September 16th

 In Which We Visit Old Sarum, A Cathedral, and A Very Old Pile of Stones

       Chestnuts cottage was so picturesque that I wanted to photograph everything inside. Not wanting to trample on the privacy of our hosts I restricted myself to our room.
   We wanted to see Stonehenge, and Linda was driving into Salisbury, so we thought we would start there, and then take the tour from there to Stonehenge.

Note: Some of these pictures will seem very random to you. That is because they appealed to my specific notion of charm, and they may not appeal to yours... Susie and I had discussions about this a few times. "Why is there a closeup of a weed in your photos?"...

Even the bathroom was lovely!

View out of the window: The Tilbury's garden shed.

We loved Old Sarum, and imagined ourselves there when it was built. This is Susie cooking over a pile of stones that we decided was a fireplace. 

You can see Salisbury Cathedral in the distance through the fog.

This photo summed up Wiltshire for us. 

The Salisbury Close!

Inside the Close.

We took the Tour Tour, and just kept climbing up. It was very worth the effort and cash, and the tour guide was very knowledgeable.

This place was built in the 14th century. I was astounded by the architecture, which has stood for almost 700 years.

They had to strengthen the steeple around 100 years after the church was built, as the steeple was an afterthought, and the building wasn't made to bear all of that weight.

They strengthened it again in the 16th century, as the steeple was moving.

This was the last of the work done to keep the steeple upright, and it seems to have done the job, That's a sailcloth stuffed with horse hair to keep the iron from rusting.

A giant old wheel, used to lift stone up to the tower during it's construction,

Out on the ledge!

An old construction technique. Those round knobs are holding the stones together.

We were intending to walk a mile and a half to Stonehenge, from Amesbury, as the tour from Salisbury was very expensive. We got off at the wrong bus stop, however, and ended up walking a little further.

Approaching Stonehenge!

There are boundary ropes all around Stonehenge, much to the disgust of the locals, so even if we had been on the other side of the fence we couldn't have gotten much closer.

When we got back to Upavon we ate Fish and Chips at the Ship Inn. It was amazing, and I don't even like fish! We loved the Ship Inn, and decided that Pubs were fun places to eat. Frank Sinatra was playing quietly in the background, and the folks next to us talked long over a few mugs of beer. Beside their table was a large, well behaved dog, belonging to one of the party. It just seem to fit.