The Great Escape

  May 11   - Cambridge to Ely Only a short drive of 17 miles to Ely today giving us plenty of time for a side visit to a National Trust Nature Reserve, Wicken Fen.  The fen, a type of peat-accumulating wetland, is also a Site of Special Scientific Special Interest and is renowned for its diversity of flora and fauna with over 9,000 species recorded there.  Well set up for visitors we walked for about 5k along boardwalks stopping a number of stops to  “twitch” from the bird hides.  We also went on a boat ride along one of the many man-made watercourses, which was great, and with a very interesting commentary by the ‘skipper’.  The whole morning though could have been much nicer if all the rain that we didn’t have in April hadn’t dropped in just a few hours! ☔️ 😊 Once in Ely, booked into our accommodation and dry, we’re off to see one of the UK’s most impressive cathedrals.  We’re only here for one night, and with the cathedral being the sole pu...

  May 10   - Cambridge   Our itinerary today, in part, had been to visit a couple of Cambridge’s well known university campuses.  However, because we’re here during exam time, this plan was somewhat curtailed and many of the college buildings are presently closed to visitors. Fortunately though it’s still possible to visit some of the grounds and chapels and so this was our new plan.  Our first visit was to Kings College, one of the 31 constituent Colleges that make up the University of Cambridge, and founded by King Henry VI in 1441. However, due to politics, civil war, and the lack of funds, it was only completed during the reign of Henry VIII some hundred years later. While the buildings across the whole campus are pretty special the chapel in particular is spectacular and is regarded as one of the greatest examples of late English Gothic architecture in existence.  After climbing the tower at Great St Mary’s Church, to view Cambridge from above, we ...

  May 09   - Travel day Worthing to Cambridge   After booking into our B&B (an interesting address, and if there’s no more blog posts after here you can guess what happened! 😊 ) we took off for a walk into town and to the Whipple museum.  Should we be worried? 😂 The Whipple, which houses all artefacts related to the history of science, was quite interesting, however sadly it lacked the wow factor and was just a little bit ho-hum.  In contrast to the museum however, the walk around town, and down along the river, was beautiful!  With olde worlde sandstone buildings, and universities alongside the River Cam, this is one lovely town and I’m looking forward to tomorrow when we’ll get to see the inside of some of them. 

May 05  - Worthing  Taking advantage of our Australian National Trust membership we visited one of the local NT properties, Petworth House and Gardens.  Famous for its extensive art collection (including Turner, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Holbein), it also has an extensive deer park landscaped by Capability Brown.  Although not as opulent on the outside as many other country mansions it’s still pretty special inside though. Even so there are a couple of standouts, the ‘Carved Room’, and the ‘Grand Staircase’. The Carved Room has some wonderful carved wood panelling on the walls as well as a number of portraits, one of which is of King Henry VIII, it’s magnificent. The Grand Staircase, which has a series of allegorical murals on the ceilings and walls and, although not normally my cup of tea, is really quite impressive.  After the house we walked through the parklands and gardens to try and see some deer, which we’d not manage to see in the New Forest recently. Afte...

  May 03 -  Lymington to Worthing   A travel day today, heading home to Worthing but with a couple of diversions on the way.  Our first stop was the small village of Beaulieu.  Meaning 'beautiful place' in French, Beaulieu, a picturesque little honey stone village, sits on a river and mill pond and is in the middle of the New Forest.  Dating back to the 13th century the village, built around an Abbey founded by Cistercian monks, is absolutely delightful and, although more well known for its car museum, certainly deserves a visit on its own.  A second stop was to catch up with some friends of JEM’s living living in Gosport, a naval town on the south coast.  Being ex-navy, and still having an interest in all things ‘naval’, they took us on a walk along the quay to watch the departure, from the neighbouring port of Portsmouth, of the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. Wow! This is one seriously big ship! Also, while at the quay, we saw a ‘win...

  May 02   - Lymington (Dorset) Off to the New Forest this morning, for the first of our two walks, with the small village of Brockenhurst being our start point.  The New Forest, proclaimed a ‘Forest’ by William the Conqueror, is one of England’s largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture, heathland and forest and is just fantastic for hiking.  We chose Brockenhurst because, apart from having many walking tracks in the locale, there are a choice of three pubs for when we finish our walk! 🍺   New Forest ‘residents’ Following on from yesterday’s theme, our second hike of the day was to another nature reserve, Fishlake Meadows.  Once again the lakes and woods were pretty cool, and we also saw some new bird species (for us), unfortunately though we were too slow, or too far away, with the camera!  All up though a great day to finish off a lovely week in the ‘West Country’, as tomorrow we’re heading back ‘home’ to Worthing. 

  May 01   - Lymington (Dorset) The 1st of May today and we got rained on for the first time since we arrived in the UK (31st March!), this must be some kind of record 😊   Two hikes today and the first was in and around an area known as the North Solent Marshes, a nature reserve, and named after the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight (The Solent). The area has been classified as both a ‘Site of Significant Scientific Interest’ and an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ and it’s easy to see why. The views across the mudflats are stunning while also creating an idyllic habitat for plants and seabirds.  We saw loads of new birds (for us!) and with the help of a few ‘twitchers’ along the way (and JEM’s new long zoom camera!) we managed to put a name to most of them.  What a lovely walk.  Our second hike was at another nature reserve, Blashford Lakes.  Not quite as impressive as this morning but a great walk anyway,  The...

  Apr 30   - Lymington (Dorset) A travel day today, Beer to Lymington.  As we’d missed out on the ‘chain library’ in Wimborne minster on the way down to Beer earlier on in the week, we decided to check it out on our way to Lymington.  However, for some reason the cathedral changed its opening hours this week and it’s now not open Saturdays!  Seriously?  We’ll just have to come back for a ‘3rd time lucky’ some other time.  Although we’d missed out on seeing the minster, fortunately for us JEM had seen a signpost to a nearby National Trust property, Kingston Lacy.  As previous members of the NT we knew they own some absolute gems, and this proved to be one of them. This 17th century, Italian inspired country mansion, set in over 8,000 acres of gardens and parkland, is fantastic!  The ‘house’, after much restoration work, and along with its collections of fine art, old masters, and antiquities, is just magnificent and definitely has a ‘wow’...

  Apr 29   - Beer (in Devon) Back to hiking today A little bit of an upset to our schedule this morning. Due to the vagaries of the local bus timetables (due in part to different bus companies), our original plan to walk to Lyme Regis and walk back got upended.  On top of that, facing a near 2 hour wait for transport leaving Beer, we decided to drive to Seaton and get the bus to Lyme Regis from there!   After a pleasant bus ride through the coastal countryside we started our walk by having a wander out to ‘The Cobb’.  Originally built In the 13th century, this is an old stone pier/ breakwater that helps form the local harbour, however, nobody seems to know the origin of the name.  It’s pretty impressive in size which makes you wonder what sort of wave action it has to tolerate.  Once out of town, and on to the Coastal Path proper, we started our walk in the local woods.  As it eventuated though about 95% of the path back to Seaton was in woo...