Hereford etc

It's raining, still or again, I can't decide. Exactly as forecast, surprise.
Hamster and I went to Hereford today, first to Tesco for a wee bit shopping, then a wander round the town and Hereford Cathedral.
It wasn't raining this morning and a drive in the English countryside offers the pleasures of pretty villages, beautifully manicured fields, some looking as if they have been mowed and rolled like a green on a golf course and are awaiting the arrival of 5 star sheep, others rolling away, aglow with yellow rapseed. Some fields have been planted with grain and are already 30 cm tall. The hillsides, where not cultivated, are covered in low level treets - coppiced perhaps? These are in the process of turning from their winter fawn into the lettuce green of spring. As each day passes they are greener.Hereford Cathedral, where lies the Mappa Mundi, is lovely. On arrival I was greeted by a verger in a blue gown (as in scholar) who directed me to the shop, cafe and new wing, where the locked books share space with the Mappa Mundi. (MM)
I felt a surge of spirituality when the organist began to practise, though I do think he had the trumpet stop too loud...
The MM is a fanciful middle ages map of the known world, drawn and scribed on vellum - a single calfskin, and populated with creatures derived from a very active imagination. It is now very faded but scholars have created a facsimile, coloured bright blue, red and green, as it would have been when new. It has survived because it was created at Hereford, and never left. More in Wikipedia.
I've bought a tea towel, yes I know, true kitsch, printed with the map and supplied with a key to the latin names and descriptions. Did you know that a race lived once that had large upper lips, with which they shaded their faces from the sun - so MM says, anyway.
I asked the curator in the locked book section to point out to me Sam Johnson's original printed dictionary, two volumes, sort of A3 size, complete with chains, and locked into the bookcases. The locked books, all immensely valuable and rare (I guess one begets the other) are available for study by scholars, who are allowed to take them 'upstairs' to the reading room, rather than sit on the hard benches by the bookshelves.
The cathedral contained much of the usual, monuments to past bishops and worthies of the parish, a glorious choir and screen behind the high altar, plus a set of recent stained glass windows, in 'modern' style commemorating Thomas Traherne, a 17th century metaphysical poet, who's work was largely lost. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Traherne.
The vast space was heated by Gurney Heaters, a Victorian Monster, designed, apparently, for church heating.