You think the huge, ancient medieval cathedrals of England and have been here forever and will be here forever. And then Notre Dame goes and catches fire and you realise how soon these massive monuments could vanish.
So I started a project to visit them all Before It Burns Down. Or Before A Plague Stops You Getting Around. I’ve let this one go a bit but it’s always on my mind and I’ll be getting back to it ASAP.
One thing I knew I wanted to do while I was in Germany was take the train up the road to Cologne and visit the cathedral. It’s only a little over an hour from Frankfurt and I’d heard rumours it’s a pretty good cathedral. I did balk at the price. I went to the ticket… More A Day Out of Frankfurt: Cologne Cathedral
You may – or more likely, may not – remember back in 2019 I started a series called Before It Burns Down, which is a very tasteless title for my plan to visit all the cathedrals, after having realised when Notre-Dame caught fire that these medieval behemoths might not actually sit and wait for me… More The weirdness and wonder of Wells Cathedral
This weekend I went to London for the first time in nearly two and a half years. It’s a bit busy for my tastes – I’ve become a lot more claustrophobic than I used to be and I really hate crowds nowadays. But I’d been hanging onto a ticket to see Queen + Adam Lambert… More 24 hours in London
Back in January, before 2020 really started, I went to London to cross some cathedrals off my list. The list started on April 16th 2019, when the Notre Dame fire made me realise that the great English medieval cathedrals might not be waiting for me to get round to them. Project #BeforeItBurnsDown kind of got… More On top of St Paul’s Cathedral
Good morning! Today I’m finally in the mood to tell you about my trip to Oxford in March. It was before social distancing and lockdown and isolation and whatnot but after the virus got loose in the UK. To frame it precisely, I was supposed to be going to a gig and I really didn’t… More Stay At Home Storytelling: Christ Church, Oxford
My first stop on my long weekend in York was York Minster. Well, my actual first stop, on the evening I arrived, was next door to my apartment, at the Barbican Theatre to see Rob Beckett. What kind of comedy fan, living next door to a theatre, isn’t going to pop round the corner for… More #BeforeItBurnsDown: York Minster
On April 16th this year, I suddenly realised that those eternal behemoths of days gone by might not be there forever, waiting for me to get around to visiting them and so Project #BeforeTheyBurnDown began. The very next morning I booked flights to visit the Sistine Chapel; that very weekend I went off to Winchester,… More A Pilgrimage to Canterbury: The Blogger’s Tale
Following the Notre Dame fire, my trip to Winchester and to the Sistine Chapel, the next stop on my “before it burns down” tour was Salisbury Cathedral. I mean, if it’s worth coming all the way from Moscow to see, it’s worth coming from Wessex to see. Easily done because my car spent eight hours… More Before It Burns Down: Visiting Salisbury Cathedral
Last Monday, a lot of big old heavy solid permanent monuments very suddenly became a lot less permanent. My reaction to the Notre Dame fire, once it had been established that most of the building had miraculously survived, was to book flights to Rome next month, primarily to see the Sistine Chapel. I also went… More A day at Winchester Cathedral