Wilton Now

Wilton today is a tiny village about three miles west north west of Salisbury. The carpet factory still makes carpets, Wilton house is open in the summer and there is a beautiful Italiante church to see.

The town is walking distance from Old Sarum and British Land HQ (MoD). It is also close to Stonehenge, Woodhenge and Boscombe Down (The RAF test base).

The village is mostly four streets (North, South, West, Silver) around a market square and the ruins of an ancient church. Market day is Thursday and is the closest thing to a supermarket te village has. You can buy fresh bread and local cheese and there's a butcher who puts you off them by hanging up whole dead animals. And you can buy hardware/expired batteries/Barbie dolls/snail bait/kitchenware from a man who stands around shouting 'Torlet apypa fer a pownd! Wype yer arese fer a pownd!' and such. There really is no other way to buy Barbie dolls (fer a pound).

There is also a strange fellow who sells garden gnomes. Makes them himself far as I can tell. I wish I'd been able to find one to travel with. They're harder to swipe than the Garden Gnome Liberation Front makes out. But back to Wilton...

Wilton House was the set of a Jane Austin move and some crazy film about Mozart that's due out sometime this year. Terry Pratchett lives in the area.

If you're going to visit do so in the spring, the fields and meadows are green, there are daffodils everywhere and ducks everywhere with their ducklings, and the women wear fewer clothes and the motorists honk and shout at the ducks in the road.

Wilton House gardens are very beautiful and there's a place there where you can go at four or five in the evening to gawk at tourists eating cream cakes and drinkng tea. Presumably because that's what some tourists think that's what the English do at that time of day.

Alternatively, if you are visting England you can go to one of the local pubs and gawk at what people in rural England really do at that time of day, which is drink bitter. Bitter is a flat, warm dark kind of beer - not as creamy or dark as stout. Whilst drinking people typically complain about their job/family/climate/politicians/Europe, harass the barmaids and talk about one another.

If you're visting, be aware that rural England can be incredibly insular. The UK is not one country to the people who live there and the county is the geographical area many assosciate with.