Jun 2008

We humans love to split things. Disney may tell us it’s a small world, but that doesn’t stop us from cleaving it up into ever smaller pieces. Whether it be the borders of the continents, countries, provinces, states, counties or cities, we love to draw lines on a map. There is probably even a few lines in your home town that you won’t find on any map.

In Toronto, Yonge street runs from the southern most point at Lake Ontario all the way through the city and beyond, providing a nice little line to split the city into two pieces. I always lived right close to Yonge Street when I lived there, and I admit that I found something vague distrustful about those that lived east of Yonge (even though I lived east of Yonge street, though only by a few blocks). People in the east end seemed to be more hippy-dippy, granola eating folks, whereas those in the west end always seemed more conservative, traditional, roast-on-Sundays types.

Taking it a step further was London, Ontario (I’ve lived in two different Londons in my life). One of the prime north-south streets was Adelaide Street. For those of us living west of Adelaide, crossing Adelaide was going over to the “other side of the tracks.” There was even a shorthand for it - EOA. If you said someone was EOA that’s all you needed to say. It implied they were backwards and trashy.

Of course, those are examples are completely stereotyping and wrong, so now that I have told them to you, promptly forget them as being nothing more than outdated, politically incorrect labelling.

Sometimes, though, cutting up the world into lines makes a lot of sense. This is especially true for those that set sail into the dark waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Long ago we figured out how to divide the world into a east-west running grid called Latitude that would give on their position north or south of the equator. Latitude lines run parallel, which means there is always the same amount of distance between them, no matter where you are on the earth. Defining Latitude was easy, as there is a really obvious point to start with, or rather two points, the north and south pole. One could easily measure there Latitude, as a navigator could determine his latitude by observing the height of the sun during the day and the North Star at night.

Longitude was more tricky, though, because there is no obvious reference points, nor any obvious astrological signs to go by. Lines of longitude run from pole-to-pole, so the distance between them widens as you get close to the equator. To measure how far you’ve travelled east-west, you needed two things - a really good watch and an agreement on where 0 degrees should be (i.e. where to start measuring from).

In 1884 the International Meridian Conference met in Washington, D.C. and decided to use the Meridian that the British Royal Navy had been using on their maps, which just happened to run right through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.

The Royal Observatory is now part of Greenwich Park, which includes parts of the old Naval College which is now part of the University of Greenwich and the London Maritime Museum as well.

I wandered down to Greenwich on a typically sunny English day (seriously, I think this whole rain thing is just something they said to keep the tourist away. They are now saying that it’ll not rain at all for the next two weeks, which is important for England as it is Wimbledon time - more on that in a future entry, though).

From the Cutty Sark Docklands Light Rail stop, Greenwich Park is just a few steps away. The Cutty Sark clipper ship is also on display there, thus explaining the name of the rail station, however it is currently under repairs until 2009 so all you can see is a big, white tent. I guess if you use your imagination, you could pretend that you are looking at the Cutty Sark with her sails draped over her deck to dry them out, obscuring your view.

Anyway, leaving my imagination and back to reality, the buildings closest to the water are old Naval College buildings and a sailors’ hospital.

Today the buildings are used mostly as halls for the University of Greenwich. This courtyard is in the music department, so standing here I was treated to piano, cello and violin music wafting out of open windows.

Two of the buildings of interest to tourists are the Painted Hall and the Chapel. The Painted Hall is called such because of the big hall which has a big mural on the ceiling. I’m surprise more people don’t fall down the stairs when walking out, as it’s hard not to walk around without your head tilted all the way back to take in the mural.

The Chapel is a church, and as such has dead people buried in it.

Heading south you come to the Maritime Museum, which has a number of exhibits of sailing and such, including an interesting one sponsored by P&O Cruise lines on the “golden age” of trans-Atlantic journeys by boat.

It also has the actual coat that Lord Nelson was wearing when he got shot.

The coat is blue, which sadly makes one of my favourite sailor jokes untrue...

Standing on the deck of HMS Victory, Lord Nelson glanced up at a lookout high in the rigging and called, "Keep a keen eye out for Spanish sail, my lad. For today, I feel like a fight." Soon, the lookout cried, "Sail ho, off the starboard bow!"

Nelson pointed his spyglass in the direction indicated, and - sure enough - there were two Spanish frigates off the starboard bow. Realising that his ship was in for a tough fight, Lord Nelson turned to a young officer. "Ensign, fetch my red coat!"

A few minutes later, the Ensign returned with the coat. As he held it out for his Admiral to wear, he said, "Begging your pardon, My Lord, but why do you need your red coat?"

Nelson smiled grimly. "There'll be much blood spilled today, Son. And some of it might well be mine. If it should happen that I am wounded, my red coat will hide the blood. Then, our own men will take heart from seeing their commander apparently untouched, and our enemies will fear my invincibility."

The Ensign nodded, seeing at once the wisdom of the Admiral's reasoning. The battle was long and difficult, but Nelson eventually won the day.

A few days later, a lookout shouted down, "Sail ho, off the port beam!"

Nelson pointed his spyglass in the direction indicated, and found himself staring at the entire Spanish Armada. Hundreds of ships bearing down on his lone ship like angels of death.

Anticipating his Admiral's next order, the young Ensign said, "Shall I fetch your red coat, Sir?"

Nelson nodded. "Do that, Son. And while you're at it, fetch me my brown trousers!"

Behind the museum is this statue of two frolicking dolphins that also acts as a sundial.

It works to, I checked it against my watch. I said so long to the dolphins, to which they replied “So long, and thanks for all the fish,” and then I made my way up a long hill to the Royal Observatory.

The Royal Observatory was commissioned in 1675 by Charles the Second, who also said it shouldn’t cost more than £500 to build, so they built it using stone from the Tower of London and from Duke Humphrey's Tower. The first Royal Astronomer was John Flamsteed, who set up a telescope and started mapping the heavens. The point where he set up his telescope became the meridian he used on all his star maps.

As new Astronomers came in (and out) of the position and the Observatory grew, telescopes were located in different locations, each time changing the spot of the meridian. Finally, in 1851 Sir George Airy establish the “Prime Meridian,” that went on to be adopted world-wide in 1884. Well, except for France and Brazil, but eventually they caved. Can’t keep a good idea down for long.

Also at this conference, Sir Sanford Fleming, the Scottish-born Canadian who was the primary engineer on the Canadian Pacific Railroad proposed that the world adopt “Standard Time” and time zones. The resolution wasn’t passed, in fact it wasn’t even voted on, but like the prime meridian, it was a good idea and eventually was adopted. And that led to the invention of my cool Eco-drive watch with built in time-zones, so I’m happy about that.

The Observatory has a time ball on top of it’s roof. It’s the big red ball in the photo below. After the eventual adoption of time zones, to help others synchronise their clocks to GMT, this time ball was installed by Astronomer John Pond in 1833. It was easily viewed from the River Thames, and would allow sailors to synchronise their watch to GMT when the ball dropped every day at 1 p.m., as it still does today.

Here’s the obligatory shot of me standing on the Prime Meridian. I had to line up for 20 minutes to get this damn shot, but I would have kicked myself if I didn’t.

Here’s a shot that I didn’t have to line up for at all, I just had to lie down. Nice shot, but it does make my face look really fat. This shot and my fat face would prompt me to walk a fair bit today, so it probably did something good for my cardio-vascular system if nothing else.

You know, it’s interesting how we in the “Western World” call it that when really, a fair chunk of it is in the east. Most of Europe is east of 0 degrees. It’s almost like we in the “Western World” wanted to squeeze out the rest of the world, so we didn’t even give them half the planet. This is probably one of those things like being EOA that I mentioned at the start of this entry, us on one side of an imaginary line trying to put down those on the other side.

Those of you with Google Earth or who have been to the site of the Royal Observatory with a GPS unit may be wondering why the Prime Meridian line doesn’t line up with 0 degrees. There’s a nice little explanation on the Google Earth blog about it, but the basic reason is that when GPS was created they created a mapping system called World Geodetic System 1984. GPS uses triangulation from three satellites to determine your position. Because the earth is not a perfect sphere, however, so the WGS84 uses a “best fit” approach, shoe-horning you in where it can. Unfortunately, one of these best fit scenarios wound up placing the GPS’s Prime Meridian 100 metres off of the Royal Observatory line.

Anyway, there is apparently nothing to mark the GPS84 meridian on the site except a garbage can on a footpath, so it’s much better to take your pictures on the nice, metal line in the cobblestones at the Royal Observatory.

Here’s an arty shot I took of one of the newer buildings on the Royal Observatory grounds. I liked the way that the sun was reflecting back at me.

Heading east from the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian (does that mean I am in the Orient now?), I came across Queen Elizabeth’s Oak. It is called as such because the folklore is that Henry VIII sported with Anne Boleyn under its branches and their child, the future Queen Elizabeth used to play in the tree. The tree fell down a few years ago, so the current Queen Elizabeth (number 2 of a yet undetermined set) planted a new oak tree.

After taking a gander at the royal oak, I went and saw something which was tantalisingly described as “Roman Ruins” but ended up just being a small rise in the grass. It was fenced in, though, which means all you could do was look at the small rise in the grass, you couldn’t even walk up it.

From there, I headed back downhill to the River Thames. I had two choices, one to take a pedestrian footpath under the river, which I must admit really intrigued me, or head along the Thames Path eastward. I chose, for reasons that mostly had to do with the fact that I was already east of the tunnel under the Thames, to continue farther east.

The Thames Path, for those that don’t know, is a 294 km path that follows the banks of the River Thames from its start in the Cotswolds to the Thames River barrier in London. It is for the most part a lovely place to stroll.

After passing through a little lovely bit that includes this nice view of the Trinity Church...

...you get into some really derelict and industrial areas. This is not the most idyllic part of the River Thames.

At one point, I had to wait for a crane operator who was unloaded gravel to move his crane across the path to let me pass. The giant shovel was raining little, round pebbles of gravel onto the path, which is why it is wise to wait for him to signal. I picked up one of the pieces of gravel and it (along with all the other’s split onto the path were almost perfectly round, like marbles. I wonder where perfectly round gravel comes from?

There is, though, a kind of beautiful charm to the rusty stuff, and a few bits of nice, if somewhat weedy and overgrown, nature along the trail.

After getting glimpses of it as I was walking, I finally arrived at The O2. The O2, originally commissioned as the Millennium Dome but renamed after a mobile company sponsored the place is a multi-purpose entertainment venue and shopping plaza.

My first memories of seeing the place were last year when the NHL hosted two regular season games in England, trying to spread the appeal of the game to a worldwide audience. I remember thinking that it looked very industrial, but after walking along the Thames Path towards the dome, it started to make a lot of sense. It fits very well into the area, like some sort of futuristic cargo terminal.

Arriving from the tube or DLR, though, and you wouldn’t see how the industrial beauty of The O2 fits into the surroundings, as the entry plaza from the tube station into The O2 is quite impressive.

Inside there are a number of shops and restaurants, as well as two entertainment venues and an exhibition space.

I had some chicken wings at the American Bar & Grill and contemplated my next move. Part of me wanted to walk on to see the Thames Barrier, a giant floodgate that can close and protect the cities from floods, and while my mind seemed up to the mile and a half walk, my legs were not.

I could have easily got on the tube at the O2, as the Jubilee line which my flat is on (all the way on the other end of the city, and in the “west”), but decided to splash out £4 and take a fast ferry back. The Thames Clippers run along the Thames from Woolwich in the east to Embankment in the West. It’s not really a tourist boat though, so space outside is limited and instead there’s lots of comfy seats inside.

You do get some nice views of the London, and I took a few snapshots, but the windows were really dirty so they didn’t turn out that great.

And of course, when you travel on the Thames, every once and a while you have to pass a garbage scow. That’s when you’ll be happy you’re inside.

After yesterday's rain, I woke up to a gloriously sunny and warm day, Ganesh be praised. For while it was raining on the Formula one drivers in France and the hikers in Scotland (though, of course as he have already discussed, they are probably loving that), it was sunny here in London for the 40th version of the Rath Yatra parade.

Ratha Yatra is a major Hindu festival. The deities Jagannath (Krishna), Baladeva and Subhadra are taken on the day of the Rath festival through the streets so that everyone can have the fortune of seeing them. Three richly decorated chariots, resembling temple structures, are pulled through the streets. You can find out gobs more about the festival, if you are interested, by following this link: Ratha Jatra, the Festival of Chariots

The parade in London runs from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, and has been a fixture in London since 1969. I was surprised by the number of white people there dressed up to celebrate the Hindu gods, but then I remembered that the UK has a long connection with India, back to the days of the Raj, through to when the Beatles travelled to India and learned to play the sitar, and finally today when there is a large population of Hindu immigrants from India living, mixing, marrying and having babies with the white population. It should be no surprise then that some of the local (previously Christian) population has moved allegiances to the Hindu gods.

Here is a video that I put together of the day. It's my first attempt at video editing using iMovie. The audio isn't quite what I wanted it to be, but it'll have to do. Please enjoy.

Update Thursday, August 7, 2008:

A Youtube user named CopyCutNPaste put together a montage of a number of different videos of the Rathayatra parade, including some shots from mine (with my permission, of course). He calls me a devotee in the credits, which I am not, just an interested observer.

Anyway, if you want to check it out, there is about 10 minutes of footage there, only about 20 seconds or so of mine, so it's MOSTLY NEW CONTENT! (For those who are focused on me, like I am, my clips run from 4:58 to 5:35 (or so)).

Follow this link to Youtube to see the video of the 40th Rathayatra celebration in London.

Well, it was bound to happen. I woke up this morning without the sun rays beating down on my face. It was grey and raining.

I will admit that I have exaggerated the dryness here in London to this point. It has actually rained a couple of times in the two and a half weeks I have been here, but those showers were over within an hour or so, and were book-ended by clear and sunny periods. This has been the first day where the whole day, from start to finish (or at least to 6 o'clock in the evening, when I am writing this) has been grey and rainy.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle around 11 o'clock, so I decided to put on a warm sweater and rain proof boots and go out for a walk. I headed down to Kilburn to find an HSBC bank machine and test out my new ATM card, which worked without issue. Sweet, I know have the ability to withdraw money over here in the UK without paying a $5 PLUS fee and a 3% foreign exchange rate charge.

After that, I kept heading south, eventually finding myself on a long and winding road that lead... to your door...

Just kidding, it lead to 3 Abbey Road, which is the home of the famous Abbey Road Studios. The sight is on the pilgrimage trail for Beatles fans, and many of them leave their mark on whatever surface they can find, including the neighbours walls.

In addition to being a place where the Beatles (among many others) have recorded, Abbey Road Studios are famous for what is out front of the building, a cross-walk. Not just any cross-walk though, the zebra crossing pictured on the front of the 1969 Beatles' album "Abbey Road."

Image linked from BBC

I snapped a photo of the zebra crossing. I was surprised how busy the street was, but then I guess that's why there is a cross-walk there. If the street wasn't busy, there wouldn't be much call for putting in a pedestrian crossing zone, I guess.

From there, I continued south down Abbey Road, Grove End and Lisson Grove (all the same road, the name just keeps changing) until I got to the Regent's Canal, when I cut across past the houseboats moored there...

...and then down Park Road, which turns into Baker Street.

Now Baker Street you might all know, if you are mystery lovers, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. According to the stories, Holmes lived in London at 221B Baker Street, described like this in the first book, A Study in Scarlet:

We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.
(Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 1887)

The thing about 221B Baker Street is that there never was such an address. At the time of Conan Doyle's writings, there was no such address, and so Conan Doyle probably choose it for the fact that it didn't exist. Street numbers were reallocated along Baker Street and Upper Baker Street in the 1930s, which lead to there being numbers up in the 200s along Baker Street.

There is a Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street that claims to be at 221B Baker Street, but it's actual address is 239 Baker Street. While city statues prevent anyone from displaying a false address on their premises, the Sherlock Holmes Museum does have 221B on their door. They accomplished this by registering a company with the name 221B Ltd., and thus the "221B" that appears above the door of their premises is simply the name of the company that operates out of that abode.

If 221B were to exist, it would be somewhere in the middle of what is now a rather large building, encompassing the street numbers from 219 to 229. The Abbey House was built in the early thirties to be home to the Abbey Road Building Society, which over time morphed in the Abbey Bank. Abbey Bank, interesting, is apparently one of the other banks where it is easy as a foreigner to open a bank account. Abbey Bank was in the building until 2002. The building is now undergoing renovations to develop "92 luxury residential units and 40 affordable units with 3 levels of underground car parking," according to a web page run by one of the mechanical companies assisting with the build.

Not quite as glamourous to imagine Sherlock Holmes living in a sixth floor luxury residential unit with ample parking and a private elevator as it is to see him in a nice Georgian-era home with a sitting room, fireplace and lots of old books weighing down the bookshelves, so I am willing to forget the facts and buy into the mythos. The nice old house with the bobby standing out front is where Holmes lived, not the fancy new apartment block.

During my walk the rain mostly kept itself to a low drizzle, but then the rain started to fall a little heavier, so I caught the Jubilee line back up from Baker Street Station to Willesden Green, and on to my flat. I settled in to watch the F1 qualifying, which seemed a reasonable thing to do on a rainy day. After all, I can waste a day sitting around the house doing nothing. I have years ahead of me to explore.

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Aplha Centauri
- Douglas Adams, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Ah, the good ol' days. Sometimes I feel like I've really missed out on a few things, being born when I was. Not to complain too much, because I have had the opportunity to take part in some really cool things, but in a lot of ways the past can strike us as being a lot more glamourous then what we have as options today.

I recently flew from Toronto to London on Air Canada, and despite my best hopes for an upgrade as one who both paid a full-fare Latitude class ticket and an Aeroplan Elite member, I wound up sitting in the Economy section of the plane with all the unwashed masses. I never quite got comfortable in my seat, so sleep never came, however I was at least able to watch 3 movies on my personal entertainment unit - Jumper with Hayden Christensen, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets with Nicolas Cage and the majority of 27 Dresses with whats-her-name from Grey's Anatomy and Knocked Up. I didn't actually see the end of 27 Dresses, but I am pretty sure based on what I saw that the lead girl from Grey's Anatomy was going to end up with Cyclops (or at least the actor James Marsden who played Cyclops in X-Men).

Despite the films, it was not a really pleasant experience, and my first thought on arriving in London was, "how quickly can I get to a bed and have a nap." Nothing against Air Canada (because it's not like any of the other airlines are better with their Economy Class offerings), but long distance air travel isn't that great.

There was a time, at least in my mind, when this probably wasn't the case. I imagine days in the past when silver bodied Lockheed Constellations flying New York-Gander-Shannon-Paris with all the passengers wearing suits and dresses, being served Lobster Thermidor by beautiful, young, blonde stewardesses.

I wrote about this previously in a blog post about my visit to see the Concorde, now grounded on a barge in the Hudson River as part of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. Seeing the china place settings and bottle of Champagne, it got me thinking about the age of luxury air travel that I had missed. I wrote:

It was luxury air travel. I can imagine what it must have been like on board, flying from London to New York, sipping champagne and eating off Wedgwood china. It was a chance to forget about the drudgery of air travel. It was an opportunity, if only for a few precious hours, to forget about overcrowded airports, cranky security people and weather delays, and be part of the adventure and glamour of flying. It was the physical embodiment of what the phrase “jet set” conveys: fashion, wealth and privilege beyond the masses.

I was reading a post today that made me think of this topic again today, and got me a little moist-eyed at the thought.

A blog called "Cranky Flier," which usually covers airline news and events, today had a guest blogger today by the name of Tony France, who wrote about the Decline of First Class.

Mr. France joined American Airlines in 1986 or 87 (the post is a little muddled at that point), just a few years before the accountants and bean-counters got a hold of the airline industry. Mr. France says:

The big picture visionaries with outsized personalities who kept one eye on the future and did business with a handshake were slowly, inevitably replaced with Ivy League micro-managers who knew only P&L and ROI. Atmosphere is not quantifiable ergo luxury inevitably loses out to utility and optimization. Glamour, even my first fleeting taste of it, wasn’t to remain on the scene for much longer.

Mr. France writes about his first experience travelling first class on a trans-Atlantic flight, going to visit a friend in Paris. Mr. France, as an employee of American Airlines, got the privilege of flying across "the pond" as a "non-rev" passenger (i.e. he didn't pay, as in non-revenue) in the mid-to-late 80s. Mr. France describes an absolutely excellent meal (you need to read it for yourself, it had my mouth watering), and compares what he received back in the last 80s to what first class means today:

Today’s First Class is not about the food at all; Robert Crandall (former president and chairman of American Airlines) himself once said as much. It’s the seat. As flights have gotten longer and markets more competitive it is the onboard hardware, a combination of a Borg energy pod and a spa cubicle that allegedly drives the customer’s decision.

While I could certainly appreciate the joy of a lie flat seat after trying to manoeuvre myself (unsuccessfully) into a position that would be comfortable for sleeping on my recent flight, I do have to agree with Mr. France when he bemoans the passion for beds that lie flatter or TV screens with more on-Demand options at the expense of the atmosphere and experience of trans-continental travel:

So keep all the movies and shows, fellas, my laptop screen offers a larger and better picture. Better yet, send that huge library of stuff back to the masses in coach since they don’t have onboard power but for the most part have individual screens. Do something with the walls other than the usual mood-neutral blues and beiges. How about a world mural, like TWA used to have, or commemorative artwork like Pan Am once gave away? Could Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” as a bulkhead piece help turn Alitalia around? Italian art, Italian food and hospitality, Italian wines and leathers? How could they go wrong? But I digress - at least it would be something, anything, to evoke the old romance and glamour of flying, of discovering new destinations, even if the guy in Seat 1K is a million-miler who has seen it all before.

I too miss the old romance and glamour of flying, and would be happy to see it come back. Whether I would be willing to pay extra for it, now that's a whole different story, but there is something that is lacking in today's air travel.

Luckily for me, Rail Team is right at my doorstep. From St. Pancras station to Marseilles in just 6 hours and 17 minutes. Connections from London to as far as Japan, if you so choose, with a wide variety of classes of service.

Heck, I bet I can get a little caviar aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (even if it isn't quite the "real" Orient Express).

As I continue my dive into London life, I am trying to get myself a job. I am currently speaking to two different companies, and this week had two interviews planned with those companies. However, over the past week and a half, these interviews have been scheduled, rescheduled, alternative times proposed, alternative times rejected, times and dates shifted, revised, modified, adjusted and tweaked. As time has passed, the two interviews ended up at various times being on every day this week except Wednesday.

The times were changing so frequently that I started carrying around a tie and dress shirt in my bag in the event that an HR person were to jump out at me from a hedgerow and fire off questions at me, “tell me your strengths. Tell me your weaknesses. Give me an example of a time when you had to work with a difficult person.”

“Hmm, well, there was this one time when an HR person kept jumping out at me from hedgerows and asking me my weaknesses...”

All the changing times and dates does make it a little hard to plan things to do. Finally as dates and times shifted towards later in the week, it looked like leisure time has started to open up for me. I woke up on Tuesday and hadn’t heard anything regarding any changes on my interview dates, at this point one scheduled for later in the week and another for next week, so I decided on the spur of the moment to go to Stonehenge.

Alright, it wasn’t exactly spur of the moment. It’s not like I’d never heard of Stonehenge or hadn’t planned to go there. I had, and had already figured out how to get there. It’s just that I hadn’t picked a specific date to go. A sunny Tuesday seemed like an excellent time, so I headed down to Waterloo station to catch the train to Salisbury.

Salisbury is a Medieval town dating back to the 13th Century. It is best known for two things (other than being the nearest train station to Stonehenge), and those two things are the Cathedral and sheep.

The Cathedral is massive, and has the third highest spire in all of Europe, bested only by St. Peter’s in Rome and Cologne’s Cathedral in Germany. The tourist information on the Cathedral stated that the Cathedral is the tallest spire made during the Medieval period, as the other two churches were started but not completed during the Medieval period. Sounds like splitting hairs to me, but when it comes to tourist boards claiming biggest, longest, highest, deepest, oldest or any other “est,” it seems they will split as many hairs as needed until they can claim being the “est-iest” of all the tourist attractions. After all, it doesn’t do much to bring in the crowds to say that you are the “taller” of all the Medieval Cathedrals.

The Cathedral holds one of only four of the original copies of the Magna Carta, which I wanted to see. However, there was a “flower show” in the Cathedral courtyard, and the only way to see the Magna Carta was to pay admission to show at £8. Forget it, I said. I live here now, I can come back again at some point, now I know how to get here.

As for the sheep, the Salisbury Journal website sums it up nicely. “A prosperous wool and cloth trade allowed Salisbury to flourish during the next four centuries and, when the wool trade declined, new crafts were established in the city and villages surrounding it - including cutlery, leather and basket work, saddlery, lacemaking, joinery and malting.”

Salisbury took on another industry during the second world war, being one of the places where the Spitfire airplane was being built. Despite this, and the nearby armed forces training grounds, Salisbury didn’t get bombed during the blitz, and they can thank God for that. Or rather, they can thank those who wanted to celebrate his glory and built the tall cathedral. The German Luftwaffe were under strict orders not to bomb Salisbury to ensure that the church was not damaged. This was not because of some religious concern though, but rather because the tall spire made an excellent landmark when flying from across the channel. From Salisbury, the pilots could then follow the various rivers to their targets.

Pilots would have a number of choices for following rivers out of Salisbury, as the city was founded on the confluence of five different rivers, including the River Avon. Note that this is not the same Avon that Shakespeare used to look out upon from his house in Stratford. Just to ensure that things are extra confusing, there are four Avon rivers in England (and more in Scotland and Wales). Not only that, but the word Avon s derived from the Celtic word meaning "river", and therefore the river's name means River River.

Thinking about all those different Avon Rivers confused me so much, I had to stop and have a cider on the banks of this specific Avon just to clear my head. Luckily, the Rose and Crown Inn had a nice patio facing out onto the river, so I grabbed myself a glass of Strongbow from the Avon Bar, and let the cider cool me down as the bright sun warmed me up.

Salisbury is a Medieval town, dating back to the early 1200s. The Bishop wanted to relocate his Cathedral away from its present location at the nearby Old Sarum castle (more on that later), and so he set up a market town down in the valley near the rivers. I was lucky to arrive on market day. There are only two markets a week, and I didn’t plan or anything, so sometimes serendipity works out in my favour.

Some of the buildings have been restored to their original look, including this one which dates back to the 13th century and was restored using historic methods, which means no nails in the house, just some well fitted beams.

One of the other things that folks might know from Salisbury is Mompesson house, a beautiful Queen Anne Architecture. The house was built in 1701 for Charles Mompesson, a local Member of Parliament. It was in the movie Sense and Sensibility staring Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee. It was a good movie, which most Ang Lee movies are, assuming they don’t have giant green hulks in them.

Just up the hill from Salisbury is Old Sarum. Old Sarum, atop a high hill, was both an important religious and political sight dating back to the iron age. It was occupied at various times by Romans and Saxons, but it gained its greatest glory as a Norman castle, and was the sight of William the Conqueror’s first national congress, where various lords and knights came to pay him homage in 1086.

The castle grew, and beside it a large cathedral. Things were good for a while, but eventually the tension between the castle and the cathedral grew, which eventually led to Bishop Poore moving the Cathedral to its current sight in Salisbury.

After the movement of the cathedral and settlement of the new town, the castle and surrounding homes soon became deserted. By the 17th Century, Old Serum was deserted, but even so it still held two seats in the House of Commons. It was one of the most notorious of the “rotten boroughs” that eventually led to the Reform Act of 1832.

On walking up to the entrance from the road where the bus dropped me, I accidently took a wrong turn after being distracted by this sign...

...and wound up walking all the way around the sight along this white path. It actually ended up being a nice little walk, and gave me some excellent views of the English countryside.

Up the road from Salisbury, just a couple miles from Amesbury is Stonehenge. I grabbed the Stonehenge Tour Bus from Salisbury train station, which does a big circle from Salisbury up past Old Sarum, to Stonehenge and back again.

The Stonehenge sight has been important for thousands of years, with the first structure on the sight dating back to 3000 years before the birth of Christ. This was an earthen structure with some wooden bits.

About a thousand years later, somebody decided to build something really impressive out of stones from Wales. They quarried 82 stones in Wales, floated and dragged them 240 miles to the sight, and then set them up in a big circle.

But that wasn’t enough. 150 years after that, someone said, “more stones!” So they wandered about 25 miles away, picked up a few 50 tonne stones, and dragged them over the hills and through the dales to put up another circle.

The big stone structure does act, apparently, as something of a solar calendar. The Summer Solstice is just around the corner (June 20th), the place will be abuzz with folks watching the sun rise between two of the sarsen stones, rising just above the line that runs between the heel stone outside the structure and altar stone in the middle of the circle. Last year, 24,000 people showed up to see clouds. Perhaps with some luck the weather will hold for them. Personally, I’m staying away. It was crowded enough today for me.

So that’s that. I really wanted to be more interesting and mystical about Stonehenge, but I found it a little underwhelming, really. I mean, it is impressive that the place was built so long ago, and I appreciate how that would have been hard for them, but it is just a bunch of stones in a circle.

Luckily for me, though, I actually did everything you read in this blog in reverse order. So for me, I went from underwhelmed at Stonehenge to somewhat impressed at least by the beautiful views at Old Sarum to being genuinely pleased by the nice town of Salisbury, eating a really excellent pork sandwich at the market, wandering by the beautiful Cathedral and other medieval buildings and ending the day sitting on the Avon with a pint of cider. Not a bad way to end a day, even if someone isn’t going to build a monument to it that will last 5,000 years.