Monday is Lincoln - "Quick, Sophie! Run!"

This is Lincoln Cathedral - "one of the finest mediaeval gothic buildings in Europe..." (it says here).

And it is! Seen here from the castle (which I didn't know Lincoln had), it's very imposing and grand.



Looking the other way from the castle, you get a picture of how flat and tedious the rest of Lincoln (and Lincolnshire) is...



...and that somehow makes the cathedral all the more striking.

I haven't been here since I was about ten, and my Dad hadn't been here since before I was about ten, so we spent a long time looking round and having digital camera shoot-outs. My photos (camera cost about £200) came out loads better than my Dad's (camera cost more than double that) so I was quite pleased...



You really do have to wonder exactly how they built it without modern technology to help and Health and Safety law to hinder... "Have you been hurt building a cathedral? We can help you on a no win, no fee basis..."

If I play with the settings on my digital camera enough, I can often (through no skill or judgement) get good photos of hard-to-get-good-photos-of things like stained glass windows. This is the one good one of about twelve which didn't really work...



...and here's another with lighting effects. Don't ask me what part of the cathedral this is. I'm guessing the high altar?



Now, I suppose that the inside of one mediaeval gothic cathedral is a bit like the inside of another one, and this has been exploited by the makers of The Da Vinci Code, who filmed inside Lincoln, pretending it was Westminster Abbey...

These very ornate looking cathedrabilia are, in fact, fake. The tomb is plywood...



...and blokey here is made of polystyrene...



Look out for them as Sophie Neveu runs past when you go to see the film. What would be really funny would be if they ran past them several times, repeatedly, like the gang does in Scooby Doo...

(If you zoom into the picture above, you will be able to see that the inscription is done with Letraset...)

There's obviously a huge debate about whether they should have allowed the filming to take place in the Cathedral, as the story (if you don't know, and until Christmas, I didn't) details the Church's supposed duplicity and gynophobia over a number of centuries. Did they sell out to Hollywood money? You can read the Chancellor of the Cathedral's views yourself, but I liked this little extract from his sermon the week the crew packed up and left...

"Many have come this week to get a glimpse of Tom Hanks. We know from the staff and from our own experience that a few have also caught a glimpse of God. That is our work and that is our mission."

Anyway, they can now afford the thousands needed to restore the huge "Dean's Eye" stained glass window in the North Transept...



...and even though I doubt Tom Hanks paid for the scaffolding personally, Sophie-Neveu-like, I can't help but see a connection.