Wells via Glastonbury

Saturday, 23 November 2019

It is a 3 hour drive to Glastonbury, so we got a fairly early start and drove the 170 miles, arriving around 12:30 PM.  We are staying in Wells tonight, but we are stopping in Glastonbury on the way. 

First stop is the Glastonbury Abbey, the first Christian sanctuary in the British Isles.  This site has been a sacred site for hundreds of years starting with the druids.  In the 1st century, Joseph of Arimathea (the man who was responsible for burying Jesus), supposedly visited here and built a small church, making this the leading Christian pilgrimage site in all of Britain.

In 1184 there was a devastating fire bringing the pilgrimage to a halt.  In 1191, the abbot "discovered," with the help of a divine dream, the tomb and bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, bringing the pilgrims back...along with all their money.

In 1539, King Henry VIII destroyed all abbeys leading to the ruins we are seeing today.

A guided tour is included in the admission price, so we ate our sandwiches we bought at a convenience store, while waiting for the tour to begin.  Lucky us, we were the only ones on the tour.  The tour guide dressed up as a pilgrim from the 12th century which was pretty cool, although Tim only got a photo of here back:

Here are some photos from our visit:

And of course, the site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's tomb:

After the Abby, we walked through town.  This town is full of shops selling crystals due to the druid connection mentioned above and also because of hippies visiting the springs filled with healing water.  There are also many music and art shops due to the famous Glastonbury music and art festival held nearby.  Our first goal on this walk is to find, and taste the healing waters of the Red and White Springs.  After about 20 minutes we found them, right across from each other.  Here I am tasting the Red Spring water.  It was actually pretty good.

Across from the Red Spring is the White Spring which you can bathe in by entering this strange building:

Inside it was candlelit with shrines, antlers, crystals, and naked hippie-like people showering under cold water or soaking in cold water pools.  This is taken from their website.

The primary purpose of the temple is to honour The Spirit of the White Spring. It is an expression of gratitude for the gift of pure water. It is a sanctuary, a place of reflection, inspiration and healing. It is a sacred site of great depth and beauty. It is a living temple.

After getting our fill..and no, we didn't go into the water...I filled up my water bottle with White Spring water, which tasted better than the Red Spring water.  We then headed to Glastonbury Tor to hike to the top.  We are hiking to the tower in this photo.  It doesn't look too bad.

Did I say it doesn't look too bad?  Well, the walk was much steeper than anticipated.  This is looking down from almost the top:

Ah....made it.  The view was well worth the walk.

We started our hike down and decided to stop for a snack at a conveniently located bench.

It was now almost 3 PM, so we finished our snack and headed down the hill, through town, and back to our car (stopping for an awesome brownie at a bakery in town.)

Oh yeah...I forget to show you a photo of the Chalice Well Garden.  Behind this building is a well that Joseph of Arimathea (you learned about him above) dropped the chalice from the Last Supper into.  We didn't see it fitting to pay £4.50, so all you get is a photo of the building.

We were only 15 minutes from Wells, so arrived in town, parked, and walked to the Wells Cathedral.  We arrived there in time to walk around a little bit and take a few photos before they announced that the cathedral was closing unless you were staying for Evensong Service, so we stayed.  I do like listening to the organ playing with the boys choir singing.

Here are some photos of the cathedral.  It is England's first completely Gothic cathedral dating from around 1200.

Check out the figure-eight "scissor arches'...pretty cool.  I don't think we have seen this before.

Evensong ended at 6PM, so we were greeted with a lit-up church when we exited.

Wells was lit up for the season:

Our B&B is not actually in Bath, so we returned to the car and drove the 10 minutes.  As we checked in, the owners made a reservation for us the closest restaurant, The Pheasant.  We had a glass of wine in the room and walked 10 minutes to the restaurant.  We had a nice dinner and some beer and returned to the B&B.  Tomorrow we head to Portmouth for a 2 night stay.  Until then...