The Palace of Versailles

The end of our visit to Versailles was drawing near - as indeed is the by now legendary photo of the scorch mark...

Passing through this archway we found ourselves once again in the courtyard, where we had shivered and gasped under the icy torrent of the thunderstorm of two or three articles ago. If you have no idea what I am talking about then shame on you and go back to recap it all!

Leafing through the guide book, it seems incredible what a very small fraction was seen of all that Versailles has to show. The clock in the Marble Courtyard had the hands symbolically stopped to show the time of the death of Louis XIV. (I use this excuse at home now whenever Miss Franny complains the battery has run out on the clock...)

The Sun King's symbol can be seen in the centre of the clock. As a child, whenever games of fancy dress were played, he would always choose the costume of the sun.

Looking up at the two wings of the house where we had been deluged both by storm and by drainage from the roofs. Actually the "wing" on the right is more like a chapel. It was hard to believe how totally we had been soaked. But a mere pat of the trouser legs brought it sharply back to mind! I apologised and reminded myself to pat my own trousers in future...

We said goodbye to Louis XIV, the Sun King, who had last been seen against a sky so dark that the floodlighting of the palace had switched on. Did the lightning really come as close as it had seemed?

It certainly did! This was not the only scorch mark in the area. And once we got back to the coach other passengers told us that all the fish were dead in one of the ponds, which made me think that lightning must have struck there also. We sat on a bench, eating baguettes whilst our coats were laid down in the sun to dry. As the coach pulled away a scream of laughter directed our attention to a German coach whose company name was an Anglo-Saxon word that I'm not going to repeat here!

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The Gardens of Versailles

Sunday 30 May 1999. We have been inside the Palace of Versailles following a soaking from Paris's greatest ever storm up to that date. We missed half of the upper floor and all of the ground floor rooms as time was moving on and we wanted at least a glimpse of the gardens. Probably you would need at least two days to see Versailles properly.

By now the sun was out and we came out of the house and started wringing out what bits we could. It was when we came to find our tickets for the gardens that we realised just how wet the inside of Fran's bag had got.

We presented the limp rag that was two card tickets irretrievably stick together to the very smart attendant, who was wearing a formal suit. Strangely he declined to take hold of it and waved us through to walk into the grounds. This is a couple of hours after the storm had finished and the gravel of the pathways would have dismayed anyone whose feet were not already making squelchy noises... My trainers did not dry out for a couple of days.

Quite apart from the water features the garden furniture and the formal layout of the gardens is wonderful. They were designed by Le Nôtre for Louis XIV not only for their own beauty but to enhance the architecture of the palace itself. The Parterres to north and south and particularly the Water Parterre, two wide ponds designed to reflect the palace as seen from the garden.

Le Nôtre's Grand Perspective. It commences with the Water Parterre then down the steps to the Fountain of Latona. Then down the slope to the Royal Avenue to the Fountain of Apollo before merging with the Grand Canal which is 1650 metres long. The Fountain of Latona tells a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Latona, Apollo's mother, having been ridiculed by the Lycian peasants, turns to Jupiter seeking vengeance. Jupiter turns the peasants into frogs. "Dammit!" he said to Mars afterwards, "I wanted them to choke - not croak!"

The fountains only flow for limited time, accompanied by classical music. As we skirted the Fountain of Latona, the water died. The gardens were extensive and our time was rapidly running out. It was also lunchtime and we had been told this was our only chance to buy anything to eat, so reluctantly we decided to leave the rest of the gardens for another visit (well, we can hope!) and we will move on to have a quick look at the exterior of the palace - and the scorch mark - just as soon as you click the relevant links...

Looking back up the slopes and steps towards the palace.

"Oy! Keep moving! No you can't have a lick of my ice cream..."

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Palais de Versailles

Sunday 30 May 1999. The coach set off at 9:00am for Versailles and although warm, it was rather dull. By the time we reached the palace it was obvious that a storm was in the offing.

None-the-less we left the coach - no choice actually as it was not stopping in the coach park at the palace - and we walked into the huge cobbled courtyard and joined a horrendously long line of people waiting to go into the palace itself. The people on the right are somewhere near the back of the queue and the front of it is between the two wings on the right.

It was going darker and darker and I left Fran in the queue and went to see if there was another way in. There wasn't. On the way back I photographed the statue of Louis XIV and the sky gives you some idea. It was to get darker however. As I got back to Fran I was surprised to see she had moved up the line quite a way. The more nervous were bailing out and heading for the cafe and toilets! A few drops of rain fell - I notice these things, being bald...

Hardly had the rain started than it suddenly got a lot darker. The automatic sensors assumed it was night and the floodlighting came on. There was a test flash of lightning and it was successful so there came a lot more... Suddenly it stopped raining and instead the air turned to water. At least that's what it felt like. I've been in Florida thunderstorms which I thought were bad but this was unbelievable. In no time at all everyone was soaked through to the skin with icy water whilst thunder and lightning were horrendously close. I'll show you the scorch marks later... The cafe and shop closed its doors as there were so many people fighting to get in they were in danger of suffocating. People were literally screaming - the air was so full of water that you could hardly breathe or see.

The gutters and drains of Versailles are wonderful. Water is collected off the roofs and pours out the mouths of gargoyles. Beautiful in a shower, but in this storm the people in the narrow space between the two wings of the building were subjected to the equivalent of a row of fire hoses directed onto them from the rooftop. It was ten minutes before another door was opened and by then the mass of people was so compacted as we huddled together that we were just swept into the building. In no time the floor of the foyer was awash as all you had to do was grip a bit of clothing and water would gush forth.

It took a long time to get tickets to go into the palace proper as by then the foyer was choked with people wandering aimlessly and dripping in several different languages. The caissier had given over asking and was simply ringing up the till and pointing at the displayed price. My glasses were misted over - I took out my handkerchief and added some water... Having got the tickets we squelched up the staircase and decided the jackets we were carrying were simply making our arms wetter. We stuffed them in a plastic carrier bag and forgot about them.

When the Revolution emptied the palace of its inhabitants and showed them what a good time you could have in a condemned cell, all the furniture was being taken out and auctioned off until it was realised what was happening and what remained was left alone. Consequently many of the rooms are empty of furniture. Some contain paintings and some contain odd items. The decor though in all rooms is stunning. Gilding is in evidence throughout and there are some wonderful ceiling paintings and mouldings.

Some national stereotypes were emerging. The French were standing, dripping and sullen. The Germans were all organised and taking coats off, folding them and putting them into bags. The Brits were taking shoes off and tipping them up to literally pour a stream of water out, shouting to their mates: "Ha ha ha! Look at this!!!" A peep though a window showed that the rain had almost stopped and certainly the storm had passed over. We were later told that Paris had never had such a storm. As I said - I'll show you the scorch marks later...

It must have been heartbreaking for the staff and custodians as almost everywhere the exquisitely tiled floors were just full of water from people's feet. They were lucky the floors weren't carpeted. Meanwhile back to just before the Revolution, Paris could be dangerous and the chateau at Versailles was far enough away to have warning of any mobs but not so far as to be unaware and unable to send troops. Besides, Louis' court lived there also and thus he had them under his direct control. From 1682 to 1789 Versailles was the home of the kings of France. Everything had been built especially for Louis XIV: the palace itself, the town to house the builders and the tradesmen who served and fed them, the gardens, the water supplies, and a large hunting park. There was only a couple of villages full of peasants who had to be ejected before work could start...

The hunting park is no longer part of the estate but even so there are 800 hectares of land, 20km of roads, 200,000 trees, 35km of canals, 2153 windows, 700 rooms and 67 staircases... We had no time to go through all the rooms and the ones that we did see we saw only briefly, taking a quick glance, a photo and moving on, leaving a little puddle of water if we paused too long... Happily, water is a distinct feature of Versailles and the fountains in the garden are absolutely beautiful. We shall see some of them later, but the fountains are only switched on for a limited time and for most of that time we were indoors...

Carrying on our trip around the Palace of Versailles we complete one wing of the building and find ourselves back looking through the doorway at the beautiful Royal Chapel. Whilst the rain had stopped, as you can tell from the trousers of the chap on the left, we were still all very wet! I was relieved to find my cameras were ok. Later when Fran checked her bag, we found that any paper in it had tended to fall apart - like money for instance... I checked my pockets and brought out a few soggy scraps of paper myself - money and tickets to the garden... They had just disintegrated and there were just lots of half-inch tatters of paper!

Louis XIV's clock of 1706 in the Mercury Drawing Room. On the hour, animated figures of the King and of Fame descend from a cloud. The room was the State Bedchamber in 1682 and now contains the bed that Louis-Philippe had made for the bedchamber of Louis XIV when Versailles opened as a museum.

The Hall of Mirrors connects the War Drawing Room and the Peace Drawing Room, all devoted to the victories of Louis XIV. It was decorated from 1678 to 1686 and it was here that courtiers would wait, hoping for the ear of the King as he passed through on his way to morning worship in the Chapel. The room was spectacular to say the least and it was easy to visualise the masked and full dress balls that were held within these mirrored walls.

One of the candelabra from the Hall of Mirrors. M'sieur Vallaire had told us that there were no bathrooms or toilets in the palace. Certainly, they didn't wash as much as modern folk, believing that too much washing destroyed the body's natural resistance to disease. He also said, Napolean liked a bit of smell and always sent a messenger home two weeks in advance to warn Josephine not to wash! Perhaps that's the real reason for "Not tonight, Josephine!"

This is one of gallery rooms, hung with massive paintings, thronging with saturated tourists. The paintings depicted Napolean and someone had carelessly left a dirty great column standing in the middle of the room. Not mentioned in the guide book, I can only suppose that in a state of excitement someone put it down and forgot to pick it up again...

This gorgeous room was Queen Marie-Antoinette's bedchamber. It was here that the queen gave birth publicly so that there could be no doubt as to the true identity of the heir to the throne. In her memoirs, Madame Campan, First Woman of the Bedchamber described a huge crowd rushing into the room to witness the Queen give birth, actually climbing on the furniture for a better look. The King and Queen each had their own apartments, decorated similarly.

Ok folks, we are about to go into some very soggy grounds and gardens. The lightning scorch mark is somewhere outside - you may want some time to prepare yourselves...

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Chiemsee and the Palace of 'Mad' King Ludwig

Tuesday 12 August 2003. After yesterday's sun, Mum is feeling the effects and so Mum and Dad opt to stay at the hotel for the day whilst Fran and I go on the planned trip which is to Chiemsee and the Palace of 'Mad' King Ludwig.

Our coach for the day is one of those double decker coaches and we manage to bag the front seats. We watch the archway approach with some interest...

Chiemsee is a large lake - the see part of the name means lake as in Achensee, Zell-am-See etc. See? Oops, sorry! Anyway, as soon as we arrive, we are herded gently onto a boat to cross to the island of Herreninsel.

This is home to Herrenchiemsee, an exact copy of the Palace of Versailles near Paris where in the 1600s King Louis XIV of France had turned a simple hunting lodge into a grand palace. When I say "exact" it was not altogether a strictly accurate copy. For one thing it was never finished - the wings are non-existent and as it dates from the advantage of a couple of hundred years after Versailles, it has a few upgrades, not the least being some electric lighting.

Ludwig was Ludwig II, King of Bavaria from 1864 and Herrenchiemsee was just one of several extravagant castles and palaces that he spent his entire fortune and some not inconsiderable borrowed funds upon. Because of this he was declared insane, taken into custody, deposed as king in June 1886 and the following day was found dead of supposed suicide. If it was suicide it killed his doctor too on the same day...

The copy of Versailles extended into the gardens, the statuary, the fountains and the canal. At Versailles the canal extends to a small artificial lake at its far end. At Herrenchiemsee it ends by opening out into the lake Chiemsee.

The time came to return to the boat and it was a very full load of people that returned back to our starting point.

As we walked from the pier back towards the waiting coach, we noticed rails set into the roadway. There were no overhead lines and we half expected a horse-drawn tram, but it was a full-blown train that arrived!

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A Weekend at Brooklands, London and Hampton Court Palace

Friday, 23 March 2018. We had booked ourselves in at the Weir Hotel and Pub in Walton-on-Thames and were going to fulfil a long-nurtured desire to visit Hampton Court, once home to Henry VIII and a few following kings and queens of England.

We motored down from Blackpool along the M6 wondering again why so many miles of motorway should be coned off and speed restricted for just a few yards of actual activity. By the time we got down onto the M25 and the land of drivers with evil glares, ever willing to open up a space to let you in then speeding into it themselves blaring their horns, we decided to visit Brooklands Race Track and Museum.

This was the first racing track in the world, constructed in 1907 and the site of many early speed records. It was also an early centre of aviation with aircraft factories and events centred there. The 1965 comedy film Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines is centred around a race track "Brookfield" that looks remarkably like Brooklands.

The track was steeply banked to allow the cars to achieve higher speeds on the curves. Only portions of the track still survive.

At this point the far edge of the track is 29 feet above the lower part. If you visit, do not be tempted to try to climb it. It is slippery and dangerous and a long way down, rolling and having your skin scraped off! I remained on the lower level with only a brief calculating glance wondering how far I'd get up even with a sprint. But then... I'm a bit past my sprinting years... About 50 years past them I think...

This was the finishing straight. The barriers were being placed that afternoon to cater for an event celebrating the Mini which would take place over the weekend with many hundreds of Minis being brought by clubs and individual owners. I had one myself in 1972. Great fun and much better to my mind than the ever expanding things that bear the Mini name these days.

In fairness to the museum at Brooklands I am not showing lots of photos of the fabulous collection of cars and aeroplanes in the collection. Apart from this which was a great surprise and joy. Babs was the Land Speed Record car of John Godfrey Parry Thomas. On 27 April 1926 Parry Thomas set a new World Record, taking his car through the measured mile at Pendine Sands in South Wales at a speed of 169.3 miles per hour (averaged from a two-way trip through the mile). Knowing it wasn't high enough to last for long he returned the next day and achieved 171.02 mph. On 4 February 1927 Sir Malcolm Campbell raised the record to 174.88 mph.

Parry Thomas made another attempt on 3 March 1927 on the sands, but his car was trailing smoke. On his return run Babs slewed sideways, rolled and then carved a gouge out of the sand as it spun round to a halt. Spectators raced to the rescue but found a grisly scene. Warning! Skip now to the next paragraph if you are of a sensitive nature... Parry was still sitting in the driving seat but some part of the car, possibly the chain that drove the rear wheels from the engine and which had snapped at around 2000 revs, had taken off a part of his head, which was lying on the sand at the side of the car.

Parry Thomas was buried at Byfleet Church at Brooklands. The car was left on and eventually sank beneath Pendine Sands. In 1969 she was excavated by Welshman Owen Wyn Owen and painstakingly restored. Parry Thomas had bought her for £125 from Count Louis Zborowski, whose racing cars were all named Chitty Bang Bang. Sounds familiar? Babs had been Chitty Bang Bang 4. Powered by its rebuilt 27-litre Liberty aero engine, it is once again in racing condition.

Similarly with the fabulous collection of aircraft, including the first British Concorde, VC10, Harrier Jump Jet, Wellington, Sopwith Camel, SE5a and Vickers Vimy and many more - this is the only photo I'm showing. This is the intrepid crew of His Majesty, The Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al Said's Vickers VC10 which was designed and built at Brooklands and is fitted out in the most opulent and luxurious manner once behind the cockpit. Even the toilet is spacious enough to allow the Sultan's valet to be in attendance.

Time was marching on and we took our leave of Brooklands, having spent a fabulous hour and a half there. Even so we missed several exhibits including the entire building housing London buses. We'll wait for next time when three will come round together...

This is The Weir at Walton-on-Thames. Basically a pub but it was very comfortable, we were welcomed and looked after and the food was excellent. We had the room with the three windows in the gable above the open door on the right and had a lovely view over the river and use of the balcony.

There is, as the name suggests, a weir on the river at this point but it is on the far side of the river and it was possible only to see the foam produced by water pouring over the out-spill and not the out-spill itself. On our side of the river an unobstructed channel allowed small boats and skiffs to by-pass the weir.

On the Saturday we caught a train from Walton station into Waterloo, London and walked our feet off, visiting Westminster Abbey and then walking up to and along the shops of Regent Street and Oxford Road before heading back to Waterloo. I have to say I found Westminster Abbey disappointing. You can no longer get into the Shrine of Edward the Confessor where many of our past kings are buried, but have to pay extra to do so in a small group. "It's a very delicate area and the jewels have all been stolen from the shrine," I was told when I asked the reason for the closure. They didn't mention that the jewels were stolen many hundreds of years ago and that they were simply taking more money off people who had already paid a not inconsiderable entry fee.

My other gripe is that so many of the tombs are not labelled, but have lengthy Latin inscriptions in a far from easy to read font and even with a vague smattering of latin I wasn't able to determine who was in most of them. Elizabeth I's tomb is obvious as is King Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York (the White Princess). But I'm not really sure if I identified Margaret Beaufort's monument correctly and couldn't find Anne Neville, the widow of King Richard III at all. I'm afraid I came out feeling rather cheated...

We had been told that it was a walk of about three miles to Hampton Court, from the hotel along the tow path of the Thames. I'd have thought nearer to four miles. I don't have long legs at my manly five foot five and on Sunday morning it took us about one hour and twenty minutes to walk there, not counting a short break for a morning coffee at East Moseley Cricket Club.

The weather kept dry, even if it wasn't promising anything and the views along the river were pleasant, but we were happy to come to a bridge across the river and see the Palace of Hampton Court beyond it.

Once again I am not going to publish any photographs of the fabulous interiors. You are allowed to take photographs in most rooms apart from the Crown Room holding the replica of King Henry VIII's state crown and the Cumberland Gallery where some very famous and well-known paintings are hung. The Great Hall is huge and instantly recognisable from TV programmes such as The Tudors or Wolf Hall. There is the Haunted Gallery - part of Henry's processional route from his quarters to preside over his wider Court on Sundays and Holy Days. Along this corridor his fifth queen, Catherine Howard, about to be arrested for adultery in 1541, ran to find Henry and plead her innocence but was seized by guards almost within reach of his door and was dragged screaming back to her own rooms. It is said that her ghost haunts the gallery. But she must have been taking the day off...

But it is an earlier queen, Queen Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, for whom much of the royal palace was furnished and built. Thomas Wolsey had created a spectacular palace here and in 1525 presented it to the king. Unable to secure the King a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry chucked him out of the palace in 1529 and started building anew, spending vast sums of money to create chambers for his intended new bride. She was never to take up residence here. Looking across the Clock Courtyard, to Anne Boleyn's Gate, which was at least named after her. Perhaps not by Henry....

The astronomical clock with its single hand has a 24-hour dial around the edge, a rotating outer dial showing the day, date and current sign of the zodiac and an inner lunar dial rotating to show the phase of the moon. High and low tides are indicated - essential as the principle form of transport to London was by barge, as the rapids between the piers of London Bridge were very treacherous.

After the walk to the palace and then a few hours walking around it, we decided to ride back to the hotel and, walking down to the railway station, picked up a taxi without any problem. We got back a good deal quicker than we had taken to make the outward journey that morning!

It was now Sunday afternoon and the pub was very busy. We found a table and sat with a drink, or two, whiling away the afternoon before deciding it was time to eat. I took a couple of photos of the bar as it was starting to go dark. A company whose premises were opposite the rear of the pub found a car parked right across their entrance and phoned to see if it was someone at the pub. The staff made enquiries but no-one admitted to it and over the course of the next hour, much excitement was made of the arrival of the Police and eventually a tow truck... Someone was going to return to their car a sadder and hopefully less self-important person than they had been when they ignored the possibility of the entrance being in use!

And then the sun went down in spectacular style across the river. Was it just those stories of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, or was there really a headless ghost haunting the riverside?

A final look at the Weir Hotel Walton-on-Thames. I would without hesitation recommend it.

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Wells, Somerset and its Cathedral

Monday 25 May 2015. Our last day, Spring Bank Holiday Monday and we say goodbye to Mary, Rod and their family at The White House B&B and head into Wells for a look round before setting off on the long journey back up the motorway to Blackpool.

It is England's smallest city. The Crown Hotel is a 15th century coaching inn. There are several equally imposing and ancient inns in the vicinity. The previous day we had sat in one of them in a cellar that had once been prison cells!

A few of the shops in the cathedral area have the old windows from way back and it reminds me of the shops in Sidmouth that we saw last year.

Two impressive medieval arches lead from the market place. This one leads to Wells Cathedral and is known as the Penniless Porch as it is where beggars traditionally asked for money. They still do, there was one there today...

The other leads to the Bishop's Palace. Built by Bishop Thomas Beckynton in the middle of the 15th century - we'll learn more about him later - it is known as The Bishop's Eye as, from it, the bishop or his agents could keep watch on who entered the city.

The Bishop's Eye leads to a green sward before the moated Bishop's Palace. Complete with drawbridge and portcullis, he was having no pagans coming from Glastonbury, ringing bells and smoking hashish and giving flowers to just anyone!

Under this window a bell hangs. A bishop's daughter trained the swans on the moat to ring the bell and would reward this behaviour with a treat thrown from the window. The swans have throughout recent history lost the knack due to tourists feeding them bits of bread - which is very bad for them anyway - and during the 1980s they learned it again. I presume now they have lost it again as there were signs advertising bags of duck food for sale nearby... I would love someone to tell me they do still ring the bell for a treat!

We would perhaps have had a look at the Bishop's Palace, but we wanted to see the cathedral and we did have a long journey to make later that day! The Bishop's Eye seen from inside.

And so into the cathedral. You have to pay for a license to take photographs inside - this applies whether you have a top range camera or just your phone. It was well worth paying a few pounds to be able to take these memory stretchers!

The tower at the crossing was damaged by an earthquake in the 13th century and 100 years later was found to be sinking into Wells' rather boggy ground. To stop it falling, it was supported by the addition of unusual "scissor" arches on three sides. You either love or hate these but there's no doubt that they do the job they were designed to do!

There is some glorious stonework in the cathedral too. I have a copy of Arthur Mee's excellent King's England book for Somerset and to my chagrin realised I had left it at home when we were halfway to Somerset, so inevitably I missed some of the highlights. Still... that's a good reason to come back sometime! The photo shows a pair of 15th century chantries that face each other in the nave.

The fabulous astronomical clock dates from the late 14th century. We arrived in front of it just five minutes before 11 o'clock and sat expectantly waiting for the hour to strike. Then just a couple of seconds before it did, someone sitting next to me struck up a conversation...

Above and to the right of the clock sits this little figure, known as John Blandifer. He strikes the hour on the bell hanging before him, but rings each quarter hour by kicking his heels back against two smaller bells. This same action causes two knights in armour to strike bells with their battle axes on the outside wall of the cathedral. At the same time four knights charge at each other on horseback above the clock face, the victim flopping back in the saddle! The Victorians replaced the clock mechanism - but sent the original to the Science Museum in London where it is still working!

The tomb of Bishop John Still. He was bishop here when Shakespeare was writing and should be remembered himself for his own penmanship. But few remember his name as they read to their children his nursery rhyme Little Jack Horner...

A rather ornate memorial to Bishop Richard Kidder who died in a great storm in 1703 when the chimney of his house fell onto the good bishop and his wife in bed.

I found this quite sad - though a look around any old cemetery or graveyard will convince you how lucky we are these days in our healthcare... Nathaniell Selleck and his wife Ann were unfortunate enough to lose their their daughter Margaret in 1676 but then two years later had another daughter, naming her Teophila - a Greek name meaning "Loved by God". He loved her so much that He took her also at the tender age of three. On Teophila's tombstone the stonemason misspelt her father's name and had to add the second and final "L" in the little space available.

The first use of an organ in the cathedral was recorded as being in 1310. A subsequent one of 1620 was destroyed by the Roundheads in 1643 and its replacement of 1662 was itself replaced by this one of 1909-10 which incorporates some of the older instrument.

I took so many photos of the interior I can't hope to show them all here. This is the choir. Music plays a large part in the cathedral's life and a lunchtime recital was due to be given that day by a ladies' group.

One of the effigies from the tomb of Thomas Beckynton who was the Private Secretary to King Henry VI, surely one of our most unhappy monarchs. Reigning in the time of the Wars of The Roses he was usurped by the Yorkshire King Edward IV and found life so intolerable he spent months at a time not showing any sign of being aware of any thing, event, or person around him, leaving his unpopular French queen, Queen Margaret of Anjou to defend his throne. Thomas was made Lord Privy Seal from 1433-34 and became Bishop of Wells and Bath in October 1433.

His tomb has two effegies. The one we saw first has him in his bishop's robes whilst, below, he lies as he was to become after death.

He had the tomb built 13 years before his death and so walked the aisles of Wells, being reminded of what he would become. In Victorian times his tomb was opened and he was found to have been buried with no regalia but for his Bishop's Ring, which was removed and placed in a museum.

We are coming to the end of our visit. Leaving the church, we pass again into the cloisters. These are a bit of an anachronism - Wells was never a monastery, but perhaps the cloisters had a function as a processional route.

I left the cloisters and had a quick look around the square court they surrounded. The oldest thing to see here is the oblong stone jutting into the flower bed. It was first used by the Romans.

The west front of the cathedral is stunning. Would that every cathedral in the country had kept as many statues in their niches.

Yet Wells has not escaped totally unscathed. Of almost 500 there are well over 300 statues still here, some whole, some worn and some, including the topmost figure of Jesus above his twelve apostles, damaged by the bullets of Monmouth's rebels in 1685.

We passed back through Penniless Porch into the Market Square. This is the drinking fountain with three sides. Only one side of the three still flows of this fountain, built around 1799 to replace an earlier one that had been pulled down due to its condition in 1756. The earlier one dated from 1451 and was erected at the behest of our old friend and cadaver, Thomas Beckynton.

We made our way back to the car and with a smile for a brilliant weekend spent with good friends and great surroundings, turned northwards towards the M5 and Lancashire.

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