The Buchans 2011: Salisbury

Unusually for us we went away in the caravan in the middle of the school holidays. We only went up the road to Salisbury, but this enabled us to explore north of Salisbury and to have a better look around the city itself. The Salisbury website describes it as’ 'The city in the countryside', the magnificent medieval city has it all: historic streets and alleyways, charming half-timbered buildings etc.’ At its centre is the medieval cathedral with its 404 foot spire. Below are photos of the spire and cloisters.

In and around the cathedral are 20 sculptures by Sean Henry. Sue is pictured with the ‘Walking Woman’. The little girl in the left hand photo is real the rest is all sculpture.

Whilst in cathedral close we visited Ted Heath’s old house, Arundells. Only 12 people can go around at one time and it has to be booked in advance. We found it very interesting and most enlightening, well worth a visit if you have the time. Also in the close was the ‘Constable and Salisbury’ exhibition, although good we thought it rather expensive for what it was.
We visited Stonehenge, on the Saturday morning, unfortunately the weather was damp and overcast. At 0915 in the morning it is busy with tourists, but when we left at 1030 queues were everywhere. HINT: visit early.

Close to the campsite is Old Sarum, this is a huge Iron Age hill fort where the first cathedral once stood and the Romans, Normans and Saxons have all left their mark. On the day of our visit they were having a medieval jousting festival. This is all very dangerous and lances are regularly broken. If you look hard at the larger photo you can see the lance strike and break away.

There were quite a number of other attractions – medieval music and singing – falconry display - medieval food tasting, we didn’t risk it.

An owl in the display

The countryside north of the city is superb with some lovely villages. We are having sandwiches in St Andrews churchyard Great Durnford during a geocaching expedition. The church dates back to the late 12th century.

A surprise en route was a collection of ‘exotic’ animals at one of the manors. Here is an alpaca there was a also a Bactrian camel (two humps). The River Avon flowing through Little Durnford Manor.