Author: bbpeck

Yesterday, Bob found a route for us to walk through some neighborhoods to a short path. It gave us a good excuse to see more of Bury away from the town center. Our walk took us north of where we are staying into what appeared to be a new housing development, Marham Park, and we also found a more countryside walk to do on another day.

Also, we have been spending more time in the garden and just yesterday noticed these lovely flowers along the back fence, which separates us from the community tennis courts.

On Saturday, Bob left the house about 10:20 am to catch the train to Cambridge to meet up with our friend Peter, who had kindly offered Bob one of his season tickets to watch the Saracens rugby team play against Sale. Bob has been watching and trying to learn about rugby since our first international housesit in New Zealand, but this was his first time to see a proper game — and at the premiership level. He even treated himself to some merch.

It was a great day for a game, but sadly, not a win for the Saracens. Bob had a great time and learned a lot more about the strategy of the sport.

While Bob was away, I headed towards the Abbey Gardens, where they were holding free interactive walks, talks, and creative art projects as part of Bury BioBlitz. I ended up listening to a 30 minute talk by a guide on the diversity of spiders. Apparently, there are more than 620 species in the UK. I was quite impressed with the speaker for remembering quite a few Latin names for them.

When Bob and I first got to Bury, we started researching some activities and/or places that we wanted to check out. One of the places we knew we wanted to visit was the Theatre Royal. We could have just paid for a tour, which would be interesting as well, but we decided we would prefer to visit the theater to see a performance. Today was that day (or at least the first day if we go back). We chose to attend one of the theater’s Lunchtime Concerts.

The Theatre Royal is England’s last surviving theater from the Regency Period (1795 – 1837). It was built by William Wilkins and opened in 1819. It was fully restored in 2007.

The lunchtime series is a 50 minute performance from selected musicians. Today we saw the Miyabi Duo, two guitarists (one from Japan and one from the UK), who played a variety of music, including music by Spanish composers Granados and Rodrigo as well as contemporary music. The series seems like a great way to introduce the public to different types of music.

Bob and I took the train today for a quick 36 minute ride to Ipswich, the county seat of Suffolk. With a population of about 145,000, it is the largest settlement in the county. Bury St Edmunds is 3rd. Ipswich has been in the news recently here, as its football (soccer) team recently secured promotion to the Premier League.

We began our walk around Ipswich with a walk along the River Path along the River Gipping. The path is part of a 17 mile path to Stowmarket, passing through Sproughton, Bramford, Clayton, and Needham Market.

After leaving the path, we headed through a bit of the town center towards Christchurch Park, the first public park in Ipswich, opening in 1895. It extends over 33 hectares and is host to many events year round.

After the church, we walked back into the town center. It was pretty active and was a cute mix of old and more modern. We had lunch before we left in a cute little cafe/restaurant called Bonbon.

As we had not yet visited the Bury St Edmunds Library, we decided to head there today and then check out St John’s Street, which we had read as having local shops.

We have had our first 70+ degree day for this visit to the UK, and it actually felt like it. Bob and I were both in shorts, and we were both in short sleeves by this afternoon, lovely! We had two walks with the dogs and also walked a couple of paths that Bob had found for us on his phone.

First, Bob took me by a house that he passes every morning with the dogs. It has a beautiful wisteria tree on one side.

Then we headed towards the God’s Quarter section of Bury near the Abbey, Cathedral, and St Mary’s Church.

After we walked along the River Lark to a main thoroughfare, we retraced our steps and then headed out east of town on a number of nice paths to the community of Moreton Hall. We were surprised how quickly we seemed to be in countryside.

It is a beautiful 64 F degree day in Bury, and Bob and I used it to explore more of the area by heading off to check out two parks — Hardwick Heath and Nowton Park. Hardwick Heath is about 1.5 miles from where we are staying, and Nowton Park is 2.4 miles. Since it was a beautiful weekend day, they were both getting a lot of use.

Hardwick Heath is a park of about 55 acres that contains a children’s play area, football pitches (in use today), picnic areas, and walking trails.

The 200 acre Nowton Park has lots to offer, including football pitches, arboretums, walking paths, a maze (closed until June), ponds, wildflower meadow, and a cafe. We walked around, although we didn’t find the way finding markers particularly helpful, so we were always guessing a bit on our actual location based on the map below.

Another fun note from today. Both parks seemed to have some dog classes that had just ended when we got there — pugs at Hardwick Heath and Dachshunds at Nowton.

After a wet and chilly Friday, Bob and I were excited to get out in the sunshine today. We decided to explore a bit more of the God’s Square area of Bury — the area between St Mary’s church, the former Abbey west front, the cathedral church of St James, and Angel Hill. Specifically, we wanted to check out the rose garden area behind the cathedral and then go down the street a bit to visit St Mary’s church, the parish church (religious center) of Bury.

St Mary’s church was one of three churches that were originally part of the Benedictine Abbey of St Edmund, along with St James, which became the cathedral, and St Margaret’s, which was demolished. A church has stood on the current site for 900 years. It was enlarged in the 15th century to its current form and is one of the largest parish churches in England.

On the way to St Mary’s we entered the Abbey Gate to try to see more of the cathedral gardens. We were only partially successful.

The garden behind the building next to the cathedral which holds the gift shop and tourist information center.

We didn’t do a tour of the brewery, but we did pop in to check out the shop. The walls inside had a timeline of its history. Monks were brewing ale on the site of the Abbey as of 1086. The Greene King brewing company was formed in 1799 and is based in Bury.

Today we did our easy walk down to the city center to explore Bury’s market that occurs every Wednesday and Saturday. The website said there are about 60 stalls on Wednesdays and 80 on Saturdays. The market dates back to before the days of William the Conqueror (died 1087). We perused the stalls and found a couple items to purchase at a baker’s stall. We also stopped in an M&S to do a grocery run.

Tomorrow night we have reserved tickets for a free lecture at the nearby University and Professional Development Center on the Corpses of the Abbey. We’ll see how much we understand, but we’re looking forward to continuing to learn about the local area.

Since Bob and I saw so much of the St Edmundsbury Cathedral yesterday during our walk around the abbey grounds, we decided to go back today to get a tour of the inside of the church/now cathedral. As we learned, the building is the epitome of both old and new, although the construction succeeded in melding the two so that it looks like a cohesive whole.

The building began as the Church of St James, and the old building (originally constructed in the 11th century) is the part that you first enter.

The tour guide stated that the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich was created in 1914, which required the creation of a cathedral. Since this was at the end of WWI, followed by financial constraints and then WWII, the construction of the cathedral didn’t get started until after 1943 when Stephen Dykes Bower was selected as the architect. Normally, Ipswich, being the larger and the county seat, would have been the chosen location. However, all of the historic churches in Ipswich are located in the city center with no room for expansion, so the St James church in Bury was selected.

After our tour, we stopped in the lovely cathedral gift shop and also in the tourist information center, where we picked up lots of additional information on what to do in the local area.