Day trips to Winchester and Salisbury (15th and 16th October)
‘County’ is a way of life in England. It even has a special raiment: Barbour jackets (Claire has one), tweeds, bulky jumpers, tartan shirts (Colin forewent the opportunity to acquire one), and it is consecrated in county towns such as Winchester and Salisbury, both of which we visited.
They also happen to be cathedral cities, whose cathedrals are generally held to be paradigms of the Norman and Gothic styles respectively. Salisbury’s which figures in Thom Gorst’s unshortened list of the most important buildings, is a glorious building, one of whose features are almost enough to turn the most diehard atheist to Christianity: it is rather like Bach’s St Matthew Passion in that respect. We saw John Constable’s attempt to render its qualities in our recent visit to Tate, Britain. But even he could not capture the impact of seeing it in bricks and mortar!
Winchester’s cathedral is a squatter essay in architecture. Much more ascetic than its Wiltshire equivalent, it is renowned for its flying buttress, Jane Austen’s tomb, and the fact that it floats on a marsh. Indeed in the 1960s an intrepid diver saved it from subsiding into this marsh by replacing its wooden foundations. The cathedral’s precincts contain a decidedly uncharacteristic Barbara Hepworth, a crucifix that doubles as an homage to Piet Mondrian. We adored the view of Winchester from St Giles Hill, which takes in the city’s highlights (and some low lights too) such as King Alfred's statue, Wolvesey Castle, Winchester College and the aforementioned cathedral.
Salisbury is somewhat busier than Hampshire’s counterpart, but this deficiency is more than compensated by one view of the cathedral, which surely would provide uplift for the even most jaded and disconsolate disposition. Like Winchester, a fast moving river (in its case, the River Itchen, of which a larger version passes by Geraldine’s home), criss-crosses the city, powering mills, providing delightful river frontages and 'homes' for the inevitable ducks that seem to grace all photogenic rivers of England, and providing yet more excuses, lest Salisbury has not exhausted their memory cards, for digital cameras to engage in yet another orgy of image making.
Since much of our UK visit has been family related it is not without salience that the maiden name of Colin’s mother is ‘Salisbury’; both are gorgeous in ample measure.
No comments:
Post a Comment