Month: October 2022

The activity for the day was a quick trip to a small town north of Cambridge called Ely. Ely is known for its cathedral. We saw the cathedral from the outside but didn’t go in (saving it for a possible 2nd visit). We did a pretty good walk around town and saw Jubilee Gardens, the River Great Ouse filled with canal boats, Oliver Cromwell’s house, an active High Street, and finished with a great lunch in a quaint tea house recommended by our homeowners.

A fun fact fact about Ely (pronounced eely) is that it’s name is said to come from a word meaning Eel Island, and taxes in the area were once payable in eels. We didn’t see any eels, but they live and feed in their river. Below are pictures from our trip, a quick 16 minute train ride in each direction.

Oliver Cromwell is a famous English Statesman. In fact, Wikipedia states that he was selected 10th in a BBC poll of the 100 greatest Britons. He was educated at Cambridge, served as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth during a pause in the monarchy, but most importantly for today, lived in Ely for 10 years.

Bob and I have had a quiet day in Cambridge, catching up on laundry, getting the recycling and compost collected for tomorrow’s pick up, and getting train tickets for a quick, 16 minute ride to Ely tomorrow.

But, we did get out for a short bike ride to the end of the bike path along the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, and then over by the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, and along the art trail to its junction with the national cycling route #11. It’s pretty great when there are so many national cycling routes that you have to number them.

The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway connects Cambridge, Huntington, and St. Ives. At 16 miles, it is the longest guided busway in the world. A guided bus is a normal bus that also has small wheels attached to the front wheels of the bus, allowing it to connect to a track. These wheels steer the bus while it’s on the track.

The Art bike path has colored stripes down the middle of the path and double helices on each end. There are 10,000 stripes, one for each mile of the National Cycle Network as it was in September 2005. The stripes also represent the bases of a vital human gene, called BRCA2, which was decoded at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinton. The double helices at each end represent the double helix shape of DNA.

This morning Bob and I had our own personal walking tour of Cambridge, very generously provided by our homeowners. It was two hours of non-stop information on Cambridge (both the town and the university) provided in an entertaining manner by Tony Rogers, a Cambridge University alum.

Some fun facts about Cambridge University. 1209 is claimed as the start date for the university, as this is the year when some Oxford students fled to Cambridge when Oxford was closed. The university is made up of 31 colleges, the oldest of which is Peterhouse. It has produced an incredible number of Nobel prize winners — 121 individuals. It is built on the monastic tradition of caring for one’s mind, body, and soul and so colleges provided a library, cafeteria, and chapel.

The following photos are some of what we learned about the university. The city-related photos follow.

One of the newer features of Cambridge is the Corpus Clock which is behind leaded glass on the outside of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College. It was conceived and funded by John Taylor, an alumnus of the college. It is 24 carat gold plated stainless steel. The outer ring shows the seconds, the middle ring minutes, and the inner ring the hour via a blue light. The animal on the top, which didn’t photo well due to movement, looks a bit like an evil grasshopper, but is actually a chronophage, or time eater. The whole work is to remind us of the constant passage of time and to live life while we can.

We also learned some history about the city of Cambridge.

We enjoyed another biking adventure today. The day was sunny and the weather mild, so we biked 4.5 miles to the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. We weren’t sure what to expect, though the site was recommended by our homeowners.

The Google Map’s bike directions took us on some great bike/pedestrian trails. As we’ve said previously, Cambridge is a great biking town, which we really like. Great off-road trails makes the biking so much easier, and we only needed to be on the road for a short part of our route.

The cemetery exceeded our expectations. It is beautifully maintained. It had an impressive visitor center, chapel, and cemetery grounds. The land was donated by the University of Cambridge, and the US finished the site in 1954. My understanding is that the cemetery and memorial (and many others in Europe) is maintained by a US government agency, the American Battle Monuments Commission.

There are 3,812 gravesites for those whose remains were found and identified, and there is a wall of remembrance containing 5,127 names of individuals whose remains are not found/identified. As we walked the cemetery, we entered a row of tombstones, and the very first one was for a Charles Peck of California. No relation that we’re aware of.

Two of the more famous individuals listed on the Wall of Remembrance are Glenn Miller and Joseph P. Kennedy, who were both lost at sea.

Happy Sunday and Happy Birthday to Bob’s dad!

Cambridge University has a number of colleges and museums. They also have a botanic garden, the entrance of which is about a 10 minute walk from where we are staying. We headed there today. The weather was good (sunny and high 50s), the grounds were beautiful, it made for a lovely stroll. Below are some photos of our visit.

Our homeowners had told us about The Gog Farm Shop during our pre-trip pet/house handover, and it sounded like the sort of place we’d enjoy. It supposedly had farm-fresh products, a gourmet food shop, a deli, and a small grocery. Today was forecasted to be a warm day, so we thought we’d give it a go.

Our homeowners have kindly left us their bikes and the route to the farm seemed pretty straightforward, so we biked there. First a comment on biking in Cambridge. Coming back from our punting tour yesterday, we walked along a main route into the city center. We were amazed at the number of cyclists barreling into the city. Truly, the most bike traffic we have ever seen. It was great, and they also have many off road trails to assist with biking. As always though, you need to just keep aware of pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars around you.

After an easy (though slightly uphill and into the wind) four mile ride, we arrived at the farm shop. The ride took a little longer than normal, as it was our first real ride on the bikes, and we wanted to be extra cautious with traffic, and we stopped for photos.

The farm was sectioned off into four buildings. The 1) deli/restaurant, 2) meats and produce, 3) gourmet foods and 4) grocery/checkout. We enjoyed the shop and stocked up on a few items and plan to go back. T

The big disappointment for me was upon our return to the house, I realized that the farm-made scotch egg that I requested from the store clerk was not in either of our bags. Luckily, we hadn’t been charged for it. I kind of blame myself, as after I requested the scotch egg, I got talking to the clerk about something else, and we both apparently got distracted.

Bob and I had a lovely afternoon, starting with a 35 minute walk to the Cambridge Punt Tours to catch our 1:00 pm tour along the River Cam. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the River Cam is the main river running through Cambridge and runs for a total of 69 kilometers. If our punter (poleman) is to be believed, Cam was the Viking term for river, so we were on the River River this afternoon.

It was a great day to be out, partly sunny and in the mid-60s. There were 9 of us on our punt (representing England, US, and Croatia), but lots of others out as well. Below are some of the photos from our tour.

After the tour, we stopped at Bridge’s Patisserie for lunch. It was great! Bob had a vegetarian arancini, and I had a butternut squash pastry, and we both got side salads. And I’m just remembering now that we were going to take photos…

The only downside of the cafe was no bathroom, but they did have a note posted as to the location of the closest one. Always good to find public conveniences, as this one was called.

Greetings from Cambridge! We feel smarter already. We have had a great time here, and we haven’t really done anything yet.

We arrived in Cambridge on Sunday and had a lovely walk-through, pre-dinner social with neighbors, and dinner with our homeowners. We got a thorough overview of their beautiful home, an introduction to the beautiful Hugo and his care needs, and some great ideas for our extended visit. We are here for about 6 weeks — what a gift!

I have fallen in love with the area, as it is a dream for runners. There are so many pedestrian and bike paths, and the area is so active. The homeowners have bikes that we can use, so we are looking forward to biking as well. With Bob’s current hip issue, biking seems to be the gentlest form of manual transportation for him at the moment.

We began our sit about mid-afternoon on Monday and spent yesterday settling in and catching up on work, travel planning, and stocking up on groceries. We have learned that there are a lot of sculptures around town, and we passed a number of them on the way to the store.

Tomorrow afternoon we have a guided punting tour on the River Cam.

After doing separate days on Friday, Bob and I had a big (for us) afternoon/evening out on Saturday for our final day in London. We finally got to see Hamilton in person! We had had tickets to see it in San Francisco prior to a house sit during COVID, but obviously, both of those things were cancelled.

We enjoyed a late complimentary hotel buffet breakfast and then a leisurely morning in the hotel before heading for the theater about 12:45. The show didn’t start until 2:30, but we didn’t know how busy the underground would be with the train stoppage, and we wanted to check out possible places for dinner after the show.

We walked to the Earl’s Court underground to take a short ride to Victoria Station. The station itself was lovely, and the whole area around the station was very active and vibrant.

Hamilton was performed at the Victoria Palace Theater. The theater was lovely, and the staff were very friendly. And the show was amazing. We had seen it on Disney+ during COVID, but it was definitely better in person.

We ended the evening with a great dinner close to our hotel, the highlights of which were the cauliflower appetizer and beef carpaccio appetizers that we split. A day fit for a king but enjoyed by a couple of Yanks.

While Beth went walking and exploring, I went busing and exploring. Given the hip pain and hip replacement likely in December, getting around is still feasible but not for long distances.

I found a Hop On Hop Off bus that I paid $41 for a 24 hour ticket. I rode the bus for one loop (2.5 hours) and saw many of the sites we had seen on previous trips to London. I got a front-row top seat which provided some good views. Below are pics of my tour.