29th June 2005 – Ely and Peterborough

Turned out that there wasn’t a thunderstorm in our area so we were saved another wet and miserable morning. I did hear the claps of thunder very early in the morning though (just when daylight was breaking) and they seemed to be coming form the east. It was a much cooler day with overcast skies, Nav saying that it was good weather to drive in – and no doubt too as we’ve had to stop many a time because it’s just too hot to travel – let that be a lesson to you all, not to drive whilst hot and tired.

We got to small town of Ely and parked up outside some residential terraced houses, which seemed to have kept their old-style looks about them (not really old, but as Nav put it “I feel like I’ve gone back to the 1940s). A group of middle to elderly ladies walked past us as we snacked from the boot of the car (granary bread, homous and some other foodstuff), some of whom were speaking with quite a posh voice. Erm… that’s about it for that story.

We found Ely Cathedral with its huge spires and general huge shape hugeness. It was placed with a nice green at its front. Behind it was the local school and at that particular time, a load of school children had come swarming out. We ignored them and walked inside. This cathedral turned out to be another ‘pay-per-view’ place, so I took a photo of the main hall and had a quick look around.

Ely Cathedral. I questioned ‘why’, Nav jokily replied “It’s cultural, it’s what England was built up from.”

In the foyer, they too had the ‘one-path’ maze I described of in Norwich. Out the corner of my eye, I saw this elderly woman shuffling her feet, looking down to the floor. I thought this incredibly odd and decided to stare for a bit longer. Then she moved away from her spot and I found that she was tracing the path on the floor! Oh my, I couldn’t believe someone was doing it, and she looked like she was having fun too. Think is, I probably wouldn’t have picked this up had the maze been a bit bigger and if you couldn’t see what was at the centre, but all there was was a stand upon which sat a sign asking people to be quiet as it was ‘Quiet Hour’.

Inside Ely Cathedral, with me standing on that maze thing

We left the cathedral and headed into the local town which was mixed with small and big name shops. I think we must have spent at least 15-minutes deciding what insect repellent to purchase (so that we wouldn’t get bitten to death again). We also got some ice-cream, with Nav rhetorically questioning: “Why did we get ice-cream on one of the coldest days?” – and he was right, it was an overcast day from the effect of yesterday night.

Part of Ely’s town centre – maybe they hold their local market here?

Finally, we went to Oliver Cromwell’s house. He wasn’t in, but we stepped inside anyway – I’m sure he wouldn’t (have) mind(ed). In fact, part of the house had been turned into the TIC (and what was quite amusing was that on the door there read a sign “Entry to the TIC is FREE” – wow, thanks!). We didn’t bother to pay the fee to see the interiors and instead settled for a photograph of the outside:

Oliver Cromwell’s house-cum-TIC – I bet he wouldn’t be happy about that

We left Ely to go to our next destination, Peterborough. At one stage we were driving along an A-road that was not what you call bumpy/uneven, but was very much ‘wavey’ in that you’d br driving up and down small slopes. The road was also signed a ‘Red Route’ which we assumed to mean ‘You’ll be likely to get across this road without dieing’. Nav said that he could see why it was a dangerous road and why people would get killed – it was just too wavey to control at high speeds.

We continued our journey driving along ‘Oilmills Road’ – just as wavey as those before – and we passed an accident scene. On our driving side, a lorry had fallen onto its side down the small bank next to the road. There wasn’t any obvious external damage to the lorry (like, big bits of axel or wheels somewhere away from the lorry), but it looked like it would take a very long time for them to right the fallen vehicle. I saw a semi-naked man (assumed to be the driver) sitting on the roadside facing away from the road, who seemed to be quite shaken by the experience, sitting with two policemen.

The first thing I noticed about Peterborough was its ethnic diversity. During the trip around England, I was looking around finding that the majority of the population of the towns and villages to be Caucasian – of course, I suppose this was to be expected, but a lot of the time, there didn’t seem to be even a single family from an ethnic minority group. Not that I’m complaining or anything, just thought I’d point it out.

We managed to lose ourselves in village town street centre thingy, and whilst in Barclays I asked for directions to Peterborough Cathedral. The clerk told me to held back the way we came and then some. Finally, we found it and I found it to look quite square-looking – what do you think?

Peterborough Cathedral – west entrance

Inside, it was quite a simple design, nothing as fancy as some of the previous buildings. I don’t think that this detracted much from it, but for me, well maybe it’s because I’ve seen more cathedrals than any person should in three weeks.

A place for the important people to sit (excuse my ignorance) – quite impressive carvings, especially compared to the design of the rest of the place

Nav and I had a chat about our schedule and the destinations left on the list. He said that he was happy to drive to the county of Rutland tonight and camp there, and so we did. This would save us time on tomorrow, as I suggested that we see all the places in Rutland that Morton visited. We found a campsite without much of a problem (again, hunting for wireless internet access through residential areas) and drove east from Peterborough to Rutland (story of this county tomorrow). The owners of the campsite were particular caring of their grass asking us to be careful by not placing anything hot onto it otherwise that patch of grass would die in two days time. Two days? Hah, we wouldn’t be there the next day so what could they do…

The campsite that we stayed was selling locally produced chutney and the like – I bought a jar made to accompany Melton Mowbray pork pies (I had bought some from Tesco) and damn, was it tasty. Oh and I also made a time-lapse photograph thing of me setting up the tent (one shot every 15-seconds). I’ll try and get that up on the net some time soon. Time for bed.


-- steven

28th June 2005 - Norwich

So Morton goes to Peterborough first and then Norwich, but to save us time and to plan it so that we can get to Derby for Sunday’s ordination, we drove out to Norwich first and decided to work our way back inland.

The Boston to Norwich trip took longer than expected because of road works. They were using the classic ‘Go-Stop’ lollipop, so I said that if we ran over the signal-man on ‘Go’ we’d be the saviours of the day.

Today was the first day ever that we got really obvious looks of, well, I don’t know if they were of disgust or quizzical nature, but a group of five adults looked at us whilst we were lunching in Teso, Holbeach branch. It may have been Nav sitting in the camping chair enjoying his sandwich, but we both kind of made it look like Tesco carpark was our house, home and dining room.

‘Welcome to Norwich – A Fine City’ - That’s what was written on Norwich’s border sign. ‘A Fine City’?!? It couldn’t have been any lamer. It’s like saying: “Yeah, Norwich, it’s okay.”

We did the old trick of parking up a couple of hundred miles away from the city centre and walked in. Which I think was a good idea, as the streets we trod held many independent shops (mainly music, but there were others such as games, movies, clothes and accessories, etc.). It was great to see that sort of thing as I think it makes a city was it is (in fact, only a couple of days ago, BBC Radio 4 were discussing whether Exeter was a ‘clone city’ with all its name brand high-street shops). Some of the roads were still bricked and not redone with asphalt and that also made it more homely. It was a nice city to stroll around in with lots of ‘pedestrianised’ areas with even more small shops and some other name brands.

Before we got to the city, we found Stranger’s Hall (one of the places seen by Morton). Unfortunately, it was closed or at least they had finished all the touring sessions. The door to the small square of medieval houses was still open so we went inside to have a look. There wasn’t really much of interest, and it wasn’t until the end of the day when we were walking back to the car that I noticed they had cardboard cut-outs of people inside the houses – so you were supposed to peek through the glass when inside the square. The advertisements for looked crap anyway, so I don’t think we missed out on too much.

Strangers’ Hall – it was a really small square area, so small that I could actually photograph anything (interesting…)

We found oldest Norwich Cathedral without a problem (there are two, and also a billion churches – Morton did say it was the City of Churches) and had a look inside. Impressively (or should have oppressively) huge and the Cloister (the cathedral’s inner green) was spacious also. There was one of those circular non-maze things (one entrance and only one method/path to the centre) shaped out by slabs of concrete placed into the ground. In the middle was a circular slab with “Golden Jubilee 2002” etched on it (I think that’s what it said, can’t really remember).

Norwich Cathedral from the Cloisters – parts of the cathedral ceiling still had paintings on them

We strolled around quite some while before Nav said that he wanted to have a sleeveless t-shirt – and then he asked me if I had my Leatherman. I handed it to him and he pulled out the scissors and started to hack away at his sleeves. Somehow, at that very moment, there didn’t seem to be a single person around us.

Nav doing what he does best – hacking things to pieces and still getting a positive result – learn from him

What was pretty funny was that Nav successfully pulled off one sleeve and whilst tearing off the other, managed to rip his t-shirt down the side about half-way down. Oh, the hilarity! Mind, I think he got away with it because when he walked his arm covered the rip neatly. So Nav managed to make one of those sleeveless t-shirts in about 30-seconds, and well, it didn’t look too bad (nor good). He said that people would be jealous of his ‘frayed edge’ t-shirt, which was at some point ‘in fashion’. And I don’t think he got stared at either – Nav says he got a ‘respect’ look from some guy in the highstreet.

Further strolling around Norwich town brought us to The Forum. Boy oh boy – was this building impressive! The main construction was glass and steel (I think) with a flat front and a curve roof, looking very much like a modern aircraft hanger. It housed BBC Norwich, the local library, and also an interactive museum which dates 2000 years of Norwich history (so says the leaflet). It was huge and here’s a photo to prove it (and I think that Nav said it was too big for the camera too):

The Forum in all its glory

The TIC lady told us where to find the square Norman castle of Norwich and also Pulls Ferry. Before both, we strolled through the Castle Mall (Norwich’s shopping centre) just as most of the shops were closing so the place was pretty deserted – Nav did manage to get his Tax disc for the car, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Square Norman Castle on a hill – a view from the street below

It was coming up to 5:30pm and we found the castle to be closed. It was a real shame because the castle looked interesting. Maybe next time. From here we headed north-east, reaching the river and walking north to Pulls Ferry. We managed to walk past it because I had forgotten what the photograph looked like in Morton’s book. We turned around and took a photo of what we thought it could have been – turned out that we were right, although it looks nothing like it did then.

[morton’s shot of pulls ferry]

Our shot of Pulls Ferry

There were other places that Morton visited during his time in Norwich and Norfolk, but it was late in the day and some of those places too far. We decided that enough was enough and went to a campsite.

I think that this is another first: when speaking with the lady owner of the campsite , I dropped in the comment of us travelling around England. And for the first time, someone seemed remotely interested – it was great! The fact that she asked a couple of questions, like; how long have you been going for; where did you travel from today; and saying “Oh, lovely. Well, should travel around these places some time” was enough to warrant, in my opinion, some interest.

And it was also to be the first night of a thunder storm accompanied by a torrential downpour. A day of ‘firsts’, it seems. The tent was set during daylight hours and as the night drew in, we could see in the distance from the west, flashes of light brightening up the sky. At times there were several in succession and as the day grew later, Nav said that he could hear the rumblings of the thunder (but the whole thing was more than 30miles away at that time). However, in about 30-minutes, the distance between us and the storm had shortened considerably and was probably about 10 miles away – we hit the sack pretty quick at that point.

Oh and that campsite was full of little annoying biting flies and we got bitten to pieces – my head and neck, and Nav everywhere but the head. Very annoying. Whilst in the tent, we said that we’d die either from being eaten alive by flies or we’d drown in the flood of the storm. And then we heard the first drops of rain, lightly at first and then becoming slightly harder.

And it stayed ‘slightly harder’ for a very time, all the while we could see the flashes of lightning from the west followed by the thunder. And this went on and on, and then I got bored of waiting for the downpour and I fell asleep.


-- steven