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Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
That Craig Murray article is a reasonable read. I've no idea who he is but he makes a few decent points and makes me pause for thought.
I think the evidence we have is circumstantial so far. But their story just doesn't feel right. If we accept that Salisbury is a tourist destination worth dropping in for a couple of days, and that staying in Central London rather than Salisbury itself is a sensible idea, then I'm left with one question:
"Given you're on a brief visit to see Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge, wouldn't it be prudent to arrive in the city much earlier than 11:48 and to know where you're going so you don't get lost?"
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
When they visited on March 3rd they would have seen the clear signposting at the station directing you to the city centre and cathedral. The first sign is right outside the main entrance of the station.
For them to then visit on the 4th and go in completely the opposite direction to the cathedral is ludicrous. I simply do not believe that two people who are canny enough to arrive at Gatwick, take the Express up to Victoria, and then manage to get to Bow in East London to the hotel, before being capable enough to manage to get to Salisbury the next day, are then daft enough to go the wrong way in Salisbury. A map of the area shows how far off track they went from the cathedral.
MAP
You then look at their timings. From Waterloo the train to Salisbury departs around 1020. On the 4th they arrived at 1148. 1158 they're captured on CCTV on Wilton Road.
At 1305 they were heading for the train station. The Indie says they embarked on their journey back to London at 1350 and arrived at Waterloo at 1645. A three hour train journey is unusually long. That suggests they either were the victim of delays, quite possible due to the weather conditions at the time, or they took a train from Waterloo to Southampton Central and connected to Waterloo. Ordinarily that journey with the Southampton connection is about 2 hours 20 minutes long.
CCTV footage shows one rucksack between them on the 4th. If they returned to London at 1645, they'd have to go from Waterloo to Bow Road, pick up stuff from the hotel, and check out. The Indie reports that they got on the Tube at 1830 to Heathrow before going through passport control at 1928.
So for their time in Salisbury,
That's one heck of a travel itinerary and means that, had they gone to Salisbury cathedral, they'd have spent no more than an hour there between 1200 and 1300 on March 4.
Flight times from Moscow to London: six and a half hours minimum so let's call it 13 hours in total.
Train travel: Day 1: Gatwick to Victoria (30 mins), Victoria to Bow Road (30 mins). One hour+.
Day 2: Bow Road to Waterloo, Waterloo to Salisbury, Salisbury to Waterloo. Waterloo to Bow Road.
At least 5 hours, likely more with the poor weather of the time.
Day 3: Bow Road to Waterloo, Waterloo to Salisbury, Salisbury to Waterloo, Waterloo to Bow Road,
Bow Road to Heathrow - I would give a rough estimate of 6 to 7 hours for this.
All of this for an hour at the cathedral? No chance.
It's especially weird that they got lost on the 2nd day of visiting. You'd think that the first day being written off due to bad weather would have made them a bit more focused on going the right way. And, unless there was something blocking their view as they left Salisbury train station, the cathedral is fairly dominant in your view as you exit. You'd have to be really bad with sense of direction to go completely in the wrong direction. Again, this is especially weird given that you've flown in for a fleeting visit because the cathedral is so amazing you just had to come and see it.
I'm not saying that everything stacks up in the British side of the story, but it's got fewer and shallower holes in it.
It should be GRU not KGB (or FSB as it is now).
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
Consider this broken down further. On the 4th they arrived at 1148. Salisbury Cathedral is a 15 minute walk from the station (0.7 miles). At 1158 they were pictured on Wilton Road round near the Shell petrol station. Now if we give them the benefit of the doubt and they suddenly decided to use a mobile mapping app, then to walk from that Shell station to the Cathedral is 25 minutes walk. This would place them at the cathedral for 1225.
At 1305 and 1308 they were pictured on CCTV on Fisherton Street. Cathedral to Fisherton to station is a 15 minute walk. They took a 1350 train.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43643025
With those sort of times and maps, then the much-vaunted trip to the amazing spire of Salisbury Cathedral would have been in the region of 30 minutes.
*cough.splutter/laugh/etc*
As I posted up earlier:
Flight times from Moscow to London: six and a half hours minimum so let's call it 13 hours in total.
Train travel: Day 1: Gatwick to Victoria (30 mins), Victoria to Bow Road (30 mins). One hour+.
Day 2: Bow Road to Waterloo, Waterloo to Salisbury, Salisbury to Waterloo. Waterloo to Bow Road.
At least 5 hours, likely more with the poor weather of the time.
Day 3: Bow Road to Waterloo, Waterloo to Salisbury, Salisbury to Waterloo, Waterloo to Bow Road,
Bow Road to Heathrow - I would give a rough estimate of 6 to 7 hours for this.
All of these are conservative estimates. The reason I am focusing on these is because I know these routes so bloody well. I lived in Trowbridge for 15 years, my family still live there, I have friends in Salisbury, I had regular trips to the then Salisbury District Council, my time in London in 2002 and now meant going back via the slower trains (Waterloo via Salisbury rather than the Paddington-Bristol Intercity trains), and I regularly shuttled from Wiltshire to Gatwick and Heathrow thanks to my transatlantic marriage in the first decade of this century. I've slept rough in Salisbury a couple of times after missing the last train, stayed awake all night in both airports, shuttled on coaches up and down the M4. I know Salisbury and the connections to London very well, and the timings of the CCTV pictures simply don't add up to this grand overarching story of having a woody for a cathedral spire and clock.
Folk like Craig Murray want us to believe that two tourists can successfully navigate and travel upon the London Underground, the Gatwick Express, two South West Train trips out of London to Salisbury and back, along with flights from and to Moscow from two different bloody airports, all at a time when public transport timetables are affected by poor weather...
...yet they can't navigate their way correctly around a 0.7 mile region of Salisbury some 20 hours after visiting it on the 3rd.
I’m currently pitching a series to Channel 5 where Mr Petrov and Mr Boshirov take us round some of Britain’s greatest monuments. It’s to be called ‘ I Spy With My Little Eye’. I think it could be as big a Time Team.
He has done far too well for me to think he is a poor delegator.
For the record I like him.