Winchester. March 24, 2025

Winchester Cathedral

Winchester Cathedral

You’re bringing me down

You stood and you watched as

My baby left town

Is there anyone of my vintage who can see a reference to Winchester Cathedral without hearing that song from the sixties in her head?

A visit to the cathedral, a reverent pause at Jane Austen’s tomb, and attendance at evensong. Such calm and peace and beauty with only a score of souls at one of the mightiest cathedrals in Christendom! (Although the  traditionalist in me was a little perturbed that the lesson no longer endeth, but ends.)

It had been a long flight, after a long layover, and then a trip in a National Express bus along a clogged, polluted motorway which made me wonder what had happened to this green and pleasant land. 

I alighted at a Park and Ride that could have existed anywhere else in the modern world, and strolled a mile or so into the old town. I was back in old England. I passed, or rather trespassed (a bunch of public school lads informed me that it was private property, but they wouldn’t tell anyone) through Winchester College, a school, according to the security person who escorted me out, that was founded in the fourteenth century. 

I was staying at the Wykeham Arms, an authentic pub in every way. A score of beers on draught, paintings of sailing ships, rows of pewter mugs hanging from an oak beam, an old clock unusually telling the correct time, a line of shepherds’ crooks hanging from the ceiling, various caps and hats, cartoons and photos of people and places on every square inch of the wall, including a photo of the Lord’s XI in 1907, and one of the Queen, of course. I ate my meal on an old school desk with a circular hole for an ink well, in which we used to dip our nibs into Stevens Ink and flick them at the person in front. And underneath, no it couldn’t be, yes it was, a piece of chewing gum. Was it 75 years old, or had someone  added it later, nostalgically? I refrained from chewing it to see if any of the old flavour remained. PK or Juicy Fruit, I wondered. 

Tomorrow, I walk to BIshops Waltham, and then on to Portsmouth for the ferry to France.

The Wykeham Arms