Holidays with a religious connection The Diocese of Salisbury (including Dorset and Wiltshire)

Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset was one of the wonderful places we visited on our week’s trip to the Diocese of Salisbury. It was the location for the famous 1973 Hovis TV advertisement, featuring a boy toiling up the hill on his bike to deliver bread, then freewheeling back down again, all to the strains of the New World Symphony by Dvorak.

Day 1 It’s a long trip from Sedgley to Fifehead Neville in Dorset, where we hired an old farm stables that’s been converted into a holiday cottage. We started at around 9.45am on Friday and arrived in Fifehead around 3pm.

The beautiful stables conversion in Fifehead Neville, our base for the week in Dorset.

The Stables cottage is on a working farm, which is mainly arable land. The family that owns it have lived there all their lives.

Day 2 On our second day we visited the superb Sherborne Abbey.

The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin is usually called Sherborne Abbey. It has been a Saxon cathedral, a Benedictine abbey, and now, a parish church.

The glorious painted fan vaulted ceiling above the choir and presbytery of Sherborne Abbey dates from around 1425.

The High Altar and reredos at Sherborne Abbey.

A gargoyle and drainage spout at Sherborne Abbey.

Sherborne was made the capital of Wessex, one of the seven Saxon kingdoms of England, and King Alfred's elder brothers King Ethelbert and King Ethelbald are buried in the abbey.

After visiting the Abbey, Martin explored the beautiful town of Sherborne.

Martin and Magda Jones January 2017 The Stables in Fifehead Neville, Dorset, is available from Sykes Cottages: http://www.sykescottages.co.uk/cottage/DorsetSomerset-Woodrow/The-Stables-1854.html