Scotland may well be our favourite place in the world*, but that collection of counties known by tourist guides and travel writers as "The West Country" comes a close second. Cornwall, with it's golden ribbons of beach, high cliffs and epic waves is beautiful, if outrageously hard to get to by road. Or any other way except air, really.
The road and rail connections, particularly to the far end of the Cornish Peninsula are laughably inadequate and I'm in complete agreement with Cornish friends who lament the lack of attention that has been paid to their infrastructure over the years. "If this was the South East we'd have high speed rail and a bloody motorway by now..." is a comment I've heard a lot. Although to be fair, I have some Cornish friends who rather like their county's relative inaccessibility and take the view that they have quite enough "grockles"** to contend with as it is...
The North East section of the West Country (if that makes sense) also has rather a lot to offer. The maritime city of Bristol, with it's rich engineering and sea-faring heritage is both beautiful and enthralling, claiming attractions like Brunel's SS Great Britain (literally about a hundred yards from the Caravan Club's site in Bristol - I know because the first time I went there I overshot the site's gate and had to use the SS Great Britain's car park to turn around in) and indeed his Clifton Suspension Bridge. Also, although we didn't visit on our most recent West Country outing, the "Baltic Wharf" Caravan Club site in Bristol is amazing!
It doesn't look like much to write home about as you arrive - as mentioned above, the first time I took the 'van there I missed the entrance completely, and the site is entirely enclosed by walls which I presume once surrounded some kind of industrial compound. But once you're pitched up you can step through a little door in the surrounding wall straight through to the dockside, and from there you can walk into the centre along the water's edge in no more than a few minutes, or even better, grab one of the water taxis that ply their trade around the city's rivers and docks. Highly recommended.
As is the city of Bath. Famed for the Roman and Georgian baths that give the place its name, its honey yellow stone houses, its stunning Georgian architecture and of course a certain Miss Jane Austen. Since I'm singing the city's praises, and as a member in good standing of the Northen Branch of the Jane Austen Society, I should perhaps gloss over the fact that Miss Austen really didn't like Bath all that much... We did. The Roman Baths in particular are an absolute must see. The plumbing is more than fifteen hundred years old, and it still works!
Fine as they are though, we didn't visit either of these excellent West Country cities on our most recent foray to that neck of the woods, choosing instead to head to pastures new and the excellent little city of Wells.
Wells is the smallest city in the UK, or so they say. The city of Ripon in North Yorkshire feels smaller to me, but according to the latest census Ripon has a population of nearly seventeen thousand while Wells can boast barely eleven thousand people among its citizenry.
Small it may be, but it is absolutely perfectly formed.
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| An amazing structure - probably even better when it isn't raining. Summer 2015, eh? |
Like many of England's ancient cities Wells is centred around its Cathedral, which is amazing. Work on the present structure began in 1175, and it is the oldest example of English Gothic architecture - although construction took a little over three hundred years to complete.*** Somehow the magnificent West Front escaped the puritan excesses of Cromwell and his merry crew and it retains the statues - about three hundred of them - which decorate the exterior and tell bible stories to anyone who happens to be passing.
The interior is equally impressive. I very much regret not forking out the four quid they charge for a photography permit, because I would have loved to be able to share some pictures of the various tombs and memorials (which again, seem to have avoided the pious vandalism of Cromwell and his cronies). But most of all, I wish I'd taken pictures of the clock.
Because it is, beyond all doubt, one of the most wonderful things we've seen on our travels. Since I can't show you a picture of it, I'll just have to describe the thing instead...
First of all, you have to understand that the clock is old. Really old. Old enough that we can't be absolutely sure when it was installed, but we know that a "Keeper of the Clock" was being paid from around 1392, so it's reasonable to presume that it was put in place around about that time. Obviously there's been some restoration over the years, and the original mechanism was replaced in the nineteenth century - but the original (as we were informed by the very nice man in ecclesiastical garb who told the little crowd of visitors we were part of all about it) is still functional and can be seen at the Science Museum in London. Essentially this thing has been marking time since the end of the fourteenth century - and that's not bad going!
The mechanism actually controls two faces - one inside the Cathedral, which as I said I didn't get a picture of because I'm too tight to pay the four quid for a photo permit, and one external which I meant to photograph, but forgot. Sorry. Never mind though, because the external face just looks like a regular clock. It's the internal face that warrants the attention.
Rather than the more familiar hands, this clock face sports a twenty four hour dial around its circumference. A little sun makes the trip around the edge once each day, giving the viewer a pretty accurate idea of the current hour and minute. At the centre of the clock is the Earth, with the moon revolving around it, showing the current phase. This geocentric view of the universe, with Earth at the centre and the Sun and Moon revolving around it was well accepted at the time of the clock's manufacture - and before we laugh too hard at our primitive ancestors, if you're working from naked eye observations it does actually makes sense.
However, this mechanical marvel is so old it is thought to be the only working automaton to present this pre-Copernican view. By the time clock making of this sort really took off, astronomy had matured a bit.
The face is a thing of beauty, exquisitely painted and gilded like only a medieval craftsman could. If that were all there was, that would be sufficient. If that were all there was, it would still be my very favourite clock. But this thing has another trick up its sleeve. Because every quarter hour, a group of jousting Knights go careering around the top of the clock face, and every quarter hour, one of them gets knocked from his horse. And I mean, not just once, they go around a few times, and it's always the same Knight who gets knocked off, sits back up and then gets knocked down again.
Think about that.
Every fifteen minutes since around 1392 this poor little bugger has been knocked off his horse a couple of times. And every time he gets back up again.
There's a Chumbawumba song in there somewhere. And perhaps a lesson for us all...
Even if there isn't, this clock does, I think, have a very important lesson in and of itself. At the time of its creation this was pretty much the state of the engineering art. Nothing, anywhere was more complicated or cleverer than this. But its creators were not content to just deliver a box full of cog wheels and gears and dials and levers. They added art. A blazing gilded sun, intricate painting, a whole bloody jousting tournament.
It wasn't enough to be cutting edge. They wanted it to be beautiful too.
We should take that lesson, we really should.
First of all, you have to understand that the clock is old. Really old. Old enough that we can't be absolutely sure when it was installed, but we know that a "Keeper of the Clock" was being paid from around 1392, so it's reasonable to presume that it was put in place around about that time. Obviously there's been some restoration over the years, and the original mechanism was replaced in the nineteenth century - but the original (as we were informed by the very nice man in ecclesiastical garb who told the little crowd of visitors we were part of all about it) is still functional and can be seen at the Science Museum in London. Essentially this thing has been marking time since the end of the fourteenth century - and that's not bad going!
The mechanism actually controls two faces - one inside the Cathedral, which as I said I didn't get a picture of because I'm too tight to pay the four quid for a photo permit, and one external which I meant to photograph, but forgot. Sorry. Never mind though, because the external face just looks like a regular clock. It's the internal face that warrants the attention.
Rather than the more familiar hands, this clock face sports a twenty four hour dial around its circumference. A little sun makes the trip around the edge once each day, giving the viewer a pretty accurate idea of the current hour and minute. At the centre of the clock is the Earth, with the moon revolving around it, showing the current phase. This geocentric view of the universe, with Earth at the centre and the Sun and Moon revolving around it was well accepted at the time of the clock's manufacture - and before we laugh too hard at our primitive ancestors, if you're working from naked eye observations it does actually makes sense.
However, this mechanical marvel is so old it is thought to be the only working automaton to present this pre-Copernican view. By the time clock making of this sort really took off, astronomy had matured a bit.
The face is a thing of beauty, exquisitely painted and gilded like only a medieval craftsman could. If that were all there was, that would be sufficient. If that were all there was, it would still be my very favourite clock. But this thing has another trick up its sleeve. Because every quarter hour, a group of jousting Knights go careering around the top of the clock face, and every quarter hour, one of them gets knocked from his horse. And I mean, not just once, they go around a few times, and it's always the same Knight who gets knocked off, sits back up and then gets knocked down again.
Think about that.
Every fifteen minutes since around 1392 this poor little bugger has been knocked off his horse a couple of times. And every time he gets back up again.
There's a Chumbawumba song in there somewhere. And perhaps a lesson for us all...
Even if there isn't, this clock does, I think, have a very important lesson in and of itself. At the time of its creation this was pretty much the state of the engineering art. Nothing, anywhere was more complicated or cleverer than this. But its creators were not content to just deliver a box full of cog wheels and gears and dials and levers. They added art. A blazing gilded sun, intricate painting, a whole bloody jousting tournament.
It wasn't enough to be cutting edge. They wanted it to be beautiful too.
We should take that lesson, we really should.
*Outside Yorkshire, obviously. I tend not to include Yorkshire when contemplating how much I like places, it's not fair to everywhere else.
**Tourists.
***I know - getting a reliable builder can be difficult. Apparently it would only have taken two hundred years but the builders had another job...
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