And so it begins...

Touring that is. Wife and I had our first taste of touring since we arrived. On Sunday we drove to Salisbury to see the cathedral and check out the town. It was a sleepy, overcast day and the town showed it. About half the shops close on Sunday, so nothing was busy. From the car park we wandered along the river walk for a short time, then down some shop-lined streets to the cathedral close.

When you approach the cathedral it really is an impressive site. It’s gothic in nature with a spire that stands out from all the surrounding landscape. In fact, as you drive into Salisbury from the south you can see the spire well before you can see the rest of the town. According to our guidebook the spire is so impressive that it is having a rather detrimental effect on the supporting structure.

It was proven to be an old church (built circa 1250 A.D.) by the scaffolding that covered the north side from the transept to the back of the church. As we approached we couldn’t believe how big it was. From the outside it looked comparable to the duomos in Florence and Milan. It was only when we went in that we saw that while impressive it really wasn’t as large as we had thought. With nothing around it to offer scale, the cathedral appears much larger. The only thing that can give any sense of scale are some chestnut trees that grow in the close, but these aren’t very large or very near either.

Unfortunately this cathedral has gone the way of supposedly so many others in England. There’s a donation box at every corner. Luckily we were there on a Sunday so without many tourists about there was no one present to hound people to make the donations. We were only able to stay in the cathedral for a bit as there was a service going on and we felt awkward walking around during it.

After leaving the cathedral we wandered to the market square which was rather disappointing. It is probably very nice on market day, but as there was no market on Sunday it was being utilized as a parking lot. A bit depressed by this we headed to find some lunch.

Having had a decent lunch in a pub we made for St. Thomas’ church, which was built shortly before the cathedral for the workers building the cathedral. There is an interesting mural of the Last Judgment here, though it is a bit faded. The church itself felt rather cozy and had the requisite number of memorial stones on the floor which had been worn down from centuries of people walking on them.

It was still fairly early in the afternoon when we finished at St. Thomas so we decided to follow the river walk along the Avon. This proved to be a very nice path with various water fowl on the river and water clear enough you could see the fish. After a decent distance we turned around and headed back for the car.

Overall we thought that Salisbury is definitely worth a visit, especially for some shopping. There seemed to be a good number of unique shops and some quality restaurants for lunch. Combine that with a trip to Stonehenge and you’ve got a good day of sightseeing.

Cheers,
Frog