Britain Day 11 - Salisbury...and the rain, it raineth every day

Another rainy day greeted us as we took a train to Salisbury.  How does one get to Stonehenge without pre-booking?  Take the Salisbury tour bus.  We were able to hop on and off at places around the area, the first stop was of course, Stonehenge.

Yep, there they are.  Huge ancient standing stones.  We walked around them and snapped some pics, trying to stay dry.  On the plus side, there were less people there because of the weather.  I couldn't help but think that the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness were more impressive to me.  But it's just one of those things that a tourist has to do if in the area.

2 Ravens having a conversation

 We took the bus to the next stop, Old Sarum.  In retrospect we should've skipped it because of the weather.  The walk up the hill was wet and chilly,
there was very little room to stand inside a building.  But I did get to see a sheep on the walk there.

I had read the book, Sarum before coming so it was good to go and see what it actually looked like.  

Entrance to Old Sarum

This would be a lovely place to visit on a clear day, the views would be fantastic.  The line from Twelfth Night was ever in my mind, "and the rain, it raineth every day."

After waiting at the bus stop, we hopped on a city bus (included in our ticket) and went back down to the town of Salisbury.  It was market day.

We followed the spire and made our way to the Salisbury Cathedral.  It's the tallest spire in Britain and was built in the record time of about 40 years.  

We had just walked in when we heard someone saying that it was time for their hourly prayer.  We were asked to sit and join and so we did.  One thing I remember from the brief prayer was from a traveler's prayer, "give us this day our daily discovery."  A very poignant prayer.  

We started on one of those tours but after almost 30 minutes standing in the same spot with a very talkative tour guide, we decided to go in search of food instead.  A running theme on this trip!

The cafe at the Cathedral had stopped serving hot food at this point, so we nipped over to Mompesson House, we were National Trust members after all.  We pounced on their last sandwich, some crisps (chips) and nice hot tea.  I understand much better now why tea is so popular in England.

Mompesson House was the setting of Mrs. Jennings House in the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility.  Unfortunately, Hugh Grant was not in that day.

We made our way back to our London studio and had another pub dinner.  Our nightly ritual was to find a grocery shop, buy yogurt, snack bars and whatever chocolate we liked for the next day.  I discovered that Flake came in packs of 4 for only 1pound and found Tunnock Wafers at Sainsburys.  We usually had a cup of tea in the evenings and then went to bed.

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To view all the posts for Britain 2013, click here.