So! I know I said no posts before I got off the cruise in mid-September, but then I realized I’d forgotten that I was going one last place before we departed. And not just any place, but somewhere I had been looking forward to for years. But then I started writing, and couldn’t finish before I boarded the cruise, so this definitely happened more than two weeks ago, and I my memory may have gotten a bit rusty towards the end, but bear with me, because this is one of those day trips I will look back on fondly forever.
Winchester, England is a fair sized town. I wouldn’t call it quite the size of a city, but it’s not eensy by any means. And in medieval times, well, it was about as large as they came - the capital of England in fact. As such, the great Winchester Cathedral, once the largest Cathedral in the world, was a sight of major political intrigue throughout the English Monarchy. The Bishops of Winchester were major players in the Civil War between Stephen and Matilda in the twelfth century, the attempted divorce of Henry VIII from Anne Boleyn, opposition to the Republic under Oliver Cromwell and so on and so forth.
Winchester, England is a fair sized town. I wouldn’t call it quite the size of a city, but it’s not eensy by any means. And in medieval times, well, it was about as large as they came - the capital of England in fact. As such, the great Winchester Cathedral, once the largest Cathedral in the world, was a sight of major political intrigue throughout the English Monarchy. The Bishops of Winchester were major players in the Civil War between Stephen and Matilda in the twelfth century, the attempted divorce of Henry VIII from Anne Boleyn, opposition to the Republic under Oliver Cromwell and so on and so forth.
Now, I mentioned I’d been wanting to visit for years, but it was fate that I kept missing my chance. Without even thinking, it seems I spent the last month preparing for this visit, namely through my reading. What did I read, you ask? Plenty of Jane Austen and Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. Jane Austen, for those who are fans, might be a fairly obvious addition to any Winchester reading list. The author, though originally from Steventon and Bath, died in Winchester in a house not far from the Cathedral. She was then buried there, beneath the Cathedral floor, not because anyone found her writing peculiarly remarkable, but because she was a vicar’s daughter. Of course since then family and fans alike have raised money to honour her memory as an author as well, and there is an entire peer of the church now functioning as something of a pilgrimage site.
The other novel I read, quite on accident, could not have been more fitting. Pillars of the Earth is a piece of historical fiction, more than a thousand pages long, chronicling the building of a Cathedral in the twelfth century. Now, the Cathedral on which they focused was made up, but many of the elements, including characters, were not. King Stephen and Queen Matilda I already mentioned, but there was also the well known Bishop of Winchester, Stephen’s brother Henri du Blois. Henri’s name made itself known around every corner at the Cathedral, and I could not have been happier that I had some prior knowledge of him under my belt.
I’d woken up and gotten to the Cathedral early, but the visit took up most of my morning. The tour alone, offered free of charge by a number of knowledgeable volunteer guides, took an hour. Then there was the accompanied visit to the crypt, a trip upstairs to the Triforium Gallery, the Morley Library dedicated by Bishop Morley in the seventeenth century, and of course the Winchester Bible, the most extravagant hand copied Bible ever produced, commissioned by, you guessed it, Bishop Henry du Blois. And that was all in addition to admiring the mind blowing architecture, perfectly structured for academic comparison.
You see my book, despite being a novel, had done a spectacular job of teaching me all about Norman cathedral architecture versus that imported from Saint-Denis to influence the English Gothic style; and while most of the cathedral was redone in this new style by Bishops who were not Henri, no one ever got around to the transepts, which remain Norman. I was enchanted, in that way I get where I just stare at walls and ceilings forever. Except I couldn’t actually stare forever, so I settled for a very long time, and then decided I better go explore the rest of the town.
On my way into the Cathedral I’d seen a sign for a castle, the name of which, I am ashamed to say, I no longer remember. But it’s been two weeks, and very full ones at that, so I beg your pardon with a most respectful: Give me a break! If I had to guess I would say it was Wicklow Castle, but I don’t have internet to check, and in all honesty it is very unlikely that I will come back to edit this when I am capable of asking the almighty Google. So I am going to call it Wicklow, but at any rate, it’s the last castle standing in Winchester of the three that used to call the town their home. For reasons I doubt I need to explain to you, that was automatically my next stop.
Now, when I say ‘standing,’ that is still a relative term. The bulk of the castle was commissioned as an extension to and fortification of the Bishop’s residence by, you guessed it, Henri du Blois. That dates most of the castle to the thirteenth century, and though the Bishop still lives in a Baroque palace on the same grounds, the castle portion of the estate has fallen in ruin. Lucky for me I like ruins as much or more than in tact structures.
Despite there being little more to see than piles of stones and a few expository signs, I made a lovely time of wandering from room to overgrown room, imagining what things must have been like in Henry’s time. British Heritage, the site curators, had marked out the all important reception hall, as well as the various functional rooms like the kitchen and privy, making the whole imaging process that much more appealing. As much as I enjoyed the time, however, I didn’t spend too long, eventually wandering back up the canal walk I’d taken to get there and popping out back by the high street.
Being a Saturday, the high street was a bustle of activity. The pubs clustered at the feet of a statute of King Alfred were overflowing. There were buskers galore, including an opera singer by whom I was particularly impressed. I even managed to wander into a chippey five minutes before their fish and chips lunch special ended, saving me a good few pounds. I needed those pounds later too, because as I left the chippey, that’s when the shopping began.
I don’t know if it was a figment of my imagination or not, but Winchester seemed to have an excess of bookshops, most of the them used. Not an excess in that anywhere can have too many bookshops, but an excess in that I am nearly incapable of passing a bookshop without going in, and my “you’re traveling, you’re not allowed to buy anything, especially books” will-power was waning. I’d been in to roughly half a dozen stores before lunch, and left them all without a purchase, but as I was eating my fish a sign at the end of a narrow alley caught my eye: “Winchester Book Store: Secondhand & Antique Books.”
Well, as luck would have it, those are two of my favorite types of books, so I ate a little faster and darted across the street to one of those old tall, narrow English houses eeked in to the back corner of a building. It was three creeky wooden floors of brilliance connected by an ancient spiral staircase. I couldn’t buy any of the three hundred pound antiques, of course, but it was the clearance rack that did me in.
Not only did they have World Without End, the 1300 page sequel to Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth, for two pounds, but Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for two pounds as well. I have gotten very good at denying myself books, but given the relevance of those two books to my trip as a whole, I was powerless to resist. I haven’t even regretted it since. Not even when the added weight in my backpack scarred my collar bones as I lugged it across London.
Speaking of London, it occurs to me that in my excitement to talk about Winchester, I nearly left out the great city itself. The book buying was about the cherry on top of my visit anyway, followed only by a stop at the pharmacy to stock up before my cruise, a glance around the single room museum over an old city gate, and a walk back to the train station. Even my time in London had a tint of Winchester to it though.
I say this only because I, in my infinite wisdom and love of walking, hiked across London to my hostel when I first arrived from Paris, only narrowly stopping myself from detouring when I saw a sign for Highbury one hour away. Highbury, you see, is the home of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m sure was swallowed up by Greater London long ago. I would have detoured too if I hadn’t had my bag. The route I did take, however, was fun nonetheless.
I have started making a point of trying to stay in a different neighborhood everytime I come to London. First was Waterloo, then Marleybone; this time I took up residence for two nights at a little place in Shoreditch, Camden’s main competition for alternative London nightlife. I’d known this before I’d gone, but the hostel was cheap, and called the Dictionary, and I fiugred anyone who named their hostel after a reference book wouldn’t let it get too out of hand, even on the Friday and Saturday nights I would be staying. Boy was I wrong.
My first night there, sore and exhausted from a month on a filthy, spider infested canal boat, there was an out and out rave in my dorm room. I don’t know how they got handheld devices to play music loud enough to shake the building, but there it was. The funniest part is, I didn’t so much mind that night. Sure, I was clearly trying to sleep, but it was the first time in a month I had been around people who were happy and enjoying themselves. Besides, with my ear plugs and eye mask I drifted off eventually… even if that eventually took several hours. I didn’t even care that one girl saw a rat in the place. I had gotten to take a nice, long, full hot shower, and that was all that mattered to me. And the fact that the internet was ‘broken?’ Hey, they’d held my debit card, replaced by my bank due to fraud, until I could come an collect it. That was some lifesaving right there, and I wasn’t about to complain.
The second night was a little more annoying. The party wasn’t as loud, but it was much more focused. There was a group of Brazilian girls getting ready to go out that drew most everyone’s attention, but once they left, there was a band of four drunk Frenchmen who just wouldn’t leave me alone. I put on my bitchface though, and even got some reinforcements when an Australian kid I’d made friends with earlier returned and was equally unenthused by their vulgar commentary. It was unpleasant, but didn’t escalate thank goodness, and I got to bed that night a little bit earlier, allowing me to rise bright and early the next morning, do my laundry, and get on… the Cruise!!
Clearly I’ve been on said cruise for a while now, but that will have to wait for another post. I just wouldn’t do to mix genres and all that. In summary then, let it be said that I was ecstatic to be off that canal boat at last, Winchester was absolutely everything I expected, and London is so firmly planted in my heart that even a stay in what might be the worst hostel I have ever experienced couldn’t ruin the magic. And yet again, I cannot wait to return.
The other novel I read, quite on accident, could not have been more fitting. Pillars of the Earth is a piece of historical fiction, more than a thousand pages long, chronicling the building of a Cathedral in the twelfth century. Now, the Cathedral on which they focused was made up, but many of the elements, including characters, were not. King Stephen and Queen Matilda I already mentioned, but there was also the well known Bishop of Winchester, Stephen’s brother Henri du Blois. Henri’s name made itself known around every corner at the Cathedral, and I could not have been happier that I had some prior knowledge of him under my belt.
I’d woken up and gotten to the Cathedral early, but the visit took up most of my morning. The tour alone, offered free of charge by a number of knowledgeable volunteer guides, took an hour. Then there was the accompanied visit to the crypt, a trip upstairs to the Triforium Gallery, the Morley Library dedicated by Bishop Morley in the seventeenth century, and of course the Winchester Bible, the most extravagant hand copied Bible ever produced, commissioned by, you guessed it, Bishop Henry du Blois. And that was all in addition to admiring the mind blowing architecture, perfectly structured for academic comparison.
You see my book, despite being a novel, had done a spectacular job of teaching me all about Norman cathedral architecture versus that imported from Saint-Denis to influence the English Gothic style; and while most of the cathedral was redone in this new style by Bishops who were not Henri, no one ever got around to the transepts, which remain Norman. I was enchanted, in that way I get where I just stare at walls and ceilings forever. Except I couldn’t actually stare forever, so I settled for a very long time, and then decided I better go explore the rest of the town.
On my way into the Cathedral I’d seen a sign for a castle, the name of which, I am ashamed to say, I no longer remember. But it’s been two weeks, and very full ones at that, so I beg your pardon with a most respectful: Give me a break! If I had to guess I would say it was Wicklow Castle, but I don’t have internet to check, and in all honesty it is very unlikely that I will come back to edit this when I am capable of asking the almighty Google. So I am going to call it Wicklow, but at any rate, it’s the last castle standing in Winchester of the three that used to call the town their home. For reasons I doubt I need to explain to you, that was automatically my next stop.
Now, when I say ‘standing,’ that is still a relative term. The bulk of the castle was commissioned as an extension to and fortification of the Bishop’s residence by, you guessed it, Henri du Blois. That dates most of the castle to the thirteenth century, and though the Bishop still lives in a Baroque palace on the same grounds, the castle portion of the estate has fallen in ruin. Lucky for me I like ruins as much or more than in tact structures.
Despite there being little more to see than piles of stones and a few expository signs, I made a lovely time of wandering from room to overgrown room, imagining what things must have been like in Henry’s time. British Heritage, the site curators, had marked out the all important reception hall, as well as the various functional rooms like the kitchen and privy, making the whole imaging process that much more appealing. As much as I enjoyed the time, however, I didn’t spend too long, eventually wandering back up the canal walk I’d taken to get there and popping out back by the high street.
Being a Saturday, the high street was a bustle of activity. The pubs clustered at the feet of a statute of King Alfred were overflowing. There were buskers galore, including an opera singer by whom I was particularly impressed. I even managed to wander into a chippey five minutes before their fish and chips lunch special ended, saving me a good few pounds. I needed those pounds later too, because as I left the chippey, that’s when the shopping began.
I don’t know if it was a figment of my imagination or not, but Winchester seemed to have an excess of bookshops, most of the them used. Not an excess in that anywhere can have too many bookshops, but an excess in that I am nearly incapable of passing a bookshop without going in, and my “you’re traveling, you’re not allowed to buy anything, especially books” will-power was waning. I’d been in to roughly half a dozen stores before lunch, and left them all without a purchase, but as I was eating my fish a sign at the end of a narrow alley caught my eye: “Winchester Book Store: Secondhand & Antique Books.”
Well, as luck would have it, those are two of my favorite types of books, so I ate a little faster and darted across the street to one of those old tall, narrow English houses eeked in to the back corner of a building. It was three creeky wooden floors of brilliance connected by an ancient spiral staircase. I couldn’t buy any of the three hundred pound antiques, of course, but it was the clearance rack that did me in.
Not only did they have World Without End, the 1300 page sequel to Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth, for two pounds, but Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for two pounds as well. I have gotten very good at denying myself books, but given the relevance of those two books to my trip as a whole, I was powerless to resist. I haven’t even regretted it since. Not even when the added weight in my backpack scarred my collar bones as I lugged it across London.
Speaking of London, it occurs to me that in my excitement to talk about Winchester, I nearly left out the great city itself. The book buying was about the cherry on top of my visit anyway, followed only by a stop at the pharmacy to stock up before my cruise, a glance around the single room museum over an old city gate, and a walk back to the train station. Even my time in London had a tint of Winchester to it though.
I say this only because I, in my infinite wisdom and love of walking, hiked across London to my hostel when I first arrived from Paris, only narrowly stopping myself from detouring when I saw a sign for Highbury one hour away. Highbury, you see, is the home of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m sure was swallowed up by Greater London long ago. I would have detoured too if I hadn’t had my bag. The route I did take, however, was fun nonetheless.
I have started making a point of trying to stay in a different neighborhood everytime I come to London. First was Waterloo, then Marleybone; this time I took up residence for two nights at a little place in Shoreditch, Camden’s main competition for alternative London nightlife. I’d known this before I’d gone, but the hostel was cheap, and called the Dictionary, and I fiugred anyone who named their hostel after a reference book wouldn’t let it get too out of hand, even on the Friday and Saturday nights I would be staying. Boy was I wrong.
My first night there, sore and exhausted from a month on a filthy, spider infested canal boat, there was an out and out rave in my dorm room. I don’t know how they got handheld devices to play music loud enough to shake the building, but there it was. The funniest part is, I didn’t so much mind that night. Sure, I was clearly trying to sleep, but it was the first time in a month I had been around people who were happy and enjoying themselves. Besides, with my ear plugs and eye mask I drifted off eventually… even if that eventually took several hours. I didn’t even care that one girl saw a rat in the place. I had gotten to take a nice, long, full hot shower, and that was all that mattered to me. And the fact that the internet was ‘broken?’ Hey, they’d held my debit card, replaced by my bank due to fraud, until I could come an collect it. That was some lifesaving right there, and I wasn’t about to complain.
The second night was a little more annoying. The party wasn’t as loud, but it was much more focused. There was a group of Brazilian girls getting ready to go out that drew most everyone’s attention, but once they left, there was a band of four drunk Frenchmen who just wouldn’t leave me alone. I put on my bitchface though, and even got some reinforcements when an Australian kid I’d made friends with earlier returned and was equally unenthused by their vulgar commentary. It was unpleasant, but didn’t escalate thank goodness, and I got to bed that night a little bit earlier, allowing me to rise bright and early the next morning, do my laundry, and get on… the Cruise!!
Clearly I’ve been on said cruise for a while now, but that will have to wait for another post. I just wouldn’t do to mix genres and all that. In summary then, let it be said that I was ecstatic to be off that canal boat at last, Winchester was absolutely everything I expected, and London is so firmly planted in my heart that even a stay in what might be the worst hostel I have ever experienced couldn’t ruin the magic. And yet again, I cannot wait to return.
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