July 27: Sausage, Scaffolding, and Stones!

Monday was another early start day. Not 5:30 in the morning, but still pretty early. We were headed out to Wilton House. Wilton House is where the Earl of Pembroke lives and has for many generations. The current Earl has only held the title for about 7 years, and is getting married next year. He was the only son of 7 kids, so there is no ‘spare heir’, so it’s all on him to produce a son. The house was really pretty. Of all the famous homes and palaces that we’ve seen, Wilton House is the only one that I could actually live in. It was large and extravagant enough to be interesting, but small enough to be manageable and to not feel empty. I like it a lot. It also had more natural grounds, with just large grassy fields, and some hedge work with walkways and stuff like that. Much homier than huge manicured gardens. We had a guided tour through the house and over the grounds. We were able to go up on the bridge, which is something most tours don’t get to do. The bridge was built by one of the Earls, and it was inspired by the Rialto Bridge in Venice. We got to see the parts of the house where certain movies have been filmed. A couple of scenes from the Kiera Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice were filmed in the rooms at Wilton. It was small and humble, but it really was a great house.
After Wilton House, we headed back into the main town of Salisbury. We got dropped off by a bus and walked a couple of blocks to Salisbury Cathedral. We split into groups and went through different tours. The other group got to go on a tour of the cathedral as well as the roof tour, but we only did the roof tour. It was incredible though! We first climbed up to the second floor of the cathedral, where we could look out over the inside of the church, kind of like the dome at St. Peters. Then we went up and around into the roof above the cathedral, on top of the vaulting. We got to walk through the rafters and see how the roof was constructed and supported, as well as walk along the length of the roof on the inside. After that, we went into the room that holds that mechanism that controls the bells, and from there, up a staircase into the bell chamber. The cathedral has 4 quarter bells that chime on the quarter hour, and then on big bell that chimes on every hour. Our guide explained that it’s hard for older cathedrals to have multiple bells that ring a lot because throughout the years the vibrations from the ringing destroy the buildings. Also, the bells themselves don’t actually swing anymore, there’s just a mechanism on the inside of the bell that hits it to make the sound. From there we went up one more staircase, to the bottom of the spire, which used to be the top of the church. There is no public access allowed up the actual spire, but we got to stand at the bottom of it and look up through the scaffolding. The tower is the tallest hollow structure still standing in Europe. Also, the scaffolding is believed to be the longest standing scaffolding, because most scaffolding is taken down after the completion of the project. At the bottom of the spire we also got to go out onto a very narrow balcony to look out over the town of Salisbury. In some places, you can see up to 14 miles away. The views were amazing. This was by far one of the most interesting tours we’ve done.
After the cathedral, we got into taxi vans and headed out to Stonehenge. We got to do an audio tour around Stonehenge that talked about the history (what we know, anyway), and the different stones, and some of the speculations of what it was for, as well as the area around it. It was so great! Stonehenge is another one of those places where I felt like it was only a place in pictures and that I couldn’t actually get there…but I got there! Whoot whoot! They’ve had it roped off for the last couple of years, so the public can’t actually go up and touch the stones or anything anymore. In all reality, that’s probably for the better, but it’s still a little bit annoying. Too bad that some stupid people have to ruin things for everyone else! We spent about 30 minutes around Stonehenge, just looking at info and taking pictures. Afterwards, we took our taxis back to the train station and caught a late train back to London. We didn’t get back until almost 10, so we were out for over 12 hours, but it was such an amazing day, and completely worth the exhaustion.

PS: This post has absolutely nothing to do with sausage. I was trying to come up with a name, and asked Kylee and Amanda for words related to house that starts with and S, and Amanda said sausage...so there it is!