Wells, Wells, Wells

On a chance trip down to Somerset to catch up with some of Sarah's family, we decided to make a weekend of it and pop in to visit the country's smallest city, Wells. It has a few redeeming features, but the principle one for me was it was the main location of the riotous British film Hot Fuzz. Yes the one with those two from Spaced. 

I had vague ideas that i would visit the model village and get a photo opportunity of me being impaled a la Timothy Dalton on the miniature church steeple. Alas though, further investigations uncovered that the model village used in the film was actually  in Buckinghamshire, and as tolerant as Sarah is with my whimsy, i felt asking her to drive halfway across the country for a quick photo opportunity would have met with short shrift.

Church where Tim Messenger gets in-spired...

Still, Wells is a wonderfully quaint little town (sorry, city) and the weather was actually rather pleasant, so we wandered up and down the main street ticking off the places used in the film from my Eye-Spy book of Hot Fuzz filming locations. We saw the church where the village fete is held (and where the intrepid yet dixlesic reporter,Tim Messenger, gets killed with falling masonry),  we also saw the fountain which the youth's graffitti, the Somerfield store which is owned by Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), the Swan Hotel which Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) stays in, the local pub that they all drink in, and the

Bishop's Palace where the townsfolk (sorry, cityfolk) reveal their diabolical plan to Angel....

The fountain of yoof....

The hotel where Angel stays

I was somewhat disappointed that i could not get a full photo opportunity of the high street where the final shootout takes place, because some inconsiderate town planner types had decided to designate Saturday as a market day, and so the whole square was covered in stalls selling all manner of objet d'art. 

 

Alas, the Somerfield store from the film is now a Co-operative

The local pub (well the exterior of it at least)

 Having got my fill of snapping the locations from the film, we decided to go and see the reason the city got it's charter - certainly, the size of the place does not justify it being classed as a city - and that is the wonderful Wells cathedral.

The frontage of Wells cathedral, rather impressive

Those who know me, will be well aquainted with my love of ancient buildings and monuments, and this really did tick all my boxes. It is a 10th century cathedral, and the frontage was truly spectacular, with an amazing array of statues and sculpltured scenes from the bible (i am presuming). 

Following this, we started to make our way back home, but i couldn't resist asking Sarah to take me via Wookey Hole. Disappointingly it had nothing to do with Chewbacca or proctologists, so i just grabbed a snap of the place name before turning her around and getting us the hell out of the place (i swear, she has the patience of a saint!).

the name is more amusing than the place