I am about to make the biggest purchase I will ever make - buying a flat! Should be completed before...
I am about to make the biggest purchase I will ever make - buying a flat! Should be completed before Christmas!
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Leave London on the M4 (which is a good idea already) and head west, and after a couple of hours you will enter a region of rolling hills, partitioned into fields, every one containing a different crop so that the landscape resembles a huge patchwork quilt. Turn off the M4 onto the A345 and head south towards Salisbury and soon you will come to one of the most AWE-inspiring sights you will ever see... There before you on the great expanse of Salisbury Plain, is the mysterious and ancient monument of Stone Henge. You cannot fail to be captivated by it, it is the biggest thing for miles around. The stones are huge, if you just stop to think for a while on how those primitive people thousands of years ago got them there, when each stone comes from hundreds of miles away and weighs several tons each, then you will be as impressed and mystified as the generations of people who have been here before you.
It really is a fantastic effect - even if you've seen these things hundreds of times on TV, in books, whatever, when you actually get close to them it just hits you like you've never seen anything like it before.
I could go on all day, but I won't, cos this is supposed to be about Wiltshire and not just Stone Henge. You'd be mistaken if you thought that was the only thing in Wiltshire! I spent many happy holidays here when I was younger, and got to see just about everything in the county at one time or another.
Salisbury Plain is covered in strange lumps. There are quite a few near Stone
Henge, you may be forgiven for thinking that a giant mole has been at work here, but no, these are the final resting places of the ancient kings and nobles of this land. But don't go reaching for the metal detector and spade just yet - almost every mound has been dug up at least once during its history, and anything of value is long-gone. One of the biggest is called Silbury Hill, a cone-shaped mound of earth with a path spiralling up it. Archaeologists have investigated it many times, but don't seem to know if there's anyone or anything buried inside it.
The Plain is also the artillery range for the Ministry of Defence, so major portions of it are out of bounds to walkers - for their own good! There are abandoned villages in the middle of the plain, owned by the MOD, which they use for practicing fighting in towns. Imagine wandering into one of these while an exercise is going on!
And so, continuing on south, we come to the town of Salisbury itself, a lovely medieval town with a huge cathedral. The spire of the cathedral is 404 feet high, and was built in the 14th century, and is still the tallest in Britain. The cathedral has fantastic architecture, the outside is covered in gargoyles and statues of saints. Inside the cathedral you will find the Mediaeval Clock, the oldest working clock in the world, a copy of the Magna Carta and more statues and wooden carvings. The inside is also the best place to view the stained glass windows which are really beautiful. Isn't it weird how they could build such fantastic things so long ago, and now the best we can manage is a giant gherkin... There are loads of pictures of the cathedral on their website:
http://www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/gallery.php
Almost all of the shops in the main shopping area of Salisbury are Elizabethan, with oak beams on the front and looking as though they might fall down any minute onto the unwary shoppers beneath.
Heading northeast, we come to Longleat House, home of the, quite frankly, potty, Duke of Bath. This man calls his girlfriends his "wifelets" and has made weird paper mache paintings/sculptures of them which he has stuck all over the staircase of his house, at the moment 64 of them, one for every year he's been alive. Probably more by now. Nutter. Oh yes, and there's a safari park, world's longest maze, huge gardens, a railway and the Adventure Castle, which adults are not allowed to enter unless they are supervised by a child.
Heading north from here to Trowbridge, we pass one of several white horses that litter the landscape in Wiltshire. These are not the moving around, eating lots of grass, type of horse, no, these are huge drawings that are cut into the turf of the hills until you can see the chalk underneath, and can be seen for miles around. Some of these have been there for hundreds, if not thousands of years, but others are obviously recently built to attract tourists. There are 8 horses altogether in Wiltshire, and they are kept free of grass and dirt by locals. Most of them are fenced off so that sheep and tourists can't walk all over them. You can tell the really old ones, these look less like horses and more like a few scribbly lines drawn on the ground to represent a horse. Some of these have folklore attached - apparently if you shag on the eye of one of the horses at full moon, you are guaranteed to get pregnant.
Incidentally, as you're driving through the country lanes past the fields of golden corn, look out for crop circles! Wiltshire is the crop-circle capital of europe. Every morning more and more of these intricate designs are found. No-one knows how they got there - is it aliens visiting earth, faries dancing in circles, or just a couple of men with a bit of string and a plank, who knows...
North-west again, and we find the historic city of Bath. The Romans first came here to wash in the naturally hot spring water (whether they were dirty or not) and built huge pools to bathe in. The waters are also supposed to cure people of illnesses, including leprosy. Nobody in Bath has leprosy, so this must be true.
Bath is also home to the Royal Crescent, a really impressive curved row of Georgian houses, built in the 1760s. There is also Bath Abbey, which is 500 years old and was ruined by Henry VIII but re-built later. There is a large park called Victoria Park, this is wonderfully well kept by the huge team of gardeners, and every year there is a new centrepiece made from hedges and plants, usually cartoon figures - I remember one year they had Mr Blobby, another time the Forever Friends bears posting letters in a letterbox.
Now it's time to dump the car, and take to a bicycle or on foot if you've got lots of time, and head east along the Kennet and Avon canal. The effectively cuts the county in half, going straight through the middle of it with lovely scenery either side. Eventually you will come to the market town of Devizes, you will know this because you will find yourself approaching a hill with a staggering number of canal locks cut into it, I think there were 21 though it might have been more, one after the other to get boats up and down the hill. It takes a whole day to get one boat from the bottom to the top.
From Devizes you can head back north again to re-join the M4 and head back to London, feeling refreshed and ready for another week at your desk... ho hum...
When I went there, I always stayed with my aunt in a small village near Devizes which was really picturesque - lots of the houses had thatchedroofs, but of course not everyone has aunts in Wiltshire! There are 5 starhotels in Bath and Salisbury if you've got the money, or there are Bed & Breakfast places in every village which are very reasonable, or you could even bring your own tent and camp in a field. The possibilities are endless! Check out the website of the Wiltshire tourist board for details on where to stay:
www.visitwiltshire.co.uk
Pictures of Wiltshire
Stonehenge
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An interesting view of this county. I have had good inland waterway boating holidays, but am glad we didn’t go through Devizes. I think it would be fun to watch others working hard getting through them all though. Lucky x
torr 19.08.2005 15:45
Good review of an interesting county. I particularly like the north-west corner, round Bradford-on-Avon. On a pedantic point of detail - is Bath still technically in Wiltshire? I thought it had been hived off into some new-fangled administrative area. Duncan
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Advantages: Fascinating addition to landscape. Interesting stories/fables behind their making. Reminder of special historical events. Disadvantages: Regular maintenance and scouring needed to prevent them disappearing into the landscape
Aug 2nd, 2005
(Aug 5th, 2005)
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