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

Norfolk Beaches

Right then where were we.... here's some pics from our summer holiday a couple of months back when we went to Norfolk with Nanna Julie. We stayed at The Cromer Country Club in Cromer, which is a classic Victorian seaside town (Victorian as in developed during the late 19th century during the reign of Queen Victoria; not as in the state where Jo grew up - that wouldn't make sense).

Cromer's got the mandatory stone church, fish and chip shops, ice cream shops, bucket and spade shops and amusement parlours which all English seaside towns seem to have, but its also got a pier, which is only reserved for the "classic" towns it seems. What's more it's the home of the Cromer crab, the local delicacy that you can actually catch from straight off the pier.... there were tons of them. We ate a few (tasted like crab funnily enough) but didn't catch any ourselves.


The Cromer Country Club is up on the cliffs above the town, and it's a nice walk down to the main beach, including lots of crab-themed Christmas lights, which must look nice at Christmas.


Just to add to the vibe.... here we checking out the cliff walk in the late afternoon.





Caiti really loves the pebbly beaches here in the UK. They are a great opportunity for her to work on her throwing technique. There's a few rocks on the beach at Cromer, but it's actually nice and sandy once the tide goes out a little.


Lucy likes the beach as well, but prefers the sandy stretches for castle building.



Here's us on the pier after the beach.


And here's all the girls enjoying what was quite good weather.


There's lots of fish and chips shops everywhere, but this shellfish van was a new experience. Crab, cockles and leekies were popular.


So we set ourselves up in front of the pub on the promenade to try it all out. The crab was sensational and the cockles were OK, but we won't be ordering the leekies again.


We mentioned the weather was good, and it was most days, but when it wasn't we headed out to check out the Norfolk coast a little more. The beach at Sea Palling is nice and sandy because they've created artificial reefs a few hundred yards out to see. They were put there to stop the low-lying town from flooding during tidal surges, but now there's no more pebbles on the beach either.


Here's Nanna enjoying the sights of nearby Sheringham, another nice Victorian seaside town, but pierless, alas.


And this is the beach at Sheringham.



It's a bit pebbly, but quite pleasant on a sunny day.


The telescope is 20p, but there's not a real lot to see to be honest.


We liked this fishing-themed relief.


And here's Lucy at the Sheringham lifeboat club.


And finally, a bit of fun at the beach for your enjoyment.

Caiti's started school! (or 'sool' as she calls it)

We can't believe it either, but Caiti's started at school. All good so far - learning, making friends, doing her homework, blitzing computer studies (applying her advanced internet gaming skills) and finishing at midday each day, cause she's a "summer born".

Anyway, there's a big demand to see some photos, so here's some Nanna Julie took when she was here. Caiti started a few days after Lucy, and Nanna actually left the weekend before Caiti's first day, so we did a special dress up for the cameras in our new backyard!









And here's Lucy on her first day back at school - all fired up for another big year!

Goodbye West Byfleet.... Hello Woodham

Well it's been a while - we hope everyone's well. Our only excuse is that we've moved house and it's taken a while for the broadband to get reconnected. Still, we haven't been idle... apart from the nightmare that is moving house, we have managed to squeeze in a holiday to Norfolk and get out and about and enjoy summer - which has been surprisingly acceptable this year. Plenty of photos taken, so stay tuned as usual.

The new house is in Woodham, which is about two streets away from where we used to live even though it's another village and in another borough. The two places are separated by the famous (or infamous for some) Basingstoke Canal - now we have to cross the canal to get to school, work, shops, etc. So now there's even more chance of spotting a long boat in our travels.

With this blog being on the internet and all, we haven't really advertised exactly where we live, and as a result we never posted a very cute video of Lucy taking us on a tour of our old house, which was actually filmed not long after we first moved in. [The girls have changed so much since then!] Anyway, since we don't live there anymore, we thought "why not?". So here for your enjoyment is 'little' Lucy's fabulous house tour... watch out for the last room, it's great!