better than Bristol

Before expounding on the specifics of today’s journey, please allow me to explain the circumstances leading up to this last adventure. The original plan was to spend Sunday and Monday in Bristol. Due to financial constraints, some of the members of our group decided it would be better to just do one day, so we settled on Monday. On Sunday night we were informed by a fellow WISC member that Bristol was nothing but industry and factory buildings. A little research on the Internet turned up one historical site of interest in Bristol, the suspension bridge. So last night we began our search for a new destination. We needed a location that satisfied three criteria: a town with a train station, a distance of no more than 2 hours by train, and something of interest besides factory buildings. We decided to take a gander at Winchester. For some reason I had trouble falling asleep last night, so I was up before the sun with only 4 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, not everyone on our trip was as quick as Sally, Marty and I, so we missed our first train and ended up taking the next one, which only set us back an hour and ended up making no difference. We arrived in Winchester and were a little discouraged. It didn’t look like the pictures we had seen. But we comforted ourselves with the knowledge that no matter what we did it would be “better than Bristol.” We found some random castle ruins in the middle of town, part of an old gate with a passageway that was blocked off just when it looked like it could get exciting. Then we happened upon the Great Hall where King Arthur met with his court, and saw the round table. Strangely enough it hangs on a wall rather than standing on the floor like any other table would. From there we saw the King’s House which are some big brick buildings used more or less for military stuff, but got some cool pictures. Then we saw the Winchester Cathedral. Spent lots of time here, not only is it huge and amazing (the architecture is unbelieveable), but there are a lot of cool people buried in the church, such as William of Wyckeham who founded New College and Winchester College. And also *gasp* Jane Austen. There were bones of people from before 1000 AD in there. Anyway, after lots of graves, coffins, statues and frescoes we had our own personal tour of the crypts beneath that cathedral. There weren’t enough spaces on the last tour, so the guy offered to take just us if we came back in half an hour. So here’s the story with the crypts. Apparently, the cathedral is built on peat, and the water table rises every winter, causing the crypts to flood. Back in the day of monks they used to just throw soil down there every time there was water, to the point where there were several feet of dirt in the crypts. Anyway, because the foundation was sinking part of the cathedral was caving in, and in a few years the whole thing would have collapsed were it not for one man, a deep sea diver, who actually went underwater below the cathedral and (by feeling only since it was dark and the water was murky) cut through the lumber base, dug out the peat, pumped out the water, and laid bags of concrete. In 6 years one man saved the whole cathedral by his own hands. The crypts are kind of creepy, there’s not dead people down there, but there are gravestones on the floor, which they apparently stole out of the local graveyard for stone to make the floor. They believe it’s where the monks used to go to pray. There’s some old statues down there too, of Saint Stucken (actually I’m not really sure what his name is but it’s something like that). When the statue of him out front would start to get a little worn down they’d replace it and put the old ones down in the crypt. There were also some coffins. The most interesting part was the Roman well, which was there before the cathedral was built. For some reason they built the cathedral over the well, keeping it intact. Actually the high altar is directly above the well, on the floor above. The tour guide felt there was a lot of symbolism in that but wouldn’t say anything further. Oddly enough, some modern sculptor has a few of his art pieces down there. It just didn’t seem right to see modern art alongside of 10th century artifacts. So we shut the place down, they even shut all the gates on us, we had to find our own way out. We came back later that night for Evensong which was good, but the choir was lacking the little boy’s voices that you hear at New College. Not to mention the cathedral is a very eerie at night. We grabbed a quick lunch from the local bakery and ate it out in the middle of town. Only in England can you eat your sandwich on the steps of the local monument. From there we took a walk along the river then up the hill where you can get an amazing view of all of the town. We tried to get in to Wolvesly’s castle but it was closed. We saw the house where Jane Austen spent her last 6 weeks and died in. But just the outside, it’s a private residence. I think it’d be weird to have people come taking pictures of your house all the time. We also took a tour of Winchester College which in England is a public school for boys, and by public school they mean private. 70 students go for free on scholarships and have to wear the black robes, the other 700 pay £22,000 a year to go there- for high school!! Since the founder of Winchester is the same as New College, a lot of the boys from this school end up going to New, we even have the same crest. Since we were all New College students they let us take the tour for free. The school was a lot like New, only there were little boys running around everywhere. Unfortunately, due to the geographical location of this wonderful island, it began to get too dark before we could see much outside of the buildings. So it ended up being a very exciting day, and although none of us can prove it, we all agree that Winchester is definitely better than Bristol.