Chicester

Last weekend John and I went to the Weald & Downland open air museum. I think their website sums it up the best: Set in 50 acres of beautiful Sussex countryside is a very special place to wander amongst a fascinating collection of nearly 50 historic buildings dating from the 13th to the 19th century, many with period gardens, together with farm animals, woodland walks and a picturesque lake.

It was a really cool place. They have dismantled these buildings and re-built them on the site. Some of the buildings were furnished and some were bare, but they were all very old.
It was a really pretty, sunny day although very cold. We took a break and got some hot chocolate/tea and cake to try to warm up, but it wasn’t until later in the evening, after a hot bath, that I finally warmed up!

They had big shire working horses there that kept passing by, pulling wagons filled with hay and so forth. We also saw some piglets and their big fat momma pig. A volunteer we were talking to said they kill one of the pigs every year and eat him. :-(

After the museum we went into the Chicester town center to walk around the cathedral. It was really pretty. They had really nice elderly volunteers when we walked in who were handing out brochures and welcoming us. They didn’t mention anything about suggested donations, which surprised and delighted me. I saw a pretty high-tech (for a church) computer screen that said we could make a credit card donation using the machine, so we happily did that. When we walked to the other end of the cathedral we saw a square hole in the ground with glass covering it that exposed a Roman mosaic that was buried underneath the church. There was a small machine on the wall nearby and a sign that said ‘Insert 20p to light up the mosaic’. Clever. Then there was a sign to the church treasury, and at the entrance to that was a turnstile that was operated by inserting 50p. And we passed another big machine that allowed you to make credit card donations. So this church that was built in the 9th century had become very wise to taking advantage of all the ways to extract money from people in the 21st century!

After seeing the cathedral we went for a late lunch at a nice Italian restaurant. We were so tired that we called it a day after that.

On Sunday John’s dad and his girlfriend took us to lunch as they were in Basingstoke. We had a nice meal at our favourite country pub, The Fox.