Father’s Day in Salsibury

We are on very familiar territory here and after a breakfast of eggs on toast and coffee of course, we embarked on our trek to the city centre. This is a 2 mile walk along the banks of the River Avon (River River) - one of the quirks of the English river system is the plethora of Avon Rivers basically utilizing the Brythonic name for river to name many rivers, I am reliably informed by the wizard behind the Google screen that there are nine rivers which call themselves river in the UK!

Anyway, I digress, on the way into the city we come across my picturesque extra of a toilet block. Why is that so interesting you ask? Well, you see it’s those blooming rivers again. Salisbury is graced by a total of 5 rivers and thankfully they are not all called Avon! In fact they were curiously named after the doors on this famous toilet block, Avon (of course), Wylie, Ebble, Nadder and Bourne: though there is some question over the last one, as in keeping with our conspiracy laden times, there are those who claim the river was named after the character Jason Bourne famously played by Matt Damon. But that was just in Tiktok so not sure about that.

On a more accurate note, the remarkable thing about these names is that they were also the names of wards on the Old Manor Mental Hospital where I worked for 2 years. Bourne was the lock up ward where I remember helping to administer a dose of haloperidol to a disturbed patient who was strong as an Ox and threatened to kill the nurse on duty! Thankfully the Old Manor is no more but the ward names live on at this famous toilet block.

Finally, after wandering around Salisbury and the crowds we took the opportunity to eat a Fathers Day roast dinner at The Haunch of Venison, the oldest pub in Salisbury which made its debut back a few years ago in 1320!

Later we had a great chat with Jamie and family and now it’s to sleep perchance to dream. Goodnight