Salisbury, Old Sarum, Stonehenge and Avebury

Today we set out for Salisbury and after a one and half hour drive and making up silly stories about the names of places that we were travelling through or past, we arrived there . Our favourite one for the trip was having driven through a series a little villages named "Wallop Something" "Something Wallop", we got to Wallop, where there was a small defense related factory. The name of the factory ended in Wallop and we were making jokes that they must pack a big wallop for their equipment. Once dropped off in the city, we went straight to the cathedral, and had lunch sitting out on the lawn in front of the cathedral. There were large crowds there and it was quite warm, about 25 and sticky. 

We made our way into the Cathedral and even though it had school group and tour groups being loud and all over the place, we were both overcome with the sense of space and light and history that filled the building. The light was the thing that really struck me at first above everything else. We spent a long time in the Cathedral and gradually the crowds disappeared and we were able to get a much better sense of the place. I could have spent the rest of the day there, but there were other things to do. 

Leaving Salisbury Cathedral, we headed up to Old Sarum to see the remains of the Castle and the Cathedral and to think about the people who had been there in one form or another for thousands of years. We then went on to Stonehenge, only a few miles away. It was getting a bit late in the day and there were still lots of people arriving. It was somewhere else we could have stayed for a long time, but we wanted to get one more thing in for the day, which was to get to Avebury. We got there in time to have a quick look around at a small part of the earth works and the stones that are there, before we had to get something to eat for dinner. So we had a first pub meal in England. Going to Avebury meant that we went through some beuatifil villages with lots of thatched roofed homes and barns. We also decided that the town of Marlborough looked like would be a nice place to live as well.

Today Jane began her work at the Lambeth Conference and headed off there this morning. I had a wander around some of the old part of Canterbury and then headed out this afternoon to visit the ruins of a Roman villa that have been uncovered. Unfortunately I got hopelessly lost trying to get of the various motorways. I shall try again tomorrow.