Seeing Salisbury, Sooner or Later

I came to Salisbury for the steaks.

That was a joke. Salisbury steaks were created by an American named Salisbury. As far as I know, he had nothing to do with Salisbury, England, where I am now.

Hey, don’t be like that. I said it was a joke. I didn’t say it was a good joke.

Now that I’ve typed that, a question occurs to me. Do Salisbury steaks still exist? I can’t recall seeing them on menus or in stores for decades.

For some reason, I always associate them in my mind with TV dinners. That’s another question. Do TV dinners still exist? I haven’t had one in decades.

All of that has nothing to do with Bristol, England. I arrived here by direct train from my previous base, Bristol.

Despite making several stops, the train, in theory, takes only a little more than an hour and a quarter to reach Salisbury. I was supposed to arrive at Salisbury station at three minutes past noon.

That was the theory. Sometimes theories prove to be false.

The train stopped at Westbury station. At the stations before there, the train paused for only a couple of minutes. A few passengers scurried off. A few more scurried on.

At Westbury, the train had idled for a few minutes when the ticket-checker came through the car and announced we’d be stopped for a while because there was a power failure ahead. The train couldn’t proceed until it got the all-clear. She said, “To be honest, I don’t know when that will be. It could be a few minutes. It could be ten minutes. It could be more. Sorry.”

We sat for a few more minutes when she came through again to say the train had been cancelled. She said the people on the platform could help us get to our destinations.

I asked a railway employee on the platform how I could get to Salisbury. He said he didn’t know if they were putting on replacement trains or buses, but if I went to platforms 2 & 3 (a central platform for both 2 & 3), the people there could help. (We were at platform 1.)

I went to that platform. There was a sign with the universal “i” information indicator, but no information desk.

A couple beside me who had been on the same cancelled train flagged down a conductor. They explained the predicament and asked how to get to Salisbury. He said he didn’t know because he had just come off a train, but if we ask someone in an orange vest, they work at the station, and they should know.

The three of us saw a man in an orange vest standing by the open door of a train. We made a beeline for him. The woman of the couple explained about the cancelled train and asked how to get to Salisbury.

He pointed to the open door and said that the train would be going to Salisbury. He didn’t know when because the signalling problem needed to be resolved, but the train would eventually be going. He invited us to hop on, take a seat, and wait.

Despite the train being run by a different rail line than the one I was booked on, my ticket was still good.

After a long wait on the train at Westbury station. The train eventually left. Then, after a while, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere.

After five minutes or so, there was an announcement over the speaker system apologizing for the unplanned stop. He thought it was due to the same signalling problem that delayed the train earlier.

After a few more minutes, the train began crawling, just barely crawling, ahead.

Instead of my scheduled 12:03 arrival at Salisbury station at 1:41 in the afternoon.

I then had a 15-minute walk from the station to my hotel.

Before you ask, no, they didn’t offer me one of the city’s famous steaks when I checked in. What? You weren’t going to ask that, you say. Well, they still didn’t offer me a Salisbury steak.

Yeah, I know. After using it only twice, that joke is getting stale, isn’t it? Yeah, I know. It wasn’t fresh the first time, much like a steak when it goes on sale for clearance.

To be honest, I didn’t come to Salisbury for Salisbury. I came for a sight about 20 minutes away by a bus that has a stop near my hotel and then proceeds nonstop to the landmark. I have a ticket booked for that sight at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow. Many, maybe most, readers know what that iconic landmark is. However, to keep the suspense for those who don’t, I’ll hold back on mentioning it here. Be sure to read tomorrow morning’s entry to hear about the excitement. Unless, of course, it turns out to be anticlimactic. In which case, please come back for the ennui.

In spite of having arrived in Salisbury later than expected and immediately requiring sustenance to quell my hangry feelings, I still had a little time to look around Salisbury today.

I started by visiting the Salisbury Cathedral and then walked around the core of Salisbury a bit and through a couple of parks.

Salisbury Cathedral

I’m going to skip right to the punchline. The Salisbury Cathedral is phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to visit it, go.

Okay. Now that I’ve given away the conclusion, let’s get to the narrative.

The cathedral’s spire is visible from many points in central Salisbury. It’s monstrously tall, as if aspiring to pierce the heavens. My walking tour app tells me that, at 404 feet (123 metres), it’s the tallest spire in Britain.

The exterior of the cathedral is made of stone blocks, with stone sculptures by the entrances. It looks enormous.

The Salisbury Cathedral is not a reverse TARDIS. It’s not significantly smaller on the inside than on the outside. It looks gigantic on the outside, and it feels soaring and cavernously inspiring inside, with soaring ribbed vaulted ceilings.

There are heavy automatic doors between the ticketing area and the nave. They swung open a couple of times while I was at the ticket desk. When they did, almost deafening music emitted from the cathedral.

I asked the ticket seller if the cathedral offered tours. She responded that there normally are, but she didn’t know if they were doing them today because the guides probably couldn’t be heard over the music. She suggested I ask one of the guides inside wearing a green sash.

A few green-sashed guides lingered just inside the doors. I asked one of them about a tour. She said that they weren’t doing them because of the overwhelming sound.

One of the other green-sashed guides approached and, I think out of boredom, offered to show me around. She had to talk pretty much into my ear, except during the breaks between numbers. She explained the choir and orchestra were rehearsing for a show tonight. I could hear most of what she said over the music, but it was a struggle sometimes.

(The music was very much not church music. I’ll get to that later.)

The Salisbury Cathedral doesn’t just look incredible. It has an amazing history.

The entire cathedral was built in only 38 years, between 1220 and 1258. Unlike some old churches that were significantly remodelled or expanded, the building still stands today in its original English Gothic style.

Most of the windows are not the original. There’s one small original window and a few larger windows that recreate the dull, mostly grey original stained glass. But the majority of the others have been replaced with more vibrant stained glass. Some of them are now clear glass to let more light in, but there were complaints about that. So most are stained glass.

The dark wood choir stall benches (the cathedral choir, not the evening performance choir) are the original stalls. However, there are some back benches, and a decorative wooden wall behind them, that are new.

There have also been new furnishings added inside. For example, there’s a sparkling new font. The surface of its water is perfectly smooth. But there are grooves on the side, and water continuously flows out of it to be drained at the base. It looks decidedly modern.

Above-ground tombs with statues have been added over the centuries. There are also grave markers on the floor. One of them is comparatively recent. It marks where the ashes of Edward Heath, a former Prime Minister of Britain, were buried in 2005.

Speaking of the floor, in one section there is a small hole in the floor with a cover on it. Another guide was standing there with a long stick. She explained that the cathedral is built over water. The water strengthens the foundation. (I didn’t quite understand that part.) The stick was a dipstick. She lifted the cover, inserted the stick and showed me the depth of the water. There was a fair bit of it. She said it was lower last week.

A sign by there said that in 1915, the water rose above the foundations and flooded the cathedral.

There’s a medieval clock in Salisbury Cathedral dating from 1386. It doesn’t have a clock face. Instead, ropes governed by the clock mechanism rang a bell at the top of every hour. The mechanism still runs, but they removed the bell more recently because, according to the guide, it made too much noise. She said this as the orchestra and choir were particularly loud. I said, “Yes, you definitely don’t want loud noises in a cathedral.” She laughed at that.

All that is not all that’s amazing about the Salisbury Cathedral. In its lovely chapter house, there’s one of only four still-existing original copies of the Magna Carta. It’s in a small, darkened modern room built within the chapter house. The Magna Carta is behind glass. Photography and videos—all photography and videos, not just flash—are forbidden in that room. So I don’t have any pictures to show you.

On the outside wall of that internal room, they’ve posted a large-font translation of the Magna Carta from its original Latin.

Coincidentally, this is the second original copy of the Magna Carta I’ve seen in my life. The first was at the British Library in London on a previous trip. I remember hearing somewhere that the reason they are called “original copies,” which sounds like an oxymoron, is that there were eleven copies hand-printed at the time. They are all considered to be originals because it’s impossible to say which came first.

There is also gorgeous cloisters around a large square of lawn and trees beside the cathedral.

I told you I’d get back to the music. While I was there, all of the numbers they performed were show tunes. After I finished touring the cathedral, I stuck around and videoed the first number. I started the video just after the conductor raised his baton. (Other visitors also had their phones out capturing videos.) There was no announcement of what they were going to play. So I didn’t know what I was going to get until they got past the opening bars.

Here I was in a grand cathedral. A 13th-century cathedral that still functions as a cathedral, at that. And what did I hear? “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” from “South Pacific,” by Rodgers and Hammerstein. That felt more than a little incongruous in that setting.

Here’s the video for your listening and viewing pleasure:

More pictures of the Salisbury Cathedral:

Walking Around Salisbury

After I left the Salisbury Cathedral, I walked around Salisbury a bit. I already had this impression from my walk from the train station to the hotel, but I found it to be a very quaint, pleasant city. The buildings are low-rise, and each is unique. There are red brick buildings mixed with stuccoed and painted structures. On the main street, the buildings contain restaurants, pubs, bars and shops at street level.

A river runs through Salisbury. Anyone want to guess what the river is?

That’s right. It’s the River Avon. I don’t know if it’s the same Avon River as I saw in Bristol and Bath, but it’s an Avon river. It’s lovely. I walked along the river for a short distance.

Pictures from walking around Salisbury:

Queen Elizabeth Gardens

I then walked to a park, Queen Elizabeth Gardens. It’s a fair-sized, beautiful park, with lots of trees and grass, and the River Avon running through it.

Pictures from Queen Elizabeth Park:

Harnham Water Meadows

Immediately behind the Queen Elizabeth Gardens is another large green space. It’s meadows, with a paved path running down the centre.

Fences on either side of the path prevent the public from entering the meadows.

On one side, there was one large meadow, with no grazing happening. The other side was divided up into two meadows by a fence. One of them was empty of animals, but the other had a huge flock of sheep.

Either they are a breed of sheep I’ve never seen before, or they’d all been sheared very recently. (Probably the latter.) They were hairless.

It’s called “water meadows” because, according to a sign, “These water meadows are a system of man-made channels and ditches. In winter months, they distribute warm water from the chalk downland streams across cold pastureland. This ‘Drowning’ provides early grass for grazing sheep. A remnant of a 17th-century farming revolution, the meadows form an 84-acre island circled by the Nadder and Avon rivers.

“They are now managed to preserve the historic features and create a rich haven for flora and fauna.”

I walked to the end of the water meadows, where there is a small dam on the river. Two swans swam in the water.

I then walked back to my hotel to end my day.

I’m booked into Salisbury for three nights, so two more full days. I have that sight to see tomorrow. I don’t know how much time I’ll spend there. Today, I also serendipitously booked a tour for Sunday afternoon. That’s scheduled to take between 90 and 105 minutes, but it’s very nearby and visits only one building. The point is, I’m not going to have all that much free time here.

Based on my little walk today and the sights listed in my walking tour app, I can confidently predict something. I’m reasonably certain that when I write up the Salisbury summary at the end of my stay here, I’m going to say that I should have booked more time here. Of course, I could lie if necessary to ensure my prediction comes true, but I won’t lie, no matter what.