14th June 2005 - Stonehenge and Salisbury
We drove off to Stonehenge (eastwards) for a gander. I'd been told that it wasn't worth paying to see, and that's quite right. At £5-something for an adult, it seemed a little dear for what you could, in fact, see for free. Turn away from the car park and you see the Stones as clearly as if you were in the compound. Only a wire fence came between us and the Stones and a fleeting idea of climbing the fence came and went. It wouldn't have been worth the hassle. I stuck my camera in between the fence and took a shot that should hopefully look like I was inside polystyrene - you couldn't disagree. The payers got a free audio-phone tour thing, although they seemed to be looking at us. I get the feeling that it went something like:
"...and if you turn to your right, you will see the stingy people who didn't pay..."
And so towards Salisbury, a nice and very cultured town of which we strolled around. To me it seemed like it should have been a small and quiet town, but in fact was quite large with a number of streets criss-crossing each other. The local market was open but unlike Christchurch, was selling some interesting items along with tat - homemade jam and chocolates, ornaments, local fruit and veg, and some. The entire thing was aimed towards the locals, and that's what was good about it - there was much less tat being sold too. Salisbury Cathedral and Ellwood Bookshop were the main points of interest during the day in Salisbury. The cathedral was quite magnificent both outside and inside. They were currently refurbishing the building and have apparently already spent some £14m since 1986. It will take another decade or so for the work to be completed.
Ellwood bookshop is currently run by the guy who gave Nav a lift from some place to his old bookshop. As we went in, it didn't seem that the owner remembered Nav and Nav never made any mention of the occurrence either. Nav bought a couple of books which I'm sure he'll talk about. Apparently, we are supposed to be rating (second-hand) bookshops during this trip, but I'll let Nav do that.
Nav: Ellwood books once cast a ray of light into an otherwise very dull Southampton existence. Not only on my first visit to this bookshop, did he actually drive me to the shop, he also served me coffee! We also had a nice chat about Oxfam versus other charity shop books, the cutural vacuum that is Southampton, and TS Eliot (he's a devoted fan). I left feeling that perhaps Southampton wasn't so bad after all, and that I should definately visit this bookshop more often...
Unfortunately it wasn't to be, shortly after he left and Southampton was again lacking one of its few highlights. So on our trip round England I resolved to go and visit his new shop in Salisbury.
It's as lovely as ever, and still boasting "more poetry than Waterstones". I picked up some more T.S.Eliot including the first part of the four quartets, which hopefully I can read in East Coker on our way through Somerset. I'm not sure if he remembered me, I was beardless last time we met, but we had a little chat about Southampton and Eliot. If your ever in Salisbury, drop by Winchester Street and take a look, say hello from the beard man of Southampton.
--- Nav
Originally, we planned to stop off at Nav's home, but that was only if our GPS device had turned up. It hadn't, so we made the trip down to Weymouth for the night's rest. We had a few choices for campsites and happened upon one that was absolutely hideous and downright awful. It was like a Butlins but in trailers, children of all ages and sizes running around, screaming. It was basically a holiday camp for the little sods and we hated it. We walked up to see the tenting site, and found a nice picturesque view of a crane and a load of workers. Dogs on leases barking at us, and more horribleness. See the photos and be disgusted....
We quickly left and continued up the road, turning into a traffic jam - it was rush hour and sitting in the car in the heat wasn't fun. We passed another site, although at a quick glance it didn't look nice. We finally found another, quite far from Weymouth town centre, but it was great - it was a proper farm and with that it was tranquil.
-- steven
"...and if you turn to your right, you will see the stingy people who didn't pay..."
And so towards Salisbury, a nice and very cultured town of which we strolled around. To me it seemed like it should have been a small and quiet town, but in fact was quite large with a number of streets criss-crossing each other. The local market was open but unlike Christchurch, was selling some interesting items along with tat - homemade jam and chocolates, ornaments, local fruit and veg, and some. The entire thing was aimed towards the locals, and that's what was good about it - there was much less tat being sold too. Salisbury Cathedral and Ellwood Bookshop were the main points of interest during the day in Salisbury. The cathedral was quite magnificent both outside and inside. They were currently refurbishing the building and have apparently already spent some £14m since 1986. It will take another decade or so for the work to be completed.
Ellwood bookshop is currently run by the guy who gave Nav a lift from some place to his old bookshop. As we went in, it didn't seem that the owner remembered Nav and Nav never made any mention of the occurrence either. Nav bought a couple of books which I'm sure he'll talk about. Apparently, we are supposed to be rating (second-hand) bookshops during this trip, but I'll let Nav do that.
Nav: Ellwood books once cast a ray of light into an otherwise very dull Southampton existence. Not only on my first visit to this bookshop, did he actually drive me to the shop, he also served me coffee! We also had a nice chat about Oxfam versus other charity shop books, the cutural vacuum that is Southampton, and TS Eliot (he's a devoted fan). I left feeling that perhaps Southampton wasn't so bad after all, and that I should definately visit this bookshop more often...
Unfortunately it wasn't to be, shortly after he left and Southampton was again lacking one of its few highlights. So on our trip round England I resolved to go and visit his new shop in Salisbury.
It's as lovely as ever, and still boasting "more poetry than Waterstones". I picked up some more T.S.Eliot including the first part of the four quartets, which hopefully I can read in East Coker on our way through Somerset. I'm not sure if he remembered me, I was beardless last time we met, but we had a little chat about Southampton and Eliot. If your ever in Salisbury, drop by Winchester Street and take a look, say hello from the beard man of Southampton.
--- Nav
Originally, we planned to stop off at Nav's home, but that was only if our GPS device had turned up. It hadn't, so we made the trip down to Weymouth for the night's rest. We had a few choices for campsites and happened upon one that was absolutely hideous and downright awful. It was like a Butlins but in trailers, children of all ages and sizes running around, screaming. It was basically a holiday camp for the little sods and we hated it. We walked up to see the tenting site, and found a nice picturesque view of a crane and a load of workers. Dogs on leases barking at us, and more horribleness. See the photos and be disgusted....
We quickly left and continued up the road, turning into a traffic jam - it was rush hour and sitting in the car in the heat wasn't fun. We passed another site, although at a quick glance it didn't look nice. We finally found another, quite far from Weymouth town centre, but it was great - it was a proper farm and with that it was tranquil.
-- steven
posted by Steven | 1:13 am
1 Comments:
I know what you mean about the trailer park holiday camps they are awfulness incarnate.
Good luck with your trip, what a wonderful way of doing a trip.
Jane
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