Cambridge 2

Robert reminds me that when you come to Cambridge you come up to Cambridge, regardless of the direction you are travelling. This is true. If you are coming up to the University. If, however, you are heading South from Tupton to Arbury then you are clearly heading down to Cambridge! But I shall remember for next time!

But it doesn’t matter which direction you are going, up or down, it nevertheless continues to rain in Cambridge. Persistently. Ongoingly. Irritatingly! Clearly we are not visiting Wicken Fen (a nature reserve) or Flag Fen (an archaeological site) this weekend. Must think of something else to do. Other than sitting in the lounge room, drinking tea and reading A compendium of nosh!

Even the bunnies were looking pissed off, sat in their hutch, gazing out at the persistent drizzle. Eventually we brought them inside (no pets are allowed to be kept in the house, according to the lease – no reason to assume that means that rabbits can’t visit!) and they sat on my and The Builder’s knee and gazed about. Then they spent half an hour or so playing on the couch before being put back in their hutch.

We, in the meantime, had decided to go out for lunch and think about something to do for the afternoon. A country pub in a village. We all hopped in the Vixen and headed back up through Milton and back towards Stretham. And decide to stop at the Lazy Otter, because it was a riverside pub (on the Great Ouse) overlooking boats, but mainly because it had a fantastically whimsical name. It also does fantastic food. For me, really nice button mushrooms in a stilton sauce, followed by a chargrilled chicken breast with vegetables. Quite defeated me. Almost unheard of for me to leave new potatoes on my plate!

What to do for the rest of the afternoon? On the road leading to the Lazy Otter, there is a ruined abbey with an attached farming museum which was having a fair for the long weekend. We decided to go there. It wasn’t raining all that heavily and there looked to be buildings with roofs to shelter in. The farming museum was very interesting. There was a basket maker there, making baskets. There was a jazz band. Lots of tractors and farming machines to look at. But the Maypole dancing had been cancelled because of the weather. No matter. Can live without that! We explored Denny Abbey which has a long history as a monastery, an abbey (developed by the Countess of Pembroke for nuns), and then farm buildings, until it was allowed to fall into disuse and ruin. It doesn’t do a tiled refectory floor a great deal of good when you turn it into a barn! There’s also a farm worker’s cottage, decorated and furnished as if it were the 1940s. It was a lovely cottage. I could quite fancy living in it myself – though an inside toilet and bathroom would be a comfortable addition! But I could live with the kitchen quite easily.

And so home for a sit down and a nice cup of tea. It had been our intention to head out in the evening to one of the local pubs for an ale drinking fest. What actually happened was that Gaz and Taffa headed out to a Greek take away place in town and came back bearing souvlaki, calamari rings and dolmades. I opened a cask of wine. And we sat and watched a series of programmes on telly about children’s television in the 1960s, ate lovely Greek food, drank lots of wine and went to bed. It was rather a nice day. We don’t very often get the chance to sit about and do nothing in a gentle sort of a way. Even going to the farm museum wasn’t vigorous exercise. It was all very pleasant and relaxing.

It is not, actually, raining as we speak. But it is still grey. And the drizzle is hanging about. I hope it stays dry for a time this morning. I want to go to the market!