So if we add up the Chilmark, Purbeck, Lead, Timber, and an allowance of 75 tonnes for the stained glass plus another 50 tonnes or so of random artefacts (stalls, pulpits, altars etc) we get around 80,000 tonnes or 80 million kgs.

One litre of helium can lift about 1g (making a small allowance for the weight of the balloon itself) so to lift the cathedral you would need 80 billion litres of helium, or a balloon approximately 530m across.

(image produced by ME with no help from any AI agents, as you may be able to guess)

PS To my intense disappointment Mr Wikipedia tells me that the world’s entire helium reserves are less than half of this.  Also there is now a proposal to set up an International Helium Agency to stop people like me squandering helium on “wasteful usage” in balloons.

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The links on each book are to Goodreads.

Edward Rutherfurd’s “Sarum” – best by far. Read it at least twice, and then you can use it as a handy doorstop as it weighs about 3kg. The story of the stonemason Osmund carving the chapter house frieze is just great.

Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” – not about Salisbury despite what everyone says. Also everyone in the book ends up exactly as unhappy as they were when it started. However the setting of the book during the period of maximum cathedral building is very interesting.

William Golding’s “The Spire” – written as an entry for the Nobel Literature Prize, which it won. No need to read this one – you can tell people you’ve read it because they won’t have got to the end either. The story finishes before the spire does, by the way.

Instead see if you can find a copy of “Elias – A story of the founding of Salisbury” which has been written by Sue Allenby, one of the guides at the cathedral.  It is thoroughly researched and is the book I wish I could have been clever enough to write.  It is however out of print so you will need to find a second hand copy.

And also sitting proudly on the line between non-fiction and fiction is Leslie Thomas’ “Almost Heaven” – I suspect that the byline “True and almost true tales about a cathedral” is simply there to allow him to tell true stories more freely.

You may be able to guess from this blog that I have spent more time reading non-fiction than fiction about Salisbury.  Some other Salisbury-based books I haven’t yet read are:

“Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain” by local author Barnaby Norris,

“Cathedral of Bones” which is the first in the Ela of Salisbury Medieval Mysteries series starring our very own Ela Longespee as a fictional detective (hmm) by J.G. Lewis, and

“The Red Room” in the Atticus Priest series by Mark Dawson.

And finally, in my constant quest to ensure that you spend even more time discovering things, there is a marvellous site called Mappit which allows you to search books by their location.

Here is the entry for Salisbury Cathedral – as always, check your diary for the rest of the day before clicking on this one: https://www.mappit.net/bookmap/places/605/salisbury-cathedral-salisbury-england-gb/

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Here they are:

With the Wylye joining 3 miles upstream, the Bourne 1 mile downstream and the Ebble joining 3 miles downstream of Salisbury, I guess the phrase “where two rivers meet” isn’t quite so distinctive.

Anyway, it is important if you live here to be able to name all the rivers, and the trick is to know that they go in alphabetical order clockwise from the top: Avon, Bourne, Ebble, Nadder, Wylye.

And you will know that the word Avon means river and the word Bourne also means river, so the confluence of the Avon and the Bourne is truly where two rivers meet.

If you are still questing after the phrase “where five rivers meet” then you may want to see the post on some Lighter Reading.

The post Do five rivers really meet here? appeared first on 332 Steps.

And even if there was, where would it have come from?

Certainly not from the Calendario Romano, which takes itself very seriously as a purveyor of useful and accurate information about the Vatian City.

The fact that all the illustrations are of, er, well, young men in clerical attire is, I am assured, entirely coincidental.

The calendar costs €24.90 and I believe it can be dispatched in a plain paper wrapping if you wish to purchase it discreetly.

PS There are two versions of the calendar this year, and the second includes a picture of a cat. I suspect they are trying to broaden its appeal to Childless Cat Ladies just in case the offer of non-stop historical notes about the Vatican wasn’t sufficient.

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