Really old stuff

Tuna

Wednesday 05 June 2019

A plan! It was a great plan, and with a reasonable amount of thought put into it. What could go wrong?

First stop was Gloucester. Gloucester isn’t a big place but the cathedral was supposed to be pretty and the Grey and Black Friars interesting. After a leisurely breakfast we toddled off down the M-something and lots of A-somethings, I made The Albatross take a wrong turn down a dead-end road and we got there.

Greyfriars is the remnants of an old Tudor friary church. We turned up; however, they weren’t open until 10.30am so that was annoying. Ok, let’s go see the Gloucester Cathedral, seemed like a sensible idea. Yes, but no. It was closed to the public as there were kids inside doing something scholarly but we were allowed in between 12-1pm. Not happy Jan!

Let’s go for a walk around the docks, that could be interesting. Meh, it was ok, mainly lots of old warehouses converted into apartment complexes.

Right, it is after 10.30am so the Greyfriars should be open, but we can walk past the Blackfriars on the way there. Blackfriars is only open on Sunday and Mondays! Grrrrr! On to Greyfriars and it was open, well what we assumed was the Greyfriars. [Looking online now that I have internet access back in the apartment, we missed the Greyfriars but got a church, St Mary de Crypt.] It was a nice, pretty little church.

With still about 40mins to kill before we would be allowed in the Cathedral, we opted for an early lunch at Lily’s Tea Rooms and Restaurant. Lovely little restaurant full of the blue-rinse set.

Cathedral time. Yes, we could get in. The cathedral is supposed to be a classic bit of ‘English Perpendicular Gothic style’. It reminded me of La Sagrada Família in Spain, but less colourful, smaller and finished. A sign told us that a scene from the Harry Potter movie was shot here.

With Gloucester done we headed east to see the Great Witcombe Roman Villa. These were really cool and were in the backyard of some blokes farm.

Final stop of our well-planned day was Hailes Abbey. Founded in the 13th century by an Earl it became a local hotspot for monastic life, particularly after someone donated a vial of what he said was Christ’s blood. Later it was denounced and thought to be just red coloured honey. The Abbey was ‘dismantled’ during Henry VIII’s reign of not believing in the Catholic Church.