WINCHESTER

Breakfast and packing, first thing, as we listened to the UK election results on out hotel TV.  Sounds all too much like home.  I particularly liked this op-en piece in today's issue of The Guardian.  To a liberal like myself, it's all rather depressing.

BUT... back to the important things.  Our rental car arrived promptly at eleven.  We had reserved the smallest VW on the list, but were bumped up to a Mercedes hatchback--small, but certainly more of a car than we had ordered.  Navigation system, all the bells and whistles.  The man from the rental company spent a good half hour showing me how it all worked, but by the time I climbed in I had forgotten most of it!

I had dreaded the drive out of London, but it proved to be much easier than expected--a straight shot from Harrod's, along the A4 and out onto the M4.  Not a problem.  We made a stop for a map and a bite to eat at one of those motorway service stops, and decided to make a detour into Winchester to see the cathedral on our way to the New Forest.  A lovely stop.  Here's our little Mercedes in a hard-to-find parking spot...

The cathedral--immense, for so tiny a city...

...has a thousand-year history and its interior spaces are quite beautiful.

It happened that we arrived--a few minutes before 3PM--at just the moment when the nation as a whole marked the end of WWII.  VE Day.  Victory in Europe.  (Japan was yet to come.)  At Winchester Cathedral, the moment was marked with two minutes of silence--an extraordinarily moving experience when every tiny echo of a sound came to a halt in that vast, normally echoing space, and the silence seemed to reach into infinity...

We listened to the prayers for the dead that introduced the silence, and joined in the Lord's Prayer that concluded the ceremony.  I thought not only of the British war dead--the soldiers and the civilians--but also of the millions of innocents in the concentration camps.  And, by extension, the millions of Germans, Russians, and others who died in that dreadful conflict.  I thought, too, of my sister, who is still in her hospital bed in Cheltenham, and sent her healing wishes.

Our tour of the cathedral was inspiring.  We saw not only the many, many ancient tombs...

... the twelfth century illustrated Winchester Bible (no pictures allowed, check out the link), the tiles...

Excuse my toes!

... supposedly the oldest medieval tiled floor in the UK--and the fine architectural detail from so many years ago...

... but also a very lovely contemporary work by one of our favorite artists, Anthony Gormley, whose figure stands alone in a crypt chapel, lost in deep contemplation in his solitude.  A lovely, moving piece of art...

From the cathedral, we strolled through the nearby city streets, ending up at the magnificent town hall...

...before walking back through a delightful little park...

... to find our car.  A long, slow drive out of town through jammed, narrow streets, and on to the edge of the New Forest, where we found our hotel with little trouble (thanks to the navigation system!) and settled in.  An excellent meal in the hotel dining room, including one of the most delicious salads we've ever had--it involved, primarily, beetroot and fresh horseradish and horseradish sorbet...  The place is renowned for its cuisine.  To bed, then, with stomachs heavier than they should have been!