To give us something to do in the van when we weren’t fielding phone calls, we came up with an ingenious rating system for the Cathedrals we visited. Actually, we weren’t rating the Cathedrals as such, but our experience of playing there. We had a number of categories, including view, acoustic, staff, media coverage, audience, parking, scare factor, and so on, and by the time we had finished, each Cathedral had a mark out of 300.

Now, this rating system was by no means perfect. In particular, one controversial category related to the cleanliness of the playing area… it could be argued that a dirty, smelly playing area actually made the performance more extreme, and therefore a more appropriate experience for us. However, we actually gave the cleanest playing areas the highest marks, so there is certainly some inconsistency in the ratings!

We don’t think it’s fair to give a complete breakdown, or to say which Cathedrals came out lowest, as (a) it’s only a bit of fun, and (b) we were delighted with the welcome we got everywhere. However, here are the ten Cathedrals that came out highest:

1. Liverpool (231 points)

2. Sheffield (227)

3. Southwell (223)

4. Derby (222)

5. Blackburn (220)

6. St Edmundsbury (218)

7. Durham (216)

8=. Gloucester (215)

8=. Newcastle (215)

10. St Paul's (212)

Although we broadly agreed with these ratings when we discussed them later, we could see a few anomalies. Liverpool coming out on top seemed fair enough, even though none of us would have guessed it. Sheffield coming second was a bit of a surprise, and we suspect there may have been some home-town bias in the ratings there! (Having said that, the audience and media rightly got top marks from all of us there.) Southwell and Derby were unexpectedly lovely views, and great towers; Blackburn was like an assault course getting up!

When we discussed our favourites, the broad consensus was something along the lines of:

1. Durham

2. St Paul ’s

3. Hereford

Durham fared less well in the ratings for one reason alone: the area where we played was filthy and smelly due to the pigeon guano that had accumulated there! We knew this would be the case, and I for one quite enjoyed the experience of playing in an avian loo… but because of the controversial system, it was marked down. Even if it had scored only average marks, it would have come out top.

St Paul's fared less well than we had expected because its ascent was relatively straighforward: not particularly scary or tight. But Hereford showed the limitations of our rating system the most: despite having no real weak categories, it did not even make the top ten, even though we all agree it was one of the real highlights of the tour!

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