June 12th blog

If every day continues to be more amazing than the previous, I can’t wait to see what is next. We woke up bright and early this morning to catch a train to Salisbury. After the hour and a half train ride we arrived and took a bus to Wilton House. Riding the bus was an experience in itself, two way streets were only wide enough to be one way, so when two cars met there would have to be a standoff to see which one would back up to a driveway or some other side escape and let the other pass. The interior at Wilton House was beautiful, the 18th Earl of Pembroke currently resides there so we could only see a portion of the house, but it was definitely impressive. They have a very extensive collection of antiquity sculpture and Renaissance artwork, and many beautiful Chippendale and Kent pieces in their furniture collections. Upon our arrival we were served tea and cookies, or lemonade and danishes in our case. The grounds were beautiful, they apparently used to be in the French, highly manicured taste, but the ninth Earl of Pembroke preferred the Italianate styles of more wild gardens, so the grounds were changed into how they are at present day.

We all enjoyed the children’s park on the grounds that had many tree houses, huge slides, a low zip line, trampolines etc, all the “fun” toys you don’t get to play on in America any longer.


I wasn’t expecting much from Salisbury Cathedral, churches hear just seem to run together a bit, but I was pleasantly suprised.

When we entered the cathedral the wide open space was impressive, unlike most of the other cathedrals this one didn’t have a partition separating by caprice so you had an uninterrupted view.

We were then taken on a “rooftop” tour of the cathedral attics and it was amazing. I learned so much about medieval architecture, and it made the building and the sacrifice of the people that much more significant. In total we went up over five hundred steps or something like that, on four or five very narrow spiral staircases, and more than a few of us had to be careful not to look down or else you might just get a little too scared to go on, but when we reached the top it was worth it.