Another long weekend

Having had such a nice long weekend, we thought that we’d have another one before Siobhan started work.  So I took the Friday off work and we arranged to meet Brigitte in Cambridge before staying with her and Andrew again for the weekend in Norfolk.  Last time we were there, they kept saying that we’d have to go back pretty much every weekend as there were so many things that they wanted to show us.  I hope that they were serious as we went back.  But they seemed genuinely pleased to see us and we had another great weekend.

We got up early and it took us a couple of hours to get to Cambridge.  We parked at one of those park and ride places as parking in Cambridge is very expensive – they are trying to keep cars out of the city it seems, as they have 5 park and rides around the perimeter of the city.  We got in to town about 10.30 and met Brigitte without incident.  We had to have coffee to start with, but once those formalities were over, we headed over to Maudlin College.  Don’t get me started on that again.  Just like Oxford, it is really Magdalene College, but pronounced “maudlin”.  Stupid academics.  No one seems to know why they fail to pronounce it properly.  And they are pretty short on excuses if you ask me because they have so many churches, all with pictures of Mary Magdalene (which they have no problem pronouncing correctly).  

Anyway, our purpose in going there was to see the Samuel Pepys Library.  It is a mighty fine collection of books.  Siobhan would probably get more excited about this than me.  However, there are some facts that objectively make it pretty interesting.  This fella collected up these books in the mid-17th century (around 1660).  He has 3,000 volumes and housed them in cabinets which were some of the first ever bookcases.  All of the books were filed depending on their size – don’t worry about the subject covered in the book – if you were having bookcases built (by the shipbuilders), you put your books into them based on size of the volumes.  Mr Pepys left this library to the College that it might be kept “without addition or subtraction”.  I found this amusing as he had collected volume one of a very old set of two books.  The college had since tracked down volume two.  They now sit side by side in a glass display cabinet, where it very clearly says that volume 2 is not part of the collection and is just appearing here on loan from some other library.  It looks like it may have been on loan for some time.

There are some cool things in the collection though.  Pepys’ diary from 1660 to 1669 is in six volumes, and he also has Sir Francis Drake’s personal almanac.  The calligraphy and pictures in these books are amazing – so many hours have gone into producing each page.

After this we were thinking of going for a punt on the Cam.  However, the university students must have been on their break and trying to recover the cost of their trips to Las Vegas.  It was like being back in Vegas where instead of every second person on the street trying to give you fliers for hookers, every second person was a student trying to get you to go on a punt.  And they were as in-your-face as the people in Vegas.  It was really off-putting and so we gave that away.  Instead we went into King’s College and had a look around their chapel.  It was very impressive.  The vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows were as good as we’ve seen elsewhere – and we’ve seen a lot.  What kept me slightly more entertained was the history exhibit which had quite a lot of detail on the War of the Roses and Edward IV and Richard III.  This is the only bit of English history that I’ve read about in any detail – although it was fiction based on fact in The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman.  I enjoyed this account as it told the tale painting Edward IV and Richard III more favourably than most of the subsequent pro-Tudor accounts, including Shakespeare’s.  Although, as an aside, it seems as if the accounts of Richard as a hunchback may have had some basis in fact.  They reckon that they have just found his skeleton, and it does show that he suffered from scoliosis so that one of his shoulders was higher than the other.  Not quite a hunchback though.

King's College courtyard

We had a very nice lunch opposite King’s College, and then felt that we’d rather go and see the Ely Cathedral than continue wandering around Cambridge.

Ely is a lovely little ‘town’ about halfway between Cambridge and King’s Lynn.  Of course we could get into trouble calling it a town – it has a cathedral, so it is officially a city.  It actually has a magnificent cathedral, and we took a tour of the Octagon after having afternoon tea in the Refectory.  The Octagon was built in the early 14th century, after the original Norman tower had collapsed.  Like many buildings in Norfolk the ground beneath the heavy stone was simply not sounds enough (see our earlier blog on Norfolk with the pictures of St. Margaret’s Church).  The Octagon took eighteen years to build, in wood rather than stone due to the distance it had to span in order to have solid ground beneath it, and is a stunning piece of gothic architecture.  The tour took us right up into the structure – huge pieces of oak, now nearly 700 years old and sound as ever – and continued outside, where we walked on the lead roof in order to see the stained glass windows of the ‘Lantern’ in the top of the Octagon.  The access to the structure (and the roof) was via a tiny staircase accessed through what the tour guide called the “Alice Door” as it was so small!  As it was such a lovely day, we could see all the way back to Cambridge from up there too.

The tour had not started until 4.30, so from here it was on to King’s Lynn, where Andrew was patently waiting for us to get there for dinner.

On Saturday, we were taken to Norwich via a shop called Beers of Europe.  This shop stocks over 1300 different bottled beers, and they are not just from Europe.  We found a few Grant know from the USA, and 8 wired from New Zealand (at £15 a bottle; Grant decided he will wait until we come home to NZ for that one!).  We spent a good half an hour or so wandering the aisles while Grant chose an even dozen different beers to sample over time.  If you want to know what they all were, they will turn up in a separate blog entry once he has sampled them in order to provide tasting notes.  I particularly admired a fortified brandy costing £1800 and wondered how it could possibly taste good enough to justify that price, even to a brandy drinker!!

Norwich is another beautiful old city full of character.  Andrew (a retired vicar) has particular connections to Norwich Cathedral, and particularly wanted to show us around.  On arriving in Norwich we discovered that there was a wedding on at the Cathedral, so we did some other sightseeing first.  We were taken to the Forum, in the city centre, which now houses the new library.  The old library burned down some years ago, which was a terrible tragedy, but there was a fascinating exhibition about the discovery of, and the restoration of, a large collection of old documents, books and pictures that the current library staff did not even know they had stored in the basement.  We had a light lunch at the café there before wandering the gorgeous little streets back to the Cathedral.   

We entered through the Hostry, which is a beautifully designed addition housing the Visitor Centre.  The design of this is beautiful, understated and lovingly detailed.  It is a stunning example of how modern architecture can truly complement old buildings.  The cathedral itself is over 900 years old, with the gorgeous vaulting we have seen in so many churches now.  It also boasts a very impressive number of ceiling bosses, which decorate the meeting points of the vaulting ribs.  Andrew pointed out many of his favourite aspects of the church, including gorgeous Norman pillars that had been covered up a couple of centuries later (only to be rediscovered during maintenance), a wonderful memorial stone with a skeleton inscribed on it, the Cloisters and my personal favourite, the beautiful copper font which used to be used for melting chocolate for Rolo’s in the local Nestle factory!  We did not tour the tower this time, but we may have to go back as there would be magnificent views across the Norfolk Broads from up there.  We made our way back to the car and drove back to King’s Lynn.

No, we hadn't been drinking when taking this!

We spent Sunday morning walking the streets of King’s Lynn once more before driving out to a favourite pub of Andrew and Brigitte’s (we have to confess we have got so far behind in our blogging that we don’t remember the name of it now) for a carvery lunch.  This seems to be a popular Sunday outing, and the food was very good.  We were well fortified for our long drive home to Woking. Before heading home, we visited Castle Rising which is a 12th century castle, built around 1140. While architecturally it was "a bit of a box" that seems to have been a popular style for castles.

After the castle, we headed back to Andrew & Brigitte's for a cup of tea and then our long weekend had to come to an end.  We remembered to get a photo of them this time though.