows off the Temple of Flora and Palladian Bridge close to the water’s edge, and St Peter’s Church just beyond.

Continuing around the lakeside path at Stourhead affords views back across the water to the largest and most important of the buildings in the gardens: the Pantheon. Inspired by its namesake in Rome, this 1754 building houses a number of statues to various gods and goddesses. A stove at the rear of the building provided heating for when the weather demanded it, and the Pantheon was used by the Hoare family for picnics and parties.

The simple, five-arched bridge in the Palladian style at Stourhead is ornamental, serving no other purpose than to appear practical. Its positioning was such that the views to and from the Pantheon would make it look as if the river into the estate flowed under it and that the bridge provided a means to cross from the estate to the nearby village. The design of the bridge was based on one in Vicenza, Italy.

The final monument of note in the grounds at Stourhead is the Bristol High Cross. As its name may suggest, this Gothic piece originally stood in Bristol but was removed and relocated twice owing to complaints from locals as to its location and threat to life (if it should fall) or inconvenience (in the way of a good promenade). In 1764 it was acquired by Hoare and transported to his estate to add a vertical accent to the views around the lake. Alcoves on tiers of the structure contain statues of monarchs.

It was customary practice to remove any old buildings that were in the way of the plans of eighteenth century landowners, but Hoare liked the idea of incorporating elements of the existing Stourton village into his estate. Not all the buildings survived, but those that were felt to enhance the picturesque views did. I cannot say for certain that we had a drink in the Spread Eagle Inn when we visited Stourhead but it would have been bloody odd if we didn’t.

Our plan had been to arrive on the Friday afternoon, have a wander into Salisbury, get food and some drinks there, then explore the town like proper tourists on the Saturday, with Sunday reserved for some trips out to nearby sites of interest to us. That was until we checked in and threw out the first day’s plans completely.

Our room was located on the furthest point west of the hotel and had a door that opened straight out onto a grassy area. The room was very large, and, in addition to the welcome bottle of fizz in a bucket, contained not only a kettle for tea and coffee, but also one of those fancy coffee pod machines too. We’d never used one of those before and would make two attempts to try to get something that looked and tasted nice out of it over the weekend with no real success; even a browse online for instructions in use wasn’t too forthcoming and we decided we wouldn’t be buying one of those for the house as a result.

We thought we might take advantage of the grassy area outside our room to drink the Prosecco on the small patio. That was when we discovered that the hotel was right on the waterfront. I hadn’t really realised that the Rose & Crown sat on the banks of the River Avon in Salisbury, and I hadn’t realised that there was a huge area with picnic tables and patio sets and some gorgeous views in an idyllic setting to enjoy. It helped having the weather for it, of course, but this was a wonderful surprise and was the reason that our plan to walk into Salisbury got ditched. We opted instead to sit out in the hotel garden on the banks of the river, watching people paddleboard up and down, drinking first the free fizz, then a few pints from the bar.

You can see from the photos below just how close to Salisbury Cathedral we were, and that would be one of the places we would be visiting the following day.

The bridge over the River Avon that we could see from the hotel would be one that we would cross several times over the next couple of days as it marked the most direct route to Salisbury. Called either Ayleswade or Harnham Bridge, it dates from around the thirteenth century and is a scheduled monument.

Our altered plans for the Friday meant we would be eating at the hotel rather than in the town. We showered, changed, and made our way through the hotel’s sprawling interior to the dining room and bar area. A word about that interior. The Rose & Crown definitely feels like an evolved pub; appearing like a coaching inn from the Middle Ages from one side with bolted-on conservatory area on another, more modern expansions to it all flowing around another section and following the contour of a small rise where the car park is to at points provide two storeys of accommodation, and rooms jutting off corridors here and there. It lends it all a nice, homely feel, and carries with it some age that is both comforting but can in places feel a little dated. We liked it.

As for our dinner: well, as you can see below there was a decent offering, but I think we both agreed the food was no more than satisfactory. Fine for a hotel, of course, and we had no real complaints, with just a minor eye-rolling from the pair of us when one of the courses was served on slate. I know it’s only one letter difference from plate, but it’s an important letter. I guess we’re old fashioned and like our food on porcelain, not slabs of metamorphic rock.

Our view from the conservatory area where food was served provided us with the lovely sight of dusk on the River Avon, and after our food we took a short walk around to a nearby pub just to see what that was like so got to see our hotel from the outside on the way back.

We enjoyed our stay at the Rose & Crown hotel in Salisbury and, not only would we use it again if visiting the area, we would – and have – recommended it to others if staying in the area too. It ticked all the right boxes for us: parking, convenient location, a lot of character, and wonderful views and garden area if the weather is good. Food was okay, drinks were a smidge pricey, but everything within that range of tolerance we have for such matters when taking any vacation in the UK these days.

In the subsequent posts in this Salisbury Weekender travelogue series I’ll cover the places we visited in the town – the cathedral, some museums, and pubs (of course) – and what we explored in the vicinity – a Roman settlement and a country house.

We were staying at the Rose and Crown, so were only ten minutes away on foot. If you’ve read the first post in this travelogue series then you might remember that the bridge over the River Avon is called either Ayleswade or Harnham Bridge. Like the nearby cathedral, it too dates from the thirteenth century. The pointed arches of the bridge give away its architectural style as Gothic. The views along this part of the river in both directions, and of the tree-lined fields to one side and the houses and our hotel on the other, were all very pleasant.

There are four medieval gates still set in parts of the wall that would have formed this fortified area of Salisbury, and our short walk took us through probably the least visually impressive of the four, Harnham Gate. The other three are Bishop’s Gate, St Ann’s Gate, and High Street Gate. Immediately after passing through the gate, we had good views to the cathedral’s imposing spire.

Salisbury Cathedral was the city’s second cathedral. The original had been located at Old Sarum (a place we’d be visiting the next day, and which you’ll be able to read about and see pictures of in a subsequent post in this series), but disagreements between the church and the military units there led to a new building being constructed in its present location some considerable distance away. The legend states that the bishop shot an arrow from Old Sarum with its resting place being where the church would be built; the arrow hit a deer which ran until it died. As a general rule, you should always get surveyors in to check the land where you’re planning on building large stone structures and not rely upon the chance expiration spot of a wounded mammal.

Salisbury Cathedral took just 38 years to complete, and at 123 metres in height, following the collapse of the spire of St Paul’s Cathedral, London in 1561 (the one destroyed and rebuilt a century later in the Great Fire), it became the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom. The architect of the new St Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren, was contracted in 1668 to design some reinforcing beams under the spire to prevent Sailsbury suffering a similar spire collapse, however.

The cathedral has a very tall and narrow nave, and makes good use of contrast between the dark, polished marble of the supporting columns with the lighter stone above and used for the main walls. It’s all very nice, but, as with our previous visit, there was something a bit average about it all. We’ve been to spectacularly ornate cathedrals that felt majestic and overpowering, and we’ve been to cathedrals with very austere interiors too that had their own power to impose obedience and fear on the faithful, and Salisbury Cathedral, for some reason we can’t put into words, just doesn’t have any of that. It’s still nice, and there are still things to be impressed by there, but it lacks a little something. Again, all just our opinion. Don’t let that dictate whether you should go or not. You might visit and squeal with delight, dancing between the chairs and along the transepts, pointing at sculptures and tombs and flags with utter joy. It’s usually frowned upon in religious buildings, but don’t you ever be anything else than you.

One thing we did like in Salisbury Cathedral was the modern font. We’d seen the prototype of this font when we’d visited the cathedral in 2007 (so you can visit that page linked earlier in this article to compare if you’d like), and the one now there was the new form installed the following year. Difficult to get any good shots of the font and reflections thanks to the number of visitors at the time, but a lovely piece of water sculpture.

The main reason for our repeat visit to Salisbury Cathedral was not to see whether we’d changed our minds about how we felt about it – clearly, we hadn’t – but to take a look at the copy of the Magna Carta stored there; something we’d either overlooked or weren’t permitted to do for some reason before.

Heading out from the cathedral, we passed the attractive cloisters and entered the Chapter House. This small building, octagonal in shape, with a narrow, ornate central column, was decorated in the nineteenth century with scenes from the Bible. We perused a few whilst waiting our turn to enter the dark, covered section in which we could view the 1215 document. No photos, naturally. It’s smaller than we’d guessed it would be, but an impressive bit of history to feast the eyes upon.

That concluded our reasonably brief look around Salisbury Cathedral. If you’re in Salisbury then it’s definitely worth a visit, but all we’d say is that it doesn’t rate very highly in the big list of churches we’ve looked inside when we’ve travelled. There was a small fee to enter (check the cathedral website before you visit), which does include seeing the Magna Carta and is valid for a whole year. The entry price for Salisbury Cathedral is definitely worth it in our opinion.

We would be following this up with some visits to a few museums in Salisbury more-or-less directly opposite the church, and the main one, covered in the next post in this series, would be the very impressive former home of Sir Edward Heath, Arundells.

First impressions were very good, involving a friendly chat with the woman on reception who took our money, asked if we’d been before, and absolutely gushed with barely-hidden praise for what we were about to see. This was an attitude that would be shared by all the people we encountered in the house during our visit. Everyone really liked working there, and you could tell.

So, we didn’t know anything about Arundells except that it had been the family home of former British Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath. His leadership of the Conservative Party was a bit before our time (well, technically it coincided with our time, but we were more interested in playing in dirt and with toys than politics back then, and would probably rather that were still the case now), and, being a Tory, that meant he was, in our eyes, absolute scum. Why should we want to know anything about him? Why should we really care about his house and gardens? Well… it turns out that he was one of the good ones. Better ones, at least. He wasn’t a complete self-serving, outright racist, thieving, nasty, traitorous shit like all the present batch and anyone who supports them is what I’m really getting at here. He couldn’t have been too bad a chap, as Tony Benn was a close friend of his, although read the final paragraph of this post for a small caveat here.

From the reception block, a short walk and into the house.

Arundells dates from the late thirteenth century. Its history before Heath called it his home includes spells as a medieval canonry, home to lay tenants of the Cathedral, both a boys and a girls boarding school at different times, and as a book and wool store during the Second World War. Post-war, Arundells fell into disrepair and was in danger of being demolished before being bought and renovated. Then, in 1985 it was bought by the former Prime Minister who hired an interior designer to modernise the house while paying respect to its origins. Display cabinets and furniture were designed for the house at the same time, and many of these pieces are still there now, housing art, collectibles, and gifts from Heath’s interesting life.

Wandering around the ground floor rooms we got to see his yachting memorabilia, his Steinway piano, photos of celebrities and dignitaries, artwork by Winston Churchill and L.S. Lowry, Tang and Ming dynasty pieces, gifts from Mao Zedong, and lots of original political cartoons. It was here that I first started to get the impression that unlike the modern Tory’s xenophobic stance that is designed to shield corruption and incompetence and theft of public money from the average voting imbecile, Heath had a far more cooperative, international viewpoint. This would be confirmed when we headed upstairs.

Heath’s military and political history was spelled out on the first floor, rather than simply implied on the more home-like lower level. As someone interested in politics prior to World War II, his views were at odds with the Conservative-led government’s, despite being Conservative himself. He was opposed to Franco in Spain (his car had been machine-gunned while in Spain in 1938, and his hotel had been bombed by Franco’s forces so you can see how that might have an impact), and was at the Nuremberg Rally in Germany in 1937 where he was appalled by what he saw there and repulsed by meeting Göring, Goebbels, and Himmler, the lattermost of whom he described as “the most evil man I have ever met.” Heath was therefore opposed to appeasement, and in 1941 was called up to service. He was given a commission as second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and temporarily commanded a battery that provided artillery support in France and Germany in the final years of the war. Though he didn’t personally kill anyone, he was in charge of a firing squad that executed a Polish soldier convicted of rape and murder, and he witnessed the results of the devastation of war at first hand which helped to cement his political world views.

While leader of the opposition in 1968 it was decision to immediately sack Nigel Farage’s wank material poster boy, Enoch Powell, following the revolting “rivers of blood” speech. Promoting the free market and closer ties to Europe as a means to get out of the country’s terrible economic situation against the Labour view of the time that this was simply reactionary, Heath led the Tories to election victory, and in 1973 brought the UK into Europe. How times and Tories change.

However, it wasn’t all good. Support for Pinochet in Chile, support for bombings by the US in Hanoi, Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland and the introduction of internment there, were just some of the “Ah, now, that could have been handled better” moments of his political career. These all led to an early election in 1974, the inconclusive result of which was a minority Labour government, before Margaret Thatcher could rise to power. Heath sat on the left side of the right-wing Tories and maintained a poor relationship with Thatcher throughout the rest of his and her lives, so that’s some small comfort.

“Make sure you go down to the end of the garden,” we’d been told in reception, and by one of the people in the house, so after we’d enjoyed our look around Arundells far more than we’d been expecting to we headed outside.

It helped with this being such a lovely day to visit Arundells, of course, but there was no disputing that this was a place with a great garden, indeed. At the very bottom of the garden it was possible to see part of the River Avon at the rear, and to look back along the length of the lawn and grounds towards the house and the cathedral beyond that.

And that is Arundells in Salisbury, and a very nice place it is too. We went in without expectations and were richly rewarded by being surprised, impressed, and educated everywhere we went. Learning about Heath was great, since we’d not known anything, although his personal life and some late-in-life accusations about him were obviously not mentioned or referred to anywhere. Understandable, but something you should check out if you feel the urge. One of the nicest aspects of Arundells, though, were the people working there, and a nicer, more committed bunch of museum employees and helpers we’ve yet to meet on our travels.

The building’s a nice one from the outside, and large inside, but be prepared to feel a little claustrophobic as it is absolutely rammed with memorabilia from the infantry regiments and your route around the ground floor is labyrinthine. For us, it was a chance to put some money into the local community and have a nose around, but there were other visitors who appeared to look at and read absolutely everything, and others – clearly military as we saw them fishing around for proof of their soldierly status to get reduced entrance fees – who wandered through, mostly talking to each other and not glancing at anything at all. So, you could argue that it’s a museum for you no matter what your interest levels in the military are. There’s a garden area at the back too.

That visit to the Rifles Museum drew a line under the cultural portion of this Saturday in Salisbury. From this point on our plan was to hit a few pubs, with another mix of culture and social activities planned for the following day too.

Built between 1327 and 1342 the High Street Gate is one of four original gates in the medieval walls of Salisbury. The wall and gate may be fourteenth century, but the statue you can see in the picture below is of King Edward VII and was added in 1909 when the king visited the city.

The following pictures were taken mostly on the meandering route we took to hit a number of pubs. The water running through Salisbury is the River Avon.

It might look like a church worshipping one of those modern religions you’ve not read about but have heard have funky iconography, and in a way that’s true, but the following photos are of the grounds and building of the Salisbury Arts Centre. The building is now deconsecrated but was formerly St Edmunds.

In the Guildhall Square in Salisbury we spotted an attractive modern sculpture. This was Turning Point by John Maine, formed from seven tapering, twisting blocks of granite in the shape of a spire.

Having worked in Chichester for many years I was very familiar with the market cross at the centre of the city, and it was nice to see that Salisbury had one too (the only one of four that the city originally had) called the Poultry Cross.

Of the pubs we visited on this day, the Wyndham Arms with its connections to the Hopback Brewery was the only one we were determined to hit, with others being fortunate happenstances. Of course I took photos of beers we drank but this barely scratches the surface.

To finish this brief post about Salisbury, some atmospheric night shots as we made our way back to the Rose & Crown Hotel. We were particularly taken by the Walking Madonna sculpture outside the cathedral by Dame Elisabeth Frink. Delightfully eerie.

In the next post in this Salisbury travelogue series I’ll cover our visit to nearby Old Sarum.

Old Sarum is run by English Heritage and we’ve had run-ins with English Heritage in the past so we expected the same on this occasion, but I’m happy to report that the people manning the ticketing were lovely. No high pressure sales pitch to get us to join made such a nice change; just the usual helpful hints on what to see and what would be the best route. There is a car park with s small fee for non-members accessed up a single track road before you get into the castle area of the location.

As a visitor to Old Sarum there are basically two things you’re going to want to see (regular visitors might also appreciate the walks and views, but I’m sticking to historical elements here): the castle, and the cathedral. Or ruins thereof, to be more accurate. We started with the castle.

Old Sarum dates to around the 400 BCE when the first hillfort and ditch was used for protection. It subsequently was occupied or used by tribes of Gauls under Roman rule, and came under Saxon rulership too, but it was only when the Vikings started invading from the late eight century onwards that defences were properly implemented and garrisons stationed. It was used as a base of planning against the Danes in the north during the ninth century. Following the Norman conquest a proper motte-and-bailey castle was erected and the cathedral was built, and the ruins that you see today are typical of Norman construction.

We walked a complete circuit of the walls of Old Sarum castle, admiring the views out across the Wiltshire countryside, and trying not to get blown off the stone paths by the wind that gusted strongly.

The name of Sarum is likely due to a mistake. Its name of Sarisburie was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 but records indicate it was often shortened to simply Sar with a line over the top of the ‘r’. Since this in itself was more often used to abbreviate the word “rum” in place names, Sarisburie eventually became Sarum.

Our visit to Old Sarum was punctuated numerous times by light aircraft flying over and dropping skydivers out. Not far from the site was an airfield that was laid down during the World War I. These days it’s for activities just like this, and it did look fun.

After completing our circuit of the castle we left the area over the bridge over the ditch surrounding it, then went for an anticlockwise walk around the ground outside.

As already mentioned, the cathedral dates to the Norman period but only lasted just over a century. Defensively, the location on a hill with views all around made sense but I’ve already mentioned that wind and writings from clergy pointed out that in addition to wind damage to the church, the howling noise could drown out prayers and there were problems with getting fresh water; it was likely easier and cheaper to transport it by cart from rivers than by wells. In addition, the church and the military often were at odds with one another with the latter blocking access on occasion, and the limited land space left lodgings that the clerics didn’t really like. The church eventually sought and got permission to relocate the cathedral to what is now Salisbury around 1220 CE, and the city soon followed it.

We enjoyed Old Sarum. If you get a pleasant day like the one we had then the countryside views are fabulous, with barely any sign of buildings in any direction. You can really appreciate what a good vantage point for spotting approaching hordes it would have provided. If you’re keen on walks then there’s a decent enough set of trails around too.

In the next post in this short travel series covering our time in Salisbury we’ll head across to Wilton House for a look around.