Ely Cathedral

Here's a few shots from our drive-by visit to Ely Cathedral. We first saw this place on the BBC documentary called "How We Built Britain" which aired a couple of years back, and thought - that'd be worth a look.

How We Built Britain was an enormously cool show, and David Dimbleby is a pretty cool presenter,travelling about the country from building to building in his bomby old Land Rover. It's worth a look if you manage to catch it. The Cathedral was also enormously cool - as was the weather that day, for which we were enormously unprepared - we still had our beach gear on as we made our way back from Norfolk.


The Cathedral. Construction of the "modern" building began sometime around 1080 we understand. Big, isn't it?



Lucy and Nana out the back.


This looks like a shot from an album cover - not sure if the band's any good though!


The obligatory shot from inside the Cathedral. We're still not sure if this is bad form or not.



And here's a quick vid of the girls catching ladybirds outside the Cathedral - there was a plague of ladybirds last summer, so they were literally everywhere, but do you think this stopped our two from being fascinated every time they saw one??? Of course not!




And if you're interested, here's the opening titles to the show, as found on YouTube.
And here's a clip from the show.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8yf31AAjv8

Cambridge: The Backs

When we were told by some locals on the 'Park and Ride' bus into Cambridge that we should see The Backs, we naturally assumed they were referring to the more intelligent players of the university rugby team. As it turns out, The Backs is the area where many of the colleges back onto the River Cam.
(Of course, if you want to see the Fronts of the colleges, take a look at our previous blog entry).

The River Cam is, as you may know, a punter's delight; what with all the betting shops and boat races. You can alternatively blow your hard-earned on taking a ride in a boat while some poor punter pushes a pole along the river bed. It all looked a bit too sedate for our kid's liking, so instead we walked a lap around the river path, over a couple of the lovely old bridges, and all the while snapped away happily away....



Poor pole-pushing punters are particulary popular


We liked this view of Kings College so much, everyone wanted to be in on the action!!!





Another bit of Kings College


Nice view of the buildings and more pole-pushers. If I'm not mistaken, that nice building there is the back of Gonville and Caius.
I may be mistaken.


A punting traffic jam


Another view of the picturesque River Cam

A Study of Cambridge

Another witty blog title means another lovely town to visit! Cambridge has certainly been one of our favourite places to visit so far. The streets are great for walking, the shopping's pretty good, and the architecture is quite spectacular. In fact we took so many photos, there were too many to post in one sitting, so we hope you enjoy these for now.


Here we are in St John's Street - lots of gorgeous colleges on this street


There's St John's for starters....


Here's the girls outside the chapel at St John's


Trinity College has a post box on the street out front




And the inside of Trinity is quite beautiful too.


We wandered past a nice college and took a look at map inside the passageway to find out we were at the legendary Gonville and Caius College... here's the map.


Lucy decided to waltz straight past the porter and through the college entrance...


....and waltzed right on through the courtyard.


This is us in Tree Court


...and here's us again in Cauis Court (it's pronounced 'keys').


As a gardener herself, Nanny Dawn admired the borders.


A wobbly moment.


Another happy couple shot (we got a grown up to take it this time).


More of the Keezees at Caius


The stone engraving on top of the passageway tells us where we are in Latin (in case we don't speak English) - it's "CAIVS"


A nice quiet and shady moment


And here's Gonville and Caius from the main street.


The girls stopped outside St Mary's Church to admire the junior orchestra. Some of the players were as young as Lucy.


The entrance to King's College is very grand....


... from whatever angle you view it.


St Catharine's College (I believe that is the correct spelling, by the way)


Corpus Christi College was closed apparently, but we still snuck a shot in.


Not sure who these people are... perhaps some American tourists.


Not much of a photo this, but notable due to the fact that we spotted Stirling Mortlock in town, when he should have been back home preparing for the big test against the All Blacks.