Details of the 2007 Salisbury Arts Festival are now online. The festival takes place from 25th May to 10th June in venues across the whole city.
Visit the website for full details.
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Abbey Stores now have their very own blog. You can subscribe via RSS and keep up to date with the latest delicious offerings from this fine emporium of cider, real ale and tasty food.
Link: Abbey Stores Blog
As Christmas approaches, Salisbury’s shops gear up for the annual shopping frenzy, and the streets become decked with lights.
To help warm those stressed-out shoppers, Abbey Stores will be selling mulled wine this Thursday (21st December 2006), outside the chocolate shop on the High Street. Knowing them, it will be good wine with just the right amount of spice, and will require much restraint to limit yourself to just one glass… (and end up like Old Saint Nick, below) 
Believe it or not, but Salisbury has it’s own internet based community TV channel. Found by chance whilst researching an article for the Scrutineer, Vision News says that it provides “local news with a personal touch”.
The videos on Vision News cover all aspects of Salisbury, from politics to local commerce. The video quality is superb, but you do need a very fast internet connection to be able to watch them ‘live’ - i.e. without having to wait ages for the whole thing to download. The style of each episode is that of an on-location local news feature, with a reported who smiles a lot, and leads the feature. They’re filmed in widescreen, and are generally quite watchable.
The beauty of delivering very local news in this way means that things that would never make TV can be covered just as well via the web. You can watch a video that follows a walk around “Haunted Salisbury”, find out about the latest excavations at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, or see what went on at the Wilton Sheep Fair.
The website itself is clearly designed, and I hope that it becomes a success. It’s a shame that it’s so obscure though - I’m not sure where they advertise themselves.
So - if you live in, or are visiting Salisbury, head over to Vision News and take your pick of video reports to watch.
3 Fish Row
Mon - Sat 8.30am - 6pm
Sun - 10am - 4pm
A very recent addition to Salisbury is Bird and Carter Delicatessen, housed in a fine timber-frame building on Fish Row, next to Pritchetts the butchers. It is independently run by Joff Bird and Annie Carter. They offer fine chacuterie (cooked and cured meats, English and continental), cheeses, pastries, hand-made cakes, savouries such as olives, pickles, sauces and chutneys, tinned fish (including the sublime Cornish pilchards from Newlyn, Penzance), coffee and all manner of dry deli items, interesting soft drinks, and filled baguettes (beautifully, and more importantly ecologically, wrapped in a peace of food grade wax paper which is biodegradable). They also provide a small catering service. Continue reading ‘Bird and Carter Delicatessen’
This is just a quick plug to let people know that you can now order a growing selection of Abbey Stores’ finest consumables (read beer, cider, chocolates, you name it) directly from their website: http://www.abbeystores.co.uk/
If you do live in Salisbury, and can never quite find the time to physically visit the shop - did you know that they deliver for free in the local area. See? No excuses!
See Abbey Stores on Google Maps.
This week sees the start of the Salisbury Food & Drink Festival 2006. There’s events all over the city, apparently, culminating with the third Salisbury Food & Drink Fair on Sunday 24th September in the Market Square from 10am-5pm.
This year, the fair’s beer and wine tent is being run by Abbey Stores, so it’s bound to be brimming with only the finest beer and ciders. If you can only make it to one of the events of the week - I think that the beer and cider tent is the one to head for!
Find out more at the official website of the Salisbury Food & Drink Festival.
69 Brown Street, Salisbury, SP1 2AS.
For reservations: 01722 327137
Freehouse, with ancient origins (apparently 1292), the Rai d’Or - literally, Beam of Gold is a pub of good character and also lovingly known as Salisbury’s best ‘Thai pub’. It used to be the city’s medieval brothel whose madam, later founded Trinity Hospital next door for retired prostitutes in 1370. More recent infamy, some would say, was the pub’s period as a rough biker’s pub, then known as The Star. Continue reading ‘Rai d’Or’
On Sunday 3rd September 2006, Old Sarum Flying Club will be holding an open day.
Old Sarum Airfield is the UK’s 2nd oldest operational airfield, opened in 1917. You can wander around looking at planes, and even get airborne on a first-come-first-served basis. There will be aerobatics, a loop-the-loop, and a rather British activity - flour bombing.
Link: Open Day flyer (PDF), Old Sarum Airfield on Google Maps
Harnham Road, Salisbury, SP2 8JG
I mentioned East Harnham Deli a few posts back on our walk to Odstock. Here’s a little more about it. Neatly perched just beyond Harnham bridge, it retains its original name on the shop hoarding, ‘A. Hand and Sons’. Outside are blackboards advertising the delicious wares of the deli from sweets and cakes (the best lemon drizzle cake we’ve tasted, they use real lemons and lots of them!) to homemade tarts and pasties. It sells a good selection of ‘dry’ deli foods made by decent companies including pasta, rice, cereals, tinned soup and more.
