We walked the short distance from the bus station to the Cathedral. As we walked into the Close (the area where a cathedral is located), we both exclaimed at this building. Because it was built in only 50 years or so, there is one design, one plan for the entire building, and it is breathtaking. So beautiful, that we paid the fee to get into the building – which is equally spectacular inside. In addition, Salisbury Cathedral owns one of the original four copies of the Magna Carta, which is on display in the Chapter House. Next to the original is a translation into modern English of the document, and we learned a bit more about it.
Once again we were struck by the number of plaques on the Cathedral wall that were put there to memorialize someone who had died in a far-off place where England had been involved in a war. One hanging in Salisbury was to the memory of a soldier who died in Balaclava during the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade". Others were to more recent deaths of men from the city or the parish who died in one of the world wars.
Before we even entered the Cathedral, Ron had been taking pictures from as far away as he could get from the building. There’s no other way to get it all in. Therefore, he had been in front the museum across the street. There was a big sign outside quoting Bill Bryson (author of "Notes From a Small Island" and several other very funny books) as saying that this was a terrific museum and he urges us to go there immediately. Since we are big fans of this author, we decided we had to do what he said. And were we ever glad. It was a great museum – much larger than we had thought. It had a large section on the pre-history of the area, another section on an archeologist named Pitt-Rivers, a section on the history of the city, and a gallery which displayed costumes and china among other things. We walked until we were exhausted, had coffee, went through more galleries and then left.
While we were in the history gallery, we noticed a large picture of what the museum called "The Poultry Cross". Their explanation for the strange name was that in the past, poultry was sold under that structure. It would be hard to describe the structure but we took a good picture of it.
When the 6:20 bus came, we approached the bus driver with the disquieting information that we hadn’t remembered to find out the name of our stop. He didn’t know where the campground was. Luckily, a very young man who was also on the bus happened to know where the campground was, and we were able to return safely. We won’t let ourselves be in that position again!
