fenstanton | Here Comes The Planet

Winston was more interested in the ball.

We come to Andrew’s house for one reason and one reason only. To hang out with Andrew. To be fair, I lived in Cambridge years ago and so I’ve seen everything there is to see and so we come to do the following things:

1. Sit on the couch.

Not trying to take a photo after a ball came into play was much easier.

We watched almost all of season 3 of Ted Lasso, some Bluey (Andrew had not even heard of it!), the first episode of Severance and Dungeons and Dragons (the new movie, not the old one).

2. Eat – it goes well with the television and couch, to be fair.

This pizza, full price, was £25! Luckily Andrew had a half price voucher.

3. Play board games. This time we played Outer Rim (a Star Wars game) and an expansion of Machi Koro, one of our favourite games at home.

Outer Rim. Complicated but I got it in the end.

4. Go for a drive in Andrew’s car. We did a little trip to St Ives.

Fancy! Andrew loves cars. I’ve known him long enough to tell him to stop explaining them to me.

I’d never been to St Ives. It’s a small town with a fancy bridge.

We looked at antiques and had an excellent Sunday roast.

Whenever I see cut glass it reminds me of Lea but unfortunately for her I wasn’t going to start lugging around crystalware, despite the excellent selection.

A tower of roast dinner with a Yorkshire pudding crown.

We liked the way the people of St Ives had put their coronation decoration right under Cromwell’s pointing finger.

5. A new reason – Winston! We went to the local park with Winston and Andrew.

Luke preparing for cycling in Switzerland.

We also took a walk around Fenstanton and I took some photos of some local houses.

There are some huge houses in Andrew’s village, and some very old houses, but I have to be honest, the style of southern buildings just doesn’t charm me as much as the slate style of the north.

The local churchyard is the resting place for Capability Brown, possibly history’s most famous landscape designer.

What else? Not much, to be honest. We don’t come here to do newsworthy things but we always have a lovely time.

Andrew’s guest bed has a really great mattress but I struggled to sleep well the first night and the last night. The middle night I’d had most (all) of a bottle of wine and slept like a log. I know drinking is supposed to cause bad sleep but I find it’s the opposite. Also, after all the drinking we did in Spain and very few alcohol-free days since the trip began, I am yet to have even a whisper of a headache from drinking. On one hand it’s good, on the other there’s no incentive to restrain myself.

May as well enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. Much like the English strawberries that are in season at the moment. Perfection!

Right now we’re at Cambridge train station. We caught the busway, a bus that drives along cement tracks in its own little road.

Finally Luke has had a full English breakfast!

We have a couple of hours until our train to London, where we will be meeting Lea and Pete at Mark’s office near the Thames. They are leaving their bags there until we get in then we’ll be catching a taxi across the city – getting giant wheeled suitcases through the underground is not ideal. The apartment we’re renting for a week is tiny so hopefully there’s a nice pub nearby we can use as a loungeroom!

Yesterday’s journey from Cragwood to Andrew’s house went relatively smoothly apart from one train connection being cancelled.

We caught the bus from Cragwood to Windermere on time but found the short train connection to Oxenholme, where our booked train tickets started, wasn’t running due to lack of staff. Luke tried to talk to the station manager behind the counter but he was on the phone and ignored us then went into his back office and shut the door.

Thankfully there was a taxi waiting outside so we jumped in and heard all about how incompetent the guy running the train station was. Apparently he leaves the station during his shifts to run personal errands and is really rude to customers all the time but there’s no one else to do the job so he just gets away with it.

We got to Oxenholme with time to spare and had some breakfast. I managed to drop a large chunk of my pie on my freshly laundered trousers.

We had to change at Preston then again at Birmingham but both other trains were on time.

Andrew met us at the station in his new (well, new to us) car. It has more buttons than any other car I’ve ever been in.

We went back to his new (to us) place in Fenstanton and said hi to his wife, Lila, and met his corgi, Winston!

After a cup of tea and tour of the house we walked to Fendrayton, the next village over and the site of a mini beer festival in the local pub.

I couldn’t help reflecting on the fact that we’d gone from the most rugged landscape in England to the most flat. Cambridgeshire is fens, land that has been largely reclaimed from wetlands. It makes cycling a dream but views aren’t precisely what you’d call inspiring.

The Three Tuns, ‘tuns’ being barrels that beer is stored in.

There were lots of people but a couple of free tables.

There were only two ciders on the list so that made life easy.

I had the sweet one first then the dry. It was so dry it verged on salty. Andrew and Luke both thought it was disgusting but I managed to drink half then changed to wine.

We sat for a while and listened to the band, who had at least two singers but neither could hold a tune. It wasn’t bad background music though and wasn’t too loud, which is the most important thing!