We had intended to set off around 10am but had run a little behind schedule. As we were just about ready to leave, the phone rang which contributed to us leaving nearly an hour later than we had intended.

We consulted ‘The Extra Mile’ book to find a suitable place for lunch and settled on Ferns Bistro which is located in the Malthouse Emporium near to Tewkesbury. We initially struggled to locate the place because we were looking for a refurbished malthouse instead of the modern day pre-fab factory building that it turned out to be.

After lunch we had a mooch around the Emporium which has an eclectic mix of new and pre-loved items for sale. We left the building empty handed and headed into Gloucester to visit the Cathedral.

Neither of us remembered the nave of the church from our previous two visits. It was only when passed through the transept that the building became familiar with its side chapels and glorious stained-glass windows.

I did, however, remember the Labyrinth from my first visit to the Cathedral and it was lovely to see it installed once again albeit for a few weeks only. I would have loved to walk it but sadly there was not enough time to do it justice.

Outside of the main Cathedral building are the cloisters. These are stunning and well worth a visit in their own right. They featured in some of the Harry Potter films and, as we walked round, we noticed a youngster in a Gryffindor cloak having his photograph taken at various locations that featured in the films. My favourite part of the cloisters is the Lavatorium, the communal washing area for the Monks in mediaeval times.

We also navigated some spiral stairs to visit the Tribune Gallery exhibition and get a closer look at some of the higher-level Cathedral features, including the Great East Window. It is on this level that you can experience the ‘Whispering Gallery’ and test out the acoustics in the narrow, almost hidden passageway.

Before leaving the Cathedral, we stopped for refreshments in the Monk’s Kitchen where I was tempted to a maple and pecan slice. The atmosphere in the Cathedral was hot and humid and this was intensified in the small café room.

As we made our way back to the car park, we noticed that Gloucester has become rather run down and that many shops are empty. When we booked in at our hotel, Hatton Court the receptionist commented on the state of Gloucester and suggested that the Cathedral and the Docks were the best parts of the city and that Cheltenham was a better place to visit.

We left our luggage in our room and headed for the hotel terrace for a refreshing drink looking over the Gloucestershire countryside, which was partially obscured by wedding/event tents erected in the hotel’s garden area.

Later we dined in the hotel restaurant where we opted for a sharing dish; pan fried venison steak served on poppadoms accompanied by rice, curry sauce and other small accompanying dishes. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the plate of food art. Later we chilled out in the bar area before retiring for the evening.

The lavatorium (‘washing place’) in the north walk of the cloister is decorated with a delightful small-scale fan vault. The trough with its drainage holes would have been lead-lined, and on the shelf behind there would have been lead tanks with taps at the front. The lavatorium was used for hand-washing before meals. The whole community of monks would line up in order of precedence to wash and dry their hands. They would then process in silence into the refectory. The open alcove opposite the lavatorium is where their towels were hung.*

The cloister lavatorium was glazed in  1868 by John Hardman of Birmingham using designs by Powell.

The main lights, appropriately for the monastic washing area, illustrate episodes from Christ’s ministry associated with water, the one exception being the lights furthest east, which depict creation. The glass is of the highest quality and among the finest in the cathedral.*

*From Gloucester Cathedral FAITH, ART AND ARCHITECTURE: 1000 YEARS by Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral 2011

Gloucester’s great Cloister is famous for its magnificent fan vaulting, which is believed to be the earliest example in England.

Originally built to house the monks, it provided space for them to live, work and meditate. In many abbeys, the cloisters were traditionally built on the south side, but at Gloucester, it unusually lies on the north.

Using the normal Benedictine layout, all of the domestic buildings would have originally branched off three of the cloister walks.

Begun in the late 14^th century and finished by Abbot Froucester before 1412, it replaced an earlier Norman cloister.

The design itself incorporates a row of twenty carrels (niche like spaces), which would have originally houses desks for the monks to study. The Cloister also includes a lavatorium, (washing place) which would have made use of a local stream.

Christ Church was originally founded by Cardinal Wolsey as Cardinal’s College in 1524. The college buildings took over the site of St. Frideswide’s Monastery, which was suppressed by Wolsey to fund his college

The monastery dated back to the earliest days of Oxford as a settlement in the 9th Century AD. When Wolsey fell from power in 1529 the College became property of King Henry VIII. Henry re-founded the College in 1546 and appointed the old monastery church as the cathedral of the new diocese of Oxford. The new institution of cathedral and university college was named Aedes Christi, which is rendered in English as Christ Church. It is due to its ecclesiastical function that Christ Church’s principal, the Dean, is always a clergyman.

During the English Civil War (1642-1646) King Charles I lived at Christ Church. He held his Parliament in the Great Hall and attended services in the Cathedral. After the war and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the College was rewarded for its loyalty to the House of Stuart by being able to raise enough money to complete the main quadrangle (Tom Quad).

A former student, Sir Christopher Wren, was commissioned to design a new bell tower in 1682, which houses the bell, Great Tom, from which the tower and the quad get their names.

The Dean who supervised this work, John Fell, was an unpopular man inspired the famous verse, “I do not love thee Dr Fell; The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not love thee, Dr Fell”.

Sitting right in the heart of Oxford but bounded by its Meadow and the Rivers Cherwell and Isis, Christ Church is architecturally stunning. The Cathedral is a Romanesque gem and is entered from Tom Quad (the largest in Oxford and Wolsey’s work). Christopher Wren’s Tom Tower is the college’s most famous feature and an Oxford landmark. Striking additions in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries complete what is not simply a panorama but a place for living and working.

Follow the footsteps of the world’s favourite wizard through Oxford’s most spectacular College. Many of the scenes in the Harry Potter feature films are shot in various locations of the College and as you walk around the cloisters and quadrangles it is easy to see why.

This continues Christ Church’s long association with children’s literature – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were inspired and written here by Lewis Carroll. If you enjoyed the film or the books, come and soak in the atmosphere of a real Hogwarts.

The Great Hall was replicated in the film studios to create Hogwart’s Hall. Only one of our portraits moves, sadly, but many of the faces are the real “Wizards” who have changed the way we understand the world. As Harry and the new first-years enter Hogwarts they are greeted by Professor McGonagall. This scene was shot on the 16th century staircase which leads up to the Great Hall. It was just as well they didn’t film this when the Hall was first built, since the wonderful vaulted roofing was only put up 150 years after the staircase. You would have got very wet going for dinner if it rained!

The cloisters in Christ Church were first built 1000 years ago. This ancient vintage made them the ideal setting for various scenes. It is here that Harry is shown the trophy his father won as a seeker in Quidditch. We don’t know if the monks who originally lived around the cloisters had their own special games. If they did, they took the secret with them when they left 500 years ago. But who knows……….

Salisbury Cathedral has the largest cloisters of any British Cathedral.

The cloisters were started as a purely decorative feature only five years after the cathedral building was completed, with shapes, patterns, and materials that copy those of the cathedral interior.

It was an ideal opportunity in the development of Early English Gothic architecture, and Salisbury Cathedral made full use of the new techniques of this emerging style. Pointed arches and lancet shapes are everywhere, from the prominent west windows to the painted arches of the east end. The narrow piers of the cathedral were made of cut stone rather than rubble-filled drums, as in earlier buildings, which changed the method of distributing the structure’s weight and allowed for more light in the interior. The piers are decorated with slender columns of dark gray Purbeck marble, which reappear in clusters and as stand-alone supports in the arches of the triforium, clerestory, and cloisters. The triforium and cloisters repeat the same patterns of plate tracery – basically stone cut-out shapes – of quatrefoils, cinquefoils, even hexafoils and octofoils. Proportions are uniform throughout.