Autumn Walking

You might have realised that I love walking.  Sadly at this time of year walking opportunities are fewer due to dark evenings but I have had a couple of lovely walks recently.

A few Saturdays ago I went over to one of my favourite places, Marks Hall Arboretum.  I walked up towards the lake,

and then around on the Millennium walk, along the bottom edge of the lake,

up to the memorial site where I'd heard the autumn colour was especially good.

The memorial site is a memorial to the serviceman who were stationed at Marks Hall during the 2nd world war - the colours in the acers were stunning.

This is acer rubrum 'October Glory'.  And it was living up to its name!

Then I walked back through the woods to the walled garden.

From the walled garden the views over the lake were lovely.

Later that same week my cousin and his wife, who now live in America, came to visit.  They wanted to walk on the Sudbury water meadows and we had a glorious day for a 4.5 mile circular route.

We walked along the river Stour, across the meadows the the Salmon Leap (no salmon in the river nowadays as far as I know!),

with time for a quick selfie

before walking back home along the river.  

Two great walks, hopefully to be repeated again very soon!

A Cambridgeshire Feast!

My Dad was born and brought up in a village just north of Cambridge, Cottenham, which is part of the Fen Edge villages.  Every year, on the first Sunday after October 11th, they hold their annual Feast.  On the Sunday there's a parade that starts by the church and processes down the High Street, ending up at the green.  The first parade was held in 1894, so it's been going a while!  When I was little we used to go there every year for it, this is me, my little sister, my Dad and my Grandad in 1969, standing on the front step of my Grandad's house, eagerly waiting for the parade to go past.

Dad hasn't been for years but really wanted to go again, so yesterday we went.  We listened to the brass band play while we waited for the parade.

Then the parade came past - lots of excited children, some of whom had walked a long way, eagerly collecting money for local causes.

Aren't those jellyfish costumes clever!

There were a variety of vehicles towing trailers full of people - Dad was really thrilled to see this one, driven by an old friend of his!

After the parade had passed we all made our way onto the green.  Originally there was a service on the green once the parade arrived and somewhere I have a copy of a very long speech that my Great Grandad made during it sometime in the early 1900s (but I can't locate it at the moment!). There was no Salvation Army band playing like there used to be when I was little, so no hymn singing like we used to do, but lots of people milling about.  

Dad had a long chat with his old mate.

We also managed to find the people who now live in his old house and were thrilled to hear that the small holding behind it, in which my grandparents used to grow fruit for Chiver's and flowers for Covent Garden is still there! Although it's not used as a small holding anymore they still have a productive fruit and veg patch.

We all had a great day out!

A Day Out in London

Yesterday I went to London.  I was going to the theatre but I'd also discovered it was Open House London, which is part of Open City, where buildings not normally open to the public open their doors to visitors.  The first one I tried to visit was 201 Bishopsgate.

It's 2 towers, joined by some amazing diagonal stainless steel work with a roof garden.  Sadly there were about 100 people in front of me and they were only letting 20 people in every 1/2 hour and I didn't have that much time (see the people abseiling on the left tower?).

So I went to 10 New Burlington Street instead; a new build behind the facade of both Regent Street and New Burlington Street.  I was lucky enough to join a tour of 10 people led by one of the architects.  No photography was allowed so I've used the images from this website (which also explains more of the detail if you're interested).

Behind the facades (which were either kept in place and propped up during the build, or taken down brick by brick, stored and rebuilt to level the floors up)

is this - 

not what you'd expect to be there at all!

Inside they'd used limited materials - the ceilings are polished plaster and the walls white oak.

There is a large central atrium to bring in light and the handmade porcelain tiles were the only colour.

We went into the listed vaults underneath, which were originally wine cellars and had been sensitively restored with lime mortar and now store bike racks for the people who work there.

It is an absolutely stunning building,  and from Regents Street the only thing you see is this gate - designed to represent the clockmakers who used to be on the site in the past.

After leaving here, a spot of lunch, and a sense of direction failure that had me walking the wrong way up Charing Cross Road for quite a while, I went here.

Kenneth Branagh was fantastic, as were all of the cast.  His daughter was played by Sophie McShera who is known to many of us as Daisy from Downton Abbey.

It's on for another few weeks and it's worth a visit if you're in London.

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A flea, some blocking and a battle!

This is a combined/random type of blog post as I've failed totally to manage to post them separately over the last few weeks.

First of all I've discovered a rather lovely, and very cheap, flea market near where my parents live.  We went to it a few weeks ago and I bought all of this:

There are 3 lovely 1950s Midwinter Cassandra dinner plates (I paid £8.00 for the three and they retail at about £20 each online).   The jug is holkham pottery and the Mrs Tiggly Winkle dish is wedgwood.
The bottle says King's Lynn Soda Water on it

All together I paid £30 for all the goodies in the photo (apart from the cat, she was just being nosey!).

Next, several people have asked my about why I block knitting.  Blocking turns a crumpled piece of finished knitting like this

into a defined, uncrumpled item.  I soak mine in water, roll it in a towel to dry it and them use wires and pins to pull it to the shape and size detailed in the pattern.

When it's dry it holds its shape and, it this case, retains the detail of the lace pattern.

This Henslowe shawl has turned out well, its a wool and silk mix yarn from Skein Queen.

Finally I went with Celia to a battle.  A reconstruction of the Battle of Assandun, between the Anglo Saxons led by Edmund Ironside and the Vikings led by Canute.

There was lots of charging about and a commentary telling the story (which was hard to hear), but it was fun and we had tea and cake too.

I'm off to London this weekend to see Kenneth Branagh in The Entertainer - can't wait!

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Exciting, Challenging and Relaxing - Three Very Different Days.

I've just had 2 weeks off work - I didn't go away but I did do lots of things.

The most exciting thing I did was a 20m tree climb.  Using ropes, knots and karabiners I climbed right into the tree canopy.

The tree was a 30m high, 200yr old sycamore in Marks Hall Arboretum

I'm the circled one, about to go through the canopy!

Once we'd got to the top (there were 6 adults and 2 children in my group, including the curator of Marks Hall), we did a free-fall abseil back down to earth.  This is where you don't put your feet on anything but control the descent through the ropes (picture the SAS climbing down a rope from a helicopter) - it was amazing.

The most challenging thing I did was to make a new deck for in front of my shed.  The old one was made of pallets and was rotting.

The reason I need a deck here is because underneath it is a big hole.  A old brick lined drainage chamber (old cess pit) which dates from when the houses were first built and before they were connected to the main sewer.

It's about 15ft deep and is not what you want to fall into (although it was very useful for chucking the old rotting wood into!).

It was challenging as the normal way of constructing a deck wouldn't work as there wasn't enough solid ground to lay the joists on, but I persevered and adapted as I went along and this is the finished result - it's very solid and looks good too (though I say it myself!).

The most relaxing thing I did was visit Wicken Fen - I'd not been for many years and it was just as lovely as I remembered it.  I took a boat trip along Wicken Lode where we watched dragonflies darting all around.

It was a glorious day and I went for a long walk - ending up at the mere before returning back to the visitor centre.

I also visited Fen Cottage, which is one of the last remaining buildings of the hamlet that once existed by the reserve.

It's constructed of local materials including peat, wood, sedge. reed and clay, all of which would have been harvested from the fen.

It was occupied until 1972 and has been restored pretty much to how it was when the last people lived in it.

The cottage gardens are gorgeous!

It was a lovely, relaxing way to end my fortnight off.

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One Historic Tower

Yesterday afternoon, after dropping Mum and Dad off for a history talk in King's Lynn, I set off along the quayside to the antiques warehouse.  As I turned down the lane leading to it I saw this sign.

How could I resist? I love history, I love towers and I suspected it was part of a house I'd longed to see inside for ages.

My suspicions were correct - it was part of Clifton House.  It was just coming up to the end of their opening time, but this worked in my favour.

Each floor of the tower has one room and some of them were set out as they might have been during the tower's history. This room was set out for a merchants' diner - the painted walls are partly restored and are beautiful.

The view from the top was amazing.  

Over the historic town centre to the church of St Margarets with its twin towers

and also over the river to where the merchant ships would originally have docked.

When I came down I was the only visitor still there and I was offered a guided tour of the house by its now owner, Simon Thurley - how could I resist?  A free, personal, tour by an eminent historian who lives in the house? Yes please!

He showed me the restoration work that they'd been doing and work they still needed to do - I didn't take many photos as I was too busy listening.  But I did take pictures of the delicately restored plasterwork on the stairs,

and in the 14th century vaulted undercroft which was originally used to store the wine that was imported by the merchants.

It was a lovely afternoon - if you ever get a chance to visit it's well worth it.  

I did get to the antiques warehouse too - so a pretty perfect afternoon really!