Wells on Wednesday

Hello!

On Wednesday I went to Wells. I took the 173 bus. Google maps says it only takes 45 minutes but I could have sworn it took twice that time to get back (probably because schools were getting out). Round trip was about 7 pounds (6.50 maybe?).

Basically it's a town with a Cathedral and a palace where the bishop lived next to it (aptly named Bishop's Palace), a place for the choir to live on the opposite side (Vicar's close), and a market west of all this. The city grew where it did due to natural "wells" that bubbled up from the ground. Water from the Mendip hills runs underground in a river and at Wells the water is forced to the surface (though I believe most of the river continues to run underground). Inside Bishops palace, there are some pools where you can see it bubbling up. It's probably hard to see, and not the best quality, but I took a really short video of it.

I posted 50 pictures to facebook and took about twice as much, partially because to take pictures in the church you had to pay for a photography permit (3 pounds) and I decided since I'd only paid 1/6th of the suggested donation I'd buy a permit to help out. I was really impressed with the stained glass windows. I was also impressed by the size of the church, considering that it's construction began in 1180. I feel like painting the roofs and putting the decorated bosses up and all that jazz would be pretty dangerous in that time. There was an older medieval and saxon church before the current cathedral was built. There was a garden outside the cloisters where you could see some of the old foundations. If you want to read more about the history of the church, their website is pretty good. They have guided tours at 11 and 12 (and in between too as well I think, there were plenty of guides) but I was content with just walking around, taking photos, and occasionally listening in.

I'm really glad it didn't end up raining all day. The forecast said it was likely to, and it was cloudy for most of the morning, but the sun came out a few times and there was even a bit of blue sky!

Overall it was a nice day trip. My motivation for going was mostly because Hot Fuzz was filmed there, and Brian loves that film. Unfortunately market square looks quite a bit different when there's an actual market going on there, so I wasn't really able to obtain pictures of the "set" that looked good, but I was still there. I also couldn't find the Somerfield Supermarket...(it's in the movie).

That's really all I have to say. I'm not sure how well I'll be able to blog about my trip to Italy next week and Austria and Munich after that. We'll see.