Salisbury - a walk in the cathedral close

Ist June and a beautiful English early summer day so I decided to take a walk through the cathedral close to the high street shops, rather than going through the city centre. The ancient cathedral, painted by both JMW Turner and John Constable, is completely surrounded by walls on three sides and beautiful old houses backing onto the river on the other. The only entrance to the close is by one of the three arched stone gateways in the walls. These are closed and locked at 10pm each night until 7am. (Residents have keys.) My house is outside the close but less than 200 steps from one of the gates. ( I was wearing a pedometer today because I aim to walk 10,00 steps everyday as part of keeping fit.) Once through the gate the view of the cathedral with its 404 ft spire, tallest in Britain, standing amidst the smooth lawns and paths, bathed in sunshine and surrounded by trees in full leaf, made my heart leap. To live so close to such beauty and not go to drink it in everyday is to deny myself one of the greatest visual pleasures on earth.

As I walked along I passed small groups of tourists as well as locals just enjoying the sunshine. Some sitting or lying on the grass, some on the weathered wooden benches conveniently dotted about by the low inner walls that border the lawns. Passing the gardens of the houses, some dating from medieval times, I paused occasionally to breathe in the smell of heavily scented roses tumbling over walls and twining around gateways. I picked a daisy from under a row of beech trees by the water meadow. In all, a truly English scene; it could be no-where else in the world.

Across a smaller lawn I passed the lovely 18th century Mompesson House, closed to visitors today but open again tomorrow. I would have been tempted by the tea-room in its back garden by the croquet lawn - delicious lemon cake to be had. You will have seen Mompesson House yourselves if you ever saw the film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, part of which was filmed there.

By now I was feeling very warm in the full sun, so I thought to go inside the cathedral for a walk around the cool cloisters and maybe take another peek at the magna carta in the Chapter House. One of only four remaining copies of the magna carta, and the best preserved, is kept here. Sadly since my last visit they have put barriers across to force visitors just wanting to see the Chapter House and magna carta to go in through the cathedral itself and out of a side door into the part of the cloister nearest the Chapter House. This means that you have to pass via a huge notice board with a list of suggested donations towards the upkeep. It takes a brave person to walk past this and the doorkeepers and ticket desk without flinching. In fact I do agree with charging because upkeep must be horrendously expensive and it was introduced for the cathedral proper many years ago. But this latest method of straddling the beautiful cloister with metal barriers and a turnstyle exit, seems so brutal. It surely would have been better to have allowed the cloister walk to remain unimpeded and put a discreet ticket box in the entrance to the Chapter House.

So back outside and walk towards the High Street Gate - the main arch through which most visitors arrive. There are terraces of tiny shops on both sides of the road on the town side of this gate: a toy and gft shop - beloved by generations of children, including mine; two hairdressers; an estate agent; a small law firm; a christian bookshop; a smart and expensive gift shop; the National Trust shop; a Post Office/gift shop. A modern restaurant now ocupies the site of the much missed old Beeches Bookshop - a wonderful rambling building which had books tumbling out of nooks and crannies. Now gutted inside and refurbished, but the lovely old black and white structure remains. Opposite is a tiny ladies shoe shop - more of a boutique really. The owner has exquisite taste and customers sit on prettily upholstered French salon style chairs to be served. I have seen a lovely pair of french navy and red sandals which I meant to pop in and buy but then remembered that I had only come out with enough money for a stamp for my letter. I digress, and letter posted, I return through the gate for a walk back home through to the gate at the other end of the close. Taking a slight diversion I pass another memorable house, Malmesbury House, which bears a sundial high on the wall. It has a series of dates across it but they are inaccurate because it was made, I think in 1749, while the Julian calendar was in use, before we changed to the gregorian calendar in 1752(?). Anyway it bears a glorious motto which starts: Life is But A Walking Shadow. Is that me? I hurry homewards.

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