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sinister streets that provided film locations for Truffaut, Fassbinder and Bergman, and neither can Guildford.
    The town of Guildford nestles on the North Downs, the ridge of hills formed during the Tertiary Period when they were attached to what are now the Swiss Alps. This ancient connection is still reflected at Guildford’s annual festival of cuckoo clocks, chocolate and Nazi-looted fine art.
    The town is first recorded in the 9th Century when King Alfred used Guildford as a base to launch his attack on Danish-held London, his army managing to reach the outskirts of the capital in less than six hours; a feat occasionally matched to this day by South West Trains.
    The name Guildford derives from the old English ‘Golden Ford’ and when a new town was recently built nearby, tradition dictated it should be named in similar fashion and so became ‘Little Metallic Bronze Datsun on the Down’.

    Cuckoo clocks being lubricated with earwax, Guildford
    Guildford really began to grow after the construction of the Wey Navigation Canal, providing 19th Century merchants a means to distribute their products and 20th Century consumers somewhere to dump their old ones.
    In 1837, one Josiah Hawkins came to Guildford and built England’s first ever paper mill. Sadly, during the Great Gale of 1838, it blew away.
    Nearby are many natural attractions, including Surrey’s highest point at Leith Hill. Allowing for weather conditions, on a reasonable day you can see as far as Orpington. On a perfect day you can’t see it all.
    The town is also noted as the burial place of Lewis Carroll, the professor of mathematics who wrote three classic novels: Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass . Visiting his grave now, one might wonder where one would ever find a Looking Glass Wonderland today. Well, good news! There’s one on the South Circular between PC World and Allied Carpets.

    Lewis Carroll’s grave. Note the inscription ‘Fell asleep January 14th 1898’. Later the law was changed to make it illegal to bury dozing relatives

WINCHESTER

    W INCHESTER is a fine city set at the heart of the ancient kingdom of Wessex. The area was originally inhabited by early Britons during the Bronze Age, when they made fine jewellery and tools. With the advent of the Iron Age, improved swords and arrowheads could be fashioned, but when the Ice Age arrived, they found frozen water a poor material for making weapons.
    It was the Romans who established a town in Winchester on the site of a small British settlement and called it ‘Wenta Belgarum’. The Latin word ‘wenta’ simply meant ‘home’, while the word ‘belgarum’ indicated a base of rocky hills or ‘tors’. Hence the literal translation: ‘Home Base Tors’.
    With the withdrawal of the Romans, the town went into decline until revived as a Saxon stronghold to fend off the Vikings. Much of England to the north-west was terrorised by invading Danes, who forced the native populace to endure such hardships as pillage, slavery, torture and flat-pack kitchen units.
    Under the rule of Alfred the Great, Winchester became the capital city of England. Alfred reunited the kingdom in the face of Danish invasion and became known as the father of the English navy, as he had several dozen girlfriends in Portsmouth. It is recorded that Alfred was buried in Winchester in the year 899. However, later historical research has revealed that Alfred didn’tactually die until 901, so that must have been a traumatic couple of years for the poor man.
    With the city constantly expanding, St John’s Hospital was built in Winchester in 935 AD . Their first ever patient is recorded as one Wil the Shepherd. His descendants still live in the area and treasure the document confirming his admission date, which has been passed down the family since the very day it was received, in 1984. St John’s is believed to be the oldest medieval hospital in Britain. The NHS recently began a modernisation programme