Outing To Cambridge

Our holiday continues. We are making the most of the warm weather again and this time, we had a trip out to Cambridge. We have been there on a few occasions, but not for a couple of years. We had to put petrol in the car at the Shell station in Grafton Street and then drove away from Milton Keynes, going towards Bedford past the Amazon distribution centre near the M1 junction at Ridgemont. The recently opened stretch of dual carriageway between the M1 and going towards Bedford and eventually the A1 at the Blackcat Roundabout means you no longer go into Bedford at all as it joins up with the Bedford bypass and it takes no more than 20-30 minutes to reach Bedford and then a further 20 minutes or so to reach the A1 and off near St Neots and on towards Cambridge. We soon reached the park-and-ride carpark at Madingley and boarded the bus which took us into the centre of Cambridge. Another relatively short journey and it's so much easier to use the park-and-ride rather than negotiating the centre of Cambridge, looking for a parking space, the frustration that causes, getting stuck in traffic (which, incidentally was quite heavy.) and in the end saving time and money (the cost of a return ticket was £6, not too expensive considering the speed of the journey and the time we spent in the centre of Cambridge.) We got off on Bridge Street, near the Round Church and the walked towards the Market Square and King's Parade. We found a Marks and Spencer's and bought crisps , drink and sandwiches and Carol wanted a coffee so we found a Cafe Nero and bought a take-out latte and then we went off to find somewhere to devour our food and in the end sat on a step in a side-street. I'm surprised there are no more benches that we could have sat on, but never mind. Adequately refreshed we walked to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Trumpington Street and browsed in one of the galleries and looked at some very familiar Pre-Raphaelite paintings which I have only ever seen in books. Also, another favourite painter of mine, Sir Stanley Spencer.
We stood looking at one painting and then a lady, who was viewing the same painting asked us about it. We had a long conversation and it turned out that she was also a teacher, like Carol. She was from Canada, and we then discovered she'd come to England to work with her husband and was working in a school in Milton Keynes and lived only a short distance from where we lived. It seemed quite a coincidence that we should go all the way to Cambridge and then bump into someone who lived only a short distance from us but who worked in another school and was also a teacher! Carol has also worked with several teachers over the past year who came originally from Canada (for example, Kendra, who stayed with us briefly before she moved into her own accommodation.) Just shows what a small world it is.)

We wandered through so more of the galleries before leaving the museum and walking back along Trumpington Street and the centre of Cambridge. Carol suggested we buy some ice cream, which we got from a street vendor and we sat and ate it on the low wall near one of the collages on King's Parade. The place was absolutely teeming with tourists. Cambridge is quite obviously one of the many and various stops that tourists come to when they visit this country.

The Chronophage at Corpus Christi

Carol had said she wanted to see the special clock which is at one of the colleges along King's Parade. We saw it a couple of years ago when we visited Cambridge when we'd been to the botanic garden. It had only recently been installed and we saw it on the local BBC television news programme 'Look East.'It is on the corner of Benet Street, on the outside of Corpus Christi college. It's a large golden clock which has a strange but quite hideous grasshopper-like insect balanced on the top which is made of metal and acts as the escape mechanism and seems to be clawing away time as it moves along. It had crowds of tourists in front of it, making it difficult to see clearly. Mostly Japanese tourists who seemed eager to photograph the thing with either their mobile phones or cameras. It took me some considerable time and effort to get a decent shot as a lot of children would insist on sitting on the sill of the window it was behind. But I eventually managed to get the photograph I wanted.

As much as we love Cambridge, and we've visited quite a few times over the past couple of years, there is one thing that annoys us above all other things. It's those people who throng the main tourist streets, particularly along King's Parade, touting punting trips. We were approached by several as we walked along, minding our own business. These 'trips' aren't cheap, around £20-£30 a time. I'm not sure how exactly they work, but presumably you are taken for a trip, in a punt, controlled (if that's the right word.) by a student or other person, along the Granta or Camb (I'm not sure which name the same river has in the centre of Cambridge. Presumably the Cam. I think it becomes the Granta outside the City.) But to say 'no' to one such tout and then be constantly assaulted (pardon the expression. But it does seem a bit like an assault.) by several more is just too much. Something should be done about it. I think if I, for one, wish to take a punting trip along the river I have a right to choose when I do this, and not be bombarded by these people. The local authority should do something about it, as it's extremely annoying.
We continued on and walked back to Bridge Street to await the arrival of the next bus which would take his back to the park-and-ride car park and our car. 

Visit To Bedford- Part 1

I drove over to Bedford yesterday to visit my friend Nick. Hi Nick if you're reading this! 

I was attempting to leave the house before 9.30, but I couldn't find Alfie. I wanted to put both the dogs in the kitchen, as we don't want them in the sitting room as we have a brand new rug and they have a habit of leaving bits of grass all over it and it takes ages to Hoover it. Anyway, Poppy complied with me and went into the kitchen and I shut the door. Then I called for Alfie, but I couldn't find him anywhere. He wasn't behind the sofa, a favourite place to hide, and he wasn't in the garden. He generally comes when you whistle or call. I looked around the house and called. Then it occurred to me that he might be in our bedroom and under the bed, so I went upstairs to the bedroom and knelt on the floor to have a look under the bed. And sure enough he was there, cowering. He looked really upset, depressed almost. He wouldn't even look at me, and he looked so sad. I think he had an idea that I was going out and leaving him. He really hates being left in the house on his own, even if it's with Poppy. We have recently bought him a bed and put it in the kitchen, as he quite likes to lay on a cushion here, neat the sliding door which leads into the garden. I called Alfie again, but still he wouldn't come out of under the bed. So my next tactic was to go downstairs and fetch a doggy treat, and sure enough he came out! I had to pick him up and carry him downstairs as he was really reluctant to go  on all four legs. So, eventually placed in the kitchen, and having checked that they had adequate water to drink, I shut the door, checked I had my mobile, wallet, loose change and my mobile, went out of the front door, which I locked behind me, and got in the car to begin the drive to Bedford.

I drove out of Milton Keynes towards Kingston, along Standing Way, past Tesco's at Kingston, and out towards the MI at Junction 13, past the Amazon warehouse (having bought quite a lot from Amazon, it seems absurd to think it all comes from that huge warehouse you see at the interchange with the MI and all the other roads, and only a few miles from our home.) There has been considerable work done on the roads here, and it's so much easier and quicker to get to Bedford on the vastly improved dual carriage way. Infact, you can get to Bedford, the A1 and Cambridge really fast now, going via the Bedford by-pass without getting in those awful traffic jams in the centre of Bedford.  It probably takes no more than 40 minutes, all told, from our house in Milton Keynes, to the Black Cat Roundabout on the A1. How many people go past and don't give the town a second thought.?I don't actually blame them, as there isn't a great deal to do there. It once had a good shopping centre, but, sadly, with the recession and now the infamous Credit Crunch, the place has got really run down and rather depressing.
Just as I got on to the new stretch of road towards Bedford near the MI the heavens opened and it rained. The windscreen wipers on our car are somewhat unreliable, and bits have come off the rubber, so they aren't as efficient at removing rain from the car's windscreen as they should be, but at least they worked. As cars and lorries went past me they threw up great clouds of mist and water, making visability even more difficult, but the rain didn't last long, and I was soon driving along in sunshine again.

I'm really surprised how quickly I got to the outskirts of Bedford, and came off the bypass at Kempston. I really didn't recognise the road, the new layout, or, indeed where I was at first, until I went over a roundabout and through a set of traffic lights and found myself in Ampthill Road. It was a fairly fast journey into the centre of Bedford, but then I got stuck in a traffic jam along Prebend Street and over the River Ouse, and then along Midland Road, Ashburnham Road and towards Shakespeare Road, where I had intended parking my car. It always used to be free to park around those streets, Milton Road, Spencer Road and Chaucer Road (my old school, Rushmoor, is not far away in Shakespeare Road, not that I want to be reminded of the awful place. More like Dotheboys Hall in Charles Dicken's novel "Nicholas Nickleby.") I then discovered , having found a suitable place to park, that I had to PAY. I looked vainly for a machine. I do remember that when I lived in Bedford the Council, in all it's eagerness to make a quick buck out of the already hard-hit Council Tax Payer, they'd introduce a pay-to-park scheme. When I did eventually find the machine, I could have paid using my mobile phone, and to add insult to injury, I'd incur a 20p fee into the bargain. It was going to cost me the princely sum of £3.20 for a couple of hours (up until 12.50, to be exact.) It was fortunate that I had the correct coinage on me, put the three one-pound coins into the machine, which were instantly rejected! After a couple more attempts the machine graciously accepted my thee pound coins and I was reward for my time and effort with a printed ticket, which I duly affixed to the inside of the windscreen of the car.