Fifth Installment:

New Forest – Bournemouth – The Jurassic Coast – Hampshire

 

To Bournemouth

Since I was up past 3 this time, thanks to the late bus from Oxford, then realizing that I'd have to wake up really early to get the car at Southampton airport by 10, I was fishing around for a phone number and saw, in my earlier (Liverpool Hanover Hotel) printout that I could modify the car booking online!  What a gift!  Of course the hotel charged 6 pounds for an hour of wifi (minimum), so I had little choice but to buy it, and once bought, I wasn't about to give up free time doing more logistics research to sleep.  Once I did a mapblast on the journey from Southampton airport to Bournemouth and realized that the straight shot even through the New Forest, where I'd picked up some suggestions on where to visit, was only 32 miles, I changed the pickup to 1:30.   I also checked hotels and B&Bs in Winchester for the night before leaving for the continent, but failed to turn up a solution.  Also continued looking for my very last night in Amsterdam, but still didn't finalize it.  I did realize which trains I'd need to take to get into Amsterdam comfortably from Winchester by checking the Eurostar website and for European schedules, www.diebahn.com ("the train" in German) and choosing Internat. Guests at the top for English.  I figured I couldn't leave London later than the 10:43, so would need to leaves Winchester a little over an hour before).  The beauty of this plan is that, not only is Winchester lovely, but it's only an hour from London and goes into Waterloo, the same station that the Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) uses, so no time- and effort-consuming tube changes in London.

Wakeup call at the Marble Arch hotel that ND and I were staying at was a little earlier than 10, which I requested, but that turned out to be quite a good thing.  Since the luggage is getting heavier and heavier, I am now looking for ways to avoid dragging the bags up steps changing at tube stations, so walked an extra half mile or so to Bond St / Jubilee line to go straight to Waterloo for today's train to Southampton airport.  After several blocks asked a guy how much farther it might be, and in his clueless answer detected an American accent, and finding out he'd been in London only an hour, switched modes and helped him out as we walked.  He was just walking on Oxford Street since people who got off the bus were.  I suggested the double-decker sightseeing bus is a good way to get oriented in any new city, hopping on and off, and then going back for more later.  The other nugget of advice was to buy day passes for the tube/bus since it pays with just a couple of uses.!

Getting to Waterloo (and luckily encountering escalators and elevators where I needed them) I decided to spend 5 of my 12 minute available time before my train to get my ticket to Brussels (it cost 50 pounds cheap single since I have a Britrail pass).  Some of the fares go as high as 379 pounds for the same ride.  But it is blindingly fast going from London to Brussels in 2 hours 20 minutes.

The train ride to Southampton, which should have lasted about an hour 45, took a lot longer.  Why?  It's Sunday!  I'd allowed 35 minutes to get to the Alamo counter once at the airport.  By the time we got to Woking, since the relief staff (?!) was coming up from the south, still in Basingstoke, and the trainman said the train will be delayed 6 or 7 minutes, he invited folks to get off the train if they required any refreshments, and pop into the buffet on the platform.  Boy, in the US they never invite people to get off the train except to smoke immediately trainside (e.g. when they change engines in Washington, it takes minimum 20 minutes, but they never tell you you have time to go inside and get something to eat).  On this train to the coast the conductor would make announcements starting with the phrase that sounded like "God speaking".  That would make me smile every time.  I eventually realized it must be Guard speaking…ï�Š  The train ended up being delayed by 30 minutes due to signal problems in Bournemouth.  The delay gave me lots of time to catch up with these travelogues tho.

Shlepped bags to Alamo/National at the airport adjacent to the train station.  No hitches getting the car, which turned out to be their only automatic.  It was a very large car, slightly dented and scratched ­ wide, high and long.  The brakes and steering were spongy, it had no get up and go, it drove like a tank.  But other than that, I was given good directions to get out of the maze and onto the M27 towards Bournemouth.  I exited to go through the New Forest.  Stopped at the quaint town of  Lyndhurst for lunch, and then to the single tracks in the forest and encountering horses grazing across the road.  I had to get out for that.  Someone had fed one, and so when he saw me he came right over.  I petted him, but once he knew I had nothing, moved on.  I managed to get into Bournemouth at a reasonable hour and with only one missed turn very close to my hotel got there well in time. The Arlington, which is a block from the venue is where I stayed there last time too.  This hotel is simple, inexpensive, and has a private entrance to this wonderful, huge park that runs from the amusement pier on the shore miles inland.  I remember having walked it last time, but running out of time before getting all the way through.  I asked where I could eat, but many of the places were closed, it being a Sunday night.  I went into a pub and after waiting what seemed like 10 minutes just to put in an order at the bar, I said I'd need to leave in 20 minutes.  They said there was a delay of 45 minutes!!  I walked out and a local bus driver told me the only other places open were McDonalds and Burger King.  Oh well.. it was calories, which I did need at that point.

 

Concert

I skidded in well after 8pm, and saw 2 California friends out front looking for tix.  Apparently there was no one selling tix out front (I'll bet because they sent the tix out so late, like a few other venues did).  They asked if I could try to get them some tix, and I did find one for them, but as you might imagine, it was hard for them to decide that one should get it and the other not.  Running back and forth with the ticket, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't get closed out of the first half of the show, since some venues in the UK will not seat you if you're late.

Tonight the double flutes were much louder than Justin's guitar for OMTTL.  It allowed me to focus on who was playing what and the vibrato for each.  Justin turned his hip monitor mid song.   He looked over at Paul at one point when the bass sound on his keyboard was way too loud.  This has happened before, with nobody seeming to notice.  I loved my seat, in front of John and in the middle of a lot of fans.  Graeme wore what I think is his best shirt of the current bunch ­ the hot raspberry stripe.  This concert had the feel of a last concert to it, and it was for the UK.  It will be interesting to see them in the Netherlands.  That will be the fifth country I've seen them in.  Despite being in the 2nd row tonight, and therefore always on guard for the security, I was able to get some nice shots.  Afterwards, the lobby smelled of dead rat.  I noticed that the food area was still open after the concert, and many of the locals were sitting there imbibing and eating.  I took a look at the congealed pizza, and decided to pass. 

I walked the long way up the cliff, around to the back.  There were only 6 or 8 of us American and Canadian fans, but the band had gotten into their bus inside the complex and one person (looked like a slender hand, probably Justin's) only waved as the bus went past.  While we were waiting, I first noticed these two teenagers whizzing down the hill on skateboards.  Pretty hazardous considering how fast they were going even when they passed us and that fact that the road ends on a major thoroughfare.  Then in a little while I'd noticed what I thought was a cat walking by along a waist-high fence down the hill towards the main road.  But it had a really long furry tail.  It was a fox!  I grabbed my camera but it had gone off ­ first under the band's equipment truck, then when I saw it again, it was much further away.  I zoomed in to see it hop up to the top of the fence, and then down the other side.  It got chillier and chillier standing in the wind.  Walking back to the hotel, I saw the band's equipment van leave ­ at about 11:40.  That was pretty fast work.  They've got a couple of days to get to Amsterdam.  The day had been gorgeous warm sunny weather and the concert was one of the best.  It's ended with writing up the notes, sipping some hot choccie that I made here in the room, while watching the making of Spamalot with interviews with Monty Python.

Tomorrow, I'm off to the Jurassic Coast.

 

The Jurassic Coast

Writing from the Arlington hotel on Exeter Park Road, choosing it since it was ok last time, and very well situated, and not too much money.  I remember having met Clint Warwick and his entourage in the lot of the hotel next door in 2002 when he was following the band for a bit.  Maid service knocked on the door about 10 minutes before the wake up knock at 8:45.  Full breakfast was ok, but I took a seat at a table that was set for 2 looking out at the front garden, and the waiter came over and said that I was sitting at the wrong table.  There was one for room 5 "over there", pointing to it.  So I picked everything up and moved it over to the other table.  The inexplicable rigidity that I keep encountering is almost comical.  The lady sitting at the next table and I had a nice chat.  She's from the area but having work done in her house.  She looked to be in her 70s.  We talked about Paul McCartney's marriage woes, Bush and Blair, and sundry other things.  We agreed on everything.  Early checkout was at 10, but was about the right timing this morning.   I put everything into the car and set out on foot into the massive gardens to which the public has access, but from limited locations.  This hotel has a private entrance accessed by hotel key.  I was able to spend a little more time this time than last and took more pix.  The interesting trees I'd seen before were dawn redwoods planted around 1950.  They have the most beautiful trunks with intricate patterns and that lovely red color.  And I looked more carefully at the wonderful mosaic in the middle of the town square.  There's a mermaid and whatever the male equivalent is (Neptune?), various fish, crabs, starfish and other stuff as well.  The mosaic pieces are not ceramic or pottery, but ocean beach or river rocks, small, uniform in size, shape and color, with rounded edges.  I'd thought before that I'd love to put something like this together for my garden's path, so  I took lots more pix.

To plan the Jurassic coast trip, I stopped at the tourist info next to the central gardens, and got a couple of ideas of where to go towards the west, southwest of Bournemouth on the way to Lyme Regis.  The main thing they were good for was getting me out of Bournemouth.  It was a bit hairy around Poole, but got good directions at a petrol station.  Bypassing Weymouth, I finally got to Wareham and since there was parking at a lovely bridge across the river Piddle (I kid you not) with ducks, and swans and gulls all over the place, I thought I'd stop for lunch, stop in at the tourist info, and to try to call to get a room for the next night in Winchester.  They basically told me to go across the street to the public library, and there was a computer with internet free!  My colleague Bob and his friend John in Winchester who had the B&B but was full had both emailed, and had found another B&B for me, so I headed to a pay phone and called.  Not there.  I figured it will get sorted at some point.  The bready veggie and cheese thing that I got for lunch was a bit too bready, but that gave me opportunity to toss pieces to the swans.  I'd done something similar in the harbor at Ipswich the last time I was there.

The tourist info sent me to Old Harry Rocks, which are a series of white cliffs, cut at about 90 degrees, including some as islands. Another good viewpoint would be Lulworth cove.  I decided to skip the first since it involved a little backtracking.  Good thing as it turned out, time-wise.  Approaching the coast I came upon town after town that had lots of thatched roofs.  Some were quite ornate, turned up just above the windows, and such.  They were very picturesque.  Got nice pix; the weather was lovely again though I think I may have just missed a rain.  Just before getting to Lulworth, I saw a sign that I just had to turn around to get a pic of.  At the top, there was a red triangle in which there is a picture of a tank.  Below that:  Tanks Crossing, and below that, Sudden Gunfire.  I'd had a vague recollection of an army installation and passed the front gate to the gunnery school after a while.  You could hear the guns all over the area and at the next two stops.  In fact, the place where the most fossils are found was prohibited for access this day.  At Lulworth cove I happened to set out at the same time as a bunch of schoolchildren and their headmaster, so I tagged along to hear his geology lecture for them.  I learned a little (though I'd seen some of this in the interpretive center), but the fellow did get some major details about rocks wrong… i.e. that metamorphic rocks always begin as igneous rocks (wrong…  the ones we were looking at on the coast were originally sedimentary strata (you can see the strata, folded and on edge) so it was clear they had been baked and uplifted, and folded, not metamorphosed from lava (which was his simplistic explanation for all igneous rocks).  But ok..  We clambered down a very steep muddy cliff face, and I got lots of mud on the shoes, sometimes sliding down a foot or two before catching myself (facing the mud wall, thankfully).  It had rained just before while I was driving.  The beaches are not sandy but rocky with what we might call river rocks, but they are small (an inch and less), round-edged, sort of oval, of all different sorts.  It's these kind of rocks that they probably used for the mosaic in Bournemouth, and which, would really be nice to bring home to use for mosaics in my garden.  But my bags are heavy enough as they are.

The next stop was a couple of miles away, called Durdle Door.  These names bring Harry Potter to mind.  There was a serious hike down to the seashore from the cliff.  I decided, mainly for the sake of time, to go halfway, to the viewpoint out to the east and west.  Since it was a little foggy most of the day, it made for interesting photography, and no shooting into the sun.  The term "door" means arch in American geological terms.  The sea has carved a hole through a rock formation on the coast.  Eventually, sometimes these get separated from the mainland due to erosion as well.  Thanks to the various types of strata (there are 5 going back to Jurassic (dinosaur) times) that have been tilted, thanks to the current movements of the African plate shoving northward pushing up the Alps, causing volcanic activity in Italy, earthquakes in Turkey, etc.  It seems that this huge force has been pushing up the chalk cliffs and the strata in this area as well.  The different strata weather and erode at different rates since they vary in hardness, so you end up with these islands offshore of harder material (Portland limestone), and the stratum between there and the shore is gone since it's softer (mudstone), and the chalk cliffs, which are hundreds of feet thick and despite being soft, are fairly weather resistant, are what you're viewing all this from.  It makes for wave-cut bays with steep sides ­ very scenic.  I walked partway down and all the way up with an older couple from Liverpool.  Stopping to take pix on the way back up made it painless.  We talked about the signs at these natural features that say you have to report to the authorities if you plan to take pictures commercially.  Since they have no admission charge and no gates around it, we figured it's a pretty odd requirement.  We talked about the concert venues that have the same requirements.  He'd wanted to take pix at some sporting event.  It's all the same story.  My pay and display ticket for both of these stops together was for 2 hours, and I made it with time to spare.

By this time it was after 4 so thought it best to head straight for Lyme Regis.  I didn't have a good map of the town, so had to circle through a few times asking half a dozen people for directions.  All the roads in Lyme Regis are very narrow.  The buildings are really gorgeous.  It's extremely hilly.  I'll get a better look in the morning.  Uplyme Road, where the Colway House is, does not have a road sign (I found out later), and it was just a good thing that I finally found a petrol station that knew precisely where it is.  You have to be coming from Uplyme not from Lyme Regis to see it.  Just before the mini-roundabout, hang a right up the little driveway up the hill (a very steep single track) about 3 houses worth to the end.  I'd heard jokes about Americans driving over these mini-roundabouts, and I had managed to avoid that up to that point, but drove over it the first time I'd encountered it.  I mean…  when you're on a 2 lane road, just driving along atspeed, you don't suddenly expect to see a concrete mound maybe 6 feet wide in the middle, no grass, no curb, around which you are supposed to go…

Getting to the place, I was rather underwhelmed at first.  Colway House is a private residence.  Yes, thatched roof, rather chilly since the window was open, but the lady of the house wasn't home, so I was greeted by the younger son, disheveled in school uniform, and he showed me my room and the bath across the hall.  I decided to plug the computer in for recharging, and just for the heck of it, tried to get online.  Can you believe it?  The house has an unsecured, working wifi spot??  So I'll later be able to send some more installments to Lost Chords.  Eventually, the lady showed up, very friendly.  She had been at the vets with her dog and later gave me a lift to town (a 15 minute walk straight uphill later) for some dinner.  I decided to buy some chocolate trifle at the grocery.  The lady Colway later told me trifle is usually not chocolate…  At the Mad Hatter, I had a nice large dinner, and decided to ask what a couple of the desserts were.  The Spotted Dick (which to me sounds like fish) is a sponge cake with currents (the spots) and a syrupy sauce.  Or am I confusing that with treacle, which is like molasses.  Ah well.  Tomorrow it's back to Southampton airport, and I hope, Winchester.

 

Lyme Regis to Winchester

 The weather forecast again was dire ­ bad weather was to be coming in sometime today.  I'd better hurry and do whatever I could do in Lyme Regis, as there might be no time for anything else, making sure to drop off the car and get to Winchester before dark, if possible.  On the map I'd been looking at possible diversions down to sea level from various cliffs up and down the coast.  At the Mad Hatter restaurant the night before, I'd been advised 2 places to go look for fossils on the beach under the cliffs, but to check the tide tables, since you don't want to get stranded…  I was also given a good tip to where the cheaper car park was (west end of town ­ only 1.60 for 2 hours, which may sound like a lot by U.S. standards.  Having more expensive car parking is one way, in addition to higher gas prices and tolls, to get people onto mass transit).  I'd seen 6 pounds for the same amount of time in other locations, so made my way there through the massive road works on the way down the cliff face, and walked way to the west to Monmouth Beach, a natural heritage area, where there were a few geologists (or at least well-equipped fossil collectors).  One hammered off a fossil shell that they call devil's toenail (charming name!) and gave it to me.  I saw a number of rocks with ammonite fossils, some quite large, and took some shots.  There was also a rock with an impression of a small tree trunk, and another that looked like a vertebrae (they said this was a good place for finding dinosaur vertebrae).  This fellow told me the rain was to be heavy with wind.  When it started drizzling, that was my cue to scram.  I was only a bit damp as I got to the car, and found that my faltering umbrella had finally given up the ghost.  As the storm intensified I walked to the other end of town to the only place one could buy an umbrella.  In that time the weather had changed to one of these English coastal storms, much like the one that hit St. Ives when I was there the last time.  Wind driven rain.  I found a grocer with my cherished Green and Black organic dark chocolate mint bars, so took some for the journey ahead.  And my pants and shoes, which had been caked with mud from scrambling down muddy cliffs the day before, though rather wet, were now clean from the pelting rain and walking a couple of miles in deep pebbles ­ the perfect cleansing action.

I walked up and down the cliff in Lyme Regis where they're building a town park.  Being a parkie myself, it was nice to make comparisons.  It was very pretty, but the reason for it was not just making the town beautiful.  I happened upon some signs, which I wiped the raindrops off of and photographed holding my new umbrella against the wind in one hand.  These explained how the town is in the midst of Phase 2 of extensive construction works to shore up the cliffside, on which it's built.  There were old pictures of damage when large pieces would fall into the sea.  The park, built on a severe slope, was part of the restoration and protective measure.  Fantastic and nicely done.  

Going thru coastal towns back towards the east took forever since so much of the driving is in built-up areas.  Now I understand why it takes buses so long to get anywhere and why the idea of driving to St. Ives from either Brighton or Bournemouth would have been impractical.  I stopped off in Lymington (pronounced Limington) which has a very charming marina and an original Saxon wall.  I'd noticed the day before, while on one of those single track diversions that the traffic-side mirror of an oncoming car had been flattened back.  I was happy I hadn't done that, but this afternoon, when navigating back onto the M27, needing that mirror, I saw that my passenger side mirror was flat against the side window.  At the car park at the airport, I pulled it back.  It was attached to a flexible rubberized thing, so I guess they make the cars this way knowing it's hard to avoid knocking it back.  I must have done it on one of the really close passes with vegetation and walls along one of those single tracks.  You notice as you drive the countryside that it looks like the vegetation has been pruned very nicely along the roadside.  The reality is that the traffic is constantly pruning potentially encroaching vegetation ­ mainly the double-decker buses.  Even the trees are pruned by them to their height.

As I was driving along, I continued my mental breakdown (no, that didn't come out right), my mental gymnastics of the adjustments that you have to make driving in England.  Simplistically, I'd originally thought that the problem would be centered on driving on the left side of the street.  Actually, though it's something you have to be mindful of, particularly when starting out each time and during turns, but that wasn't the major thing I had to learn.  Another thing, which never occurred to me before, was getting used to driving from the right side of the front seat (though thankfully, the brake and gas pedals are in the same position as for U.S. cars ­ that would be Really disastrous if they were reversed).  No, the roundabouts are the most important, and hardest, thing to master.  There is a roundabout at every major intersection, and at many many non-major ones.  It's used instead of lights for major intersections.  You find one where there are 4 or more roads at an intersection.  And it's not just remembering to go around clockwise.  That's the least of it.  It's not recalling to look right to make sure there is no one already in the roundabout before proceeding.  It's the road signs.  I've noticed that they vary all over the map, as it were, depending on the type of roundabout it is.  There are an unlimited number of roundabout designs, since the roads are rarely perpendicular to one another and intersections do not always have 4 roads.  So some roundabouts are tiny, six feet across, just lumps in the street, really, and have little signage, even to prepare one to swerve around them, much less to indicate where to go.  In fact, there are no street signs as we have them in the U.S. cities and towns at every intersection.  Some, not all, of the time, the name of the streets in a UK city are in plates on the side of the building closest to the corner maybe about 10 feet up.  The roundabout the next size up might have a blue and white roundabout sign, just the round chasing arrows symbol, in advance.  There might be a white sign with black lettering with the configuration of this actual roundabout, showing the road you're on coming up from the bottom as a line into the circle, and the possible ways out, pointed lines of varying thickness and length to indicate importance of the road, and depicted as they are laid out on the ground, and with the names of some of the destinations next to those.  This is where your knowledge of your route is critical.  If you don't know the names of all the roads and intermediate towns that you want to go through (and maybe also ones you don't), and where you are on your route, you have no basis on which to make the decision.  You rarely see a confirming sign as well, so if you made the wrong choice, you'll never know it.  It all sounds easier than it is in practice where you're in a congested area.  The larger the roundabout, or the more complex, with more roads coming in and out, the more signs.  Also, the larger the roundabout, the more stuff they put inside the circle.  Near the Southampton airport, there's one with a Spitfire in it.  Most often they plant trees, flowers and grass.  Often, there are two information signs approaching a larger roundabout.  The first sign, with the roundabout layout and labels, may have the town destinations with the road numbers.  Sometimes on this sign, there might be a destination in parentheses after one without.  This would be yet another destination, but one that you would get to indirectly off of the chosen route. Then there is often another one with the same layout but different, more local, information for the exits.  If you miss the info on the first sign because you're not prepared to read, or it's hidden by bushes, or you just can't read it all as you go by, as you're braking and looking for traffic, there are often signs in the roundabout right at the exits.  Those are often chock full of info as well, though sometimes it's just the route number and a single town name (if lucky).  Sometimes, the route numbers are on green signs, which helps to narrow down your search.  It's a lot to read while you're careening around a roundabout, needing to be prepared to dart to the left to exit.  The good thing about missing your exit on a roundabout is that you can go around again.  I had to do that once on a complex roundabout in Bournemouth yesterday.  This one was an elongated one, really two separate roundabouts merged.  Some of these elongated or large ones have traffic lights in them or to enter them.  Oftentimes, motorways and large "A" roads end in complex roundabouts, or a series of 2 or 3 in a row, and if you make a mistake you can end up getting on another limited access highway with the next exit miles away (of course, this is also true in the U.S.).  So the best thing to do is go around again and get a second look at the signs.  Sometimes you come upon a road sign that tells you you've entered a particular town, so that you can mentally tick off where you are on your journey.  But more often than not, you don't see any sign with the town name.  (I also noticed an almost entire lack of speed limit signs.)  This is particularly vexing in the southern coast, where I've been driving, since it's very built up and the towns and cities merge from one to the next.  I'm sure glad my first driving was in Scotland.  That's what I would recommend for first timers, finding a largely rural or semi-rural area to get used to everything, little by little. 

Dropping off the car was uneventful, thankfully, despite a last minute lurch off the last of a few roundabouts getting off the M27.  This time, the fellow who checked me in mentioned, casually, that there was a trolley 100 yards away, that might help me get the stuff to the train.  That was really helpful.  When I got to the train, I saw the trolley point, tucked under a stairway.  Now I know!  What wasn't helpful was no ramp or elevator at the train station.  I heard the announcements… a train north was a minute away, but having to go up two flights and down two flights with the four heavy bags, I knew I'd miss it.  I took the 3 smaller ones first leaving them at the top, and then the heavy, large one.  Only had to wait 15 minutes or so for another train, but then again being on the wrong side, had to go down and up again when I got to Winchester.

The bus in Winchester is a bargain at 60p.  The train station is always a good place to pick these up.  But then, the town is tiny, but gorgeous.  Even at night, I'd forgotten how charming it is.  The bus had left me in front of the magnificent Guild Hall, where in 1995 I'd addressed a few hundred at the public meeting about the county's developing solid waste plan, and around the corner towards my digs for the night I immediately recognized the hotel I stayed in, now called the Wessex, with the large picture window and the huge, majestic Winchester cathedral filling it.  Again, though I'm just staying in a B&B, I've got wifi.  All right!   I'll have to come back to Winchester when I have more time. 

I ended up with 3 accommodations vying for me due to a comedy of errors.  First, my colleague Bob had offered his place except that he wasn't going to be arriving until about 11:15pm, so that was a last ditch offer.  He recommended a friend of his, John, and I called, but he said he was bursting at the seams, and recommended another.  Eventually, the last one responded and I hooked up with her.  But then, once I got to Christine's B&B, she said that John had rung and wondered if I'd like to go out with him for a drink.  I thought why not.  I still had plenty of energy and it was early ­ just after 7.   It turned into dinner and dessert at a pub, followed by a guided walk round and round Winchester.  He said that he thought he was booked up, since one guest had asked to stay an extra day and didn't, and would have preferred to have me.  Winchester is very very old, and has a wall from the Saxon times, defending the town from the Vikings.  The first school still in existence is there ­ we looked inside.  Amazing, with cobblestones inside as the flooring, stone walls, and the multi-arched ceiling looks like a mini cathedral.  So many walls and buildings in Winchester are built of flint or chert, a very durable stone related to quartz, the 3 pr 4" stones laid into a concrete matrix.  A very shallow river runs through town, which is just gorgeous.

Tomorrow ­ off to Amsterdam ­ incontinent.