Meeting friends

Well, we’d not met before in person, but we had chatted online for quite some time and it felt as though we knew each other already. But as we pulled up at their hotel on Friday morning to meet them, we wondered if we’d recognise them…or would they recognise us? What if they turned out to be weird? What if they thought we were weird?

Thankfully they were just as we imagined, we began the delightfully interesting conversation that continued all day and off we went to Winchester!

Jan and Dave were going to board one of our favourite ships in Southampton on Saturday and planned to sail around the British Isles for the next couple of weeks. We’d talked about meeting up ever since we knew but the various restrictions that have come and gone over the last few months made us wonder if it would ever happen. When the day finally came and they’d been allowed into the country (!), when they had passed all the tests and had negative results every time, we all heaved a sigh of relief and looked forward to a fun day in their company.

Our first stop was the Great Hall. Though we’ve been to Winchester previously, we’d not been here and so we booked our slot and turned up with tickets in hand, ready to go.

I have a habit of turning left when I go inside somewhere and so my eyes fell immediately on a wall covered with names. Who were all of these people? I looked around and couldn’t find any information about them so went back to the ticket desk to ask. Apparently, they are all the local mayors and members of the council, listed during Victorian times when the hall was renovated. It was quite a spectacle, but in looking at that, I was missing the main event…

High on the gable end opposite all those names was the Round Table.

Yes! The Round Table. King Arthur and all of that.

Well, surely it couldn’t be THE real table, could it? (Well, have a read here and here, noting that on the Visit Winchester page it’s described as “the iconic Round Table of Arthurian legend” ) Anyway, it was an interesting focus and I was glad to have seen it and learned a little! There was a further exhibition along an adjacent corridor but well, I don’t do history and anyway, there was too much to talk about.

We moved on.

Taking a look at The Ivy on the way down the High Street and thinking it was a bit early for lunch, we went for a quick look at the statue of King Alfred before retreading our steps and stopping for a bite to eat. So far, we’d not stopped talking…

Our plan for the afternoon was to visit the cathedral so, sustained by a good lunch, we made our way there, happy to see there were not too many people with the same idea.

We were very fortunate to arrive just as a small group was setting off with a guide and we were able to tag along with them, no problem.

Preparations were being made for a flower festival in the next week or two, so we moved swiftly past the ladies sewing crepe paper flowers to a large net, ready to hoist high above the nave in similar vein to the one already hanging there.

Our guide - whose name I didn’t catch - was excellent. Here, she was explaining about St Swithun, a former Bishop of Winchester and the patron Saint of the cathedral. She had clever way of blending the serious facts with a little light storytelling and enhanced our visit greatly.

Our first stop had been to pay homage to Jane Austen, the person I had associated most closely with the cathedral.

There were far more interesting aspects to see and hear about though, including this very old corner, where some of the oldest parts of the current structure can be found.

Had we not had the benefit of our excellent guide, then surely we’d have missed the Holy Sepulchre Chapel and the beautiful 12th Century wall paintings within it. We’d not have learned of Samuel Wesley, during whose time as organist here, a small staircase was cut into this chapel as a shortcut to the organ console because he was always running late.

I’m quite good at remembering to look up in places like this, to admire the fan vaulting in the nave and the wooden bosses here in the choir.

I sometimes need a reminder to look down though, to marvel at the wealth of pattern in the medieval floor tiles, even if some are reproductions.

They make the originals all the more beautiful, however - I love this star motif.

It was whilst looking up at the roof of the tower, though, that I spotted the sun shining on some wooden boxes - reliquaries - high above my head.

No sooner had I spotted them - there were six in total - than our guide began to talk about the contents, thought to be the remains of some Saxon Kings and Bishops, their names carefully noted by those who originally created the reliquaries. However, all organisation was totally disrupted during the Civil War and only now, with the benefit of DNA processing, can research be done to identify and collate the contents once again; a project underway with the support of the Universities of Oxford and Bristol.

Fascinating. However, our guide had one more, very surprising, story up her sleeve.

The story of the diver who saved the cathedral.

What? She had referred to this gentleman earlier in her tour, in reference to Jane Austen, at whose funeral only four people were in attendance. In contrast, said she, “The Diver had a full congregation”.

I could not begin to imagine what on earth a diver could possibly have to do with this building, but standing in the northeast corner, where the floor had a very uneven surface indeed, we heard his story. it was a great way to end the tour!

We took a look in the exhibition space upstairs, but were all starting to feel the effects of either an early start this morning or jet lag. Two of us had to drive the seventy five miles home and two of us were boarding a ship the following day - I can’t say I wasn’t feeling a bit envious!

What a lovely day we’d had and how very much we look forward to next Summer…

“See you in Copenhagen!”