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Darrell inside the Ferris Wheel overlooking Cambridge, England
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| Inside our Cambridge guest house, "A and B" looking down the stairs toward the front door. |
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| A personal historic favorite of mine inside the Fitzwilliams Museum in Cambridge |
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| A grand decorated entry inside the Fitzwilliams Museum, Cambridge |
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| Old architechture house in Cambridge |
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| Decorative church building in Cambridge |
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| The Ferris Wheel in Cambridge |
Saturday. 29. We cleaned up our Bells Yew Green place, and finished packing for our 10:30 train from Frant. We each have a suitcase and a backpack. My suitcase is about 45 pounds, and each time I travel I think I need it to be lighter! Lol. Today is sunny and cool. Our train goes to a London stop where we change trains for the rest of our trip to Cambridge. On the way to London, each stop gets more and more passengers until the train car has us packed in every seat and standing tightly in the aisles and doorways. Darrell and I have seats and our luggage is stowed in a rack behind several people on the opposite end of the doorway. About 10 minutes before our train stop, Darrell get up into the already full aisle to squeeze his way to the luggage. He gets a girl to take his seat and then he maneuvers through about 5 more people to get to our two large bags, pull them out of the shelves and place them in the aisle nearer to our seats. Meanwhile I traded my seat with the woman in the aisle and got in line to leave the train at the next stop. Others were making known that they must untangle and get off of the train soon too. It was an unusual mess with people being accommodating and understanding to give inches and leeway as they could. The rest of our train journey was fairly smooth. We arrived Cambridge even though the last leg was by a rail replacement bus, and the weather continued sunny and cool. We easily walked to our A and B Guesthouse. We were allowed to check in early and found that our economy room was on the top floor and had some low angled ceilings that we could both hit our heads on which we promptly did and learned quickly to stay ducked inside our small quarters!
We rested for a while. Other than the slanty ceiling compressing our standup room, the room was very clean, quiet and we could open the window for fresh air. We found a walk to the Fitzwilliams Museum as our afternoon activity and on our tourist to-do list. The city is flat with a couple of small exceptions. The walking is good with loads of sidewalks and more than 35 colleges dating back for centuries and decades depending on when each began.
We thoroughly enjoyed our walk and looking at the architecture and learning a bit more each day about this university and college town.
The Fitzwilliams Museum was an ornate building with decorative tile floors, inlaid mosaics, and incredible details from the floors to the ceilings. There are room after room of ancient artifacts from around the world. After the museum it was 4 or 5 pm and I was tired. We used google to find a restaurant for dinner. We picked a Korean place and enjoyed our dinner that included some good kimchi. On our walk back to our apartment we stopped and rode the Ferris Wheel. It confirmed how flat this town is. As we were walking back to our apartment, I’m taking in details of our neighborhood and our directions. We stopped into a turkish grocery and bought some cookies for our stay.
We figured out where to eat breakfast tomorrow. Our room is too small for exercises so we are taking a break from that during our 4 mornings here.
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| We walked the long way to church through this big green field. |
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| We were welcomed at church by Ceril and Dorn who immigrated here over 40 years ago. |
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| A taco truck in Cambridge for lunch. |
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| Fresh blue corn tortillas and spiced meat made by a Mexican in Cambridge. Good. |
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| A sample of architechure in Cambridge. |
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| This is the Punting staging area. |
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| Darrell purchasing tickets for our guided punting tour. |
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| View from our boat of this nice historic bridge. |
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| One of the many famous colleges in Cambridge viewed from our boat. Our driver and tour guide is in the picture. |
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| Us on the boat with one of the many bridges. |
Sunday. 30. We had a nice sleep in our room. We went out for breakfast at a close place. We took a long walk through a big green space on our way to find the community center where the church meets. We met Ceril and Dorn and several other members at the worship together. After we were finished with our generous visit together, we went to find lunch. We knew there were some food trucks near the train station and we ended there getting some good and unusual Mexican food! The cook was truly mexican and he made fresh tortillas from blue corn flour. We went on a long walk to the river where we went punting, riding on a long boat with others that is pushed along by our guide with a big pole. He told us brief histories of the town, and some of the many colleges we were seeing from the river. It was very enjoyable.
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| Reading about this overgrown graveyard in Cambridge. |
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| Tree growing out of a grave marker at Mill Rd Cemetary, Cambridge. |
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| Taking the river walk in Cambridge. |
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| Various boats along the river in Cambridge. Some are full time house boats. |
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| Beautiful flowers at a college green space. Cambridge. |
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| A bridge view in Cambridge. |
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| Architechure in Cambridge |
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| In Cambridge, bikes are popular and the hides on the fence belong to a leather business under the orange tent. Darrell had a belt completed here. |
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| Darrell climbing one of the high spots in Cambridge. The old Motte. |
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| Beautiful tree lined walk in a Cambridge park. |
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| Owen's current way of waving goodbye. |
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| My very good dinner at a Bedouin restaurant. This is a 1 1/2 inch thick cauliflower steak with a tahini and pomegranite sauce. Delish! |
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| Sunset from our top story bedroom window. Cambridge. |
Monday. 1. Today was a bit cooler and very nice for walking. We walked through an overgrown cemetary and along the river. So much was closed today because it was a holiday for the King's coronation celebration. We found a small museum to tour and we climbed the old motte. Darrell purchased and had a belt sized at a street vendor. We ate delicious food. There are so many restaurants to choose from and we look at the menu and decide or move on. Talking to our grandson Owen and son Eric is a highlight. I love seeing a peek of the sunset from our window.
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| We decided to find this museum on archeology. It was inside a college with it's founder and history noted. It was a good museum. |
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| A huge totem inside the archeology museum that I thought was nice. |
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| The inside of the door to the museum of archeology. |
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| This is the outside of the David Attenborough museum. It's small and had loads of animal displays. This is the town of Darwin. His evolution theory has been around so long and the technology so improved that it's beginning to show itself with many false conclusions and mixups from the past observations. |
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| Finding another museum. The one showing the scientific process happening through many centuries here in this town. |
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| Inside the museum of Science. Loads of interesting, original artifacts. This telescope was very nice. Crafts people made these items with amazing skill. Some of Darwin's stuff is in here and also many notable scientists. |
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| I like this 'garden' that is someone's front 'yard' as we call it in the US. The neighbor house was for sale and it was something like 4 million pounds! |
Tuesday. 2. Loads of museum visiting today. Enjoying long walks and good food. Tomorrow we travel to Whitley Bay.
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| Our front door at our Whitley Bay airbnb. |
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| We are the second house from the corner and have an ocean view in Whitley Bay. |
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| Living room in our Whitley Bay ground floor apartment. |
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| Our bedroom at Whitley Bay. |
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| The hallway leading from the entry door to the bathroom on the right and the kitchen straight ahead. |
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| Very nice kitchen with a doorway to the washer and dryer and a back door to a decked patio. |
Wednesday. 3. It was a fairly easy travel day. Our first train was the most challenging. As we left Frant station headed toward London, more and more people were getting on the train. By the time we passed the last two stops the train couldn't take on any more riders. It was packed and standing room only all through the aisles. About 10 minutes before our last stop, Darrell made his way up from his seat and through the tight squeeze of people to get our luggage out of the cubby 2 rows away. I also gave up my seat to move into the packed aisle and try to manage my suitcase. We poured out of the train once the doors were opened and our turn in the lines came up quick. We changed trains two times with a little bit of a slow down, but all in all it was doable. We ate a nice lunch in the Newcastle train station and then got on the 25 minute ride to Whitley Bay on the Metro, a light local rail. Once we checked in, we got our shopping bags and walked a mile to a Morrison's grocery and a mile back to get plenty of groceries to get our month long stay started.
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| A view of cloudy and rough tide at the sea wall in Whitley Bay. The red brick house in the picture is our neighbor. |
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| Looking the other way toward Whitley Bay and beach. The tide is in as the beach is narrowed by the risen water. You can just barely see St. Mary's lighthouse in the distance. |
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| High tide and overcast sky. |
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| Looking down our street a block from our place to the sea beyond. |
Thursday. 4. It was a slow day as we exercised today and stayed inside most of the day except for taking a walk. We ate lunch out at an Italian restaurant.
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| Low tide and hazy at 10 am looking toward Whitley Bay beach. |
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| Nice flowers along the walk. |
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| More beautiful seacoast on the walk to Cullercoats. |
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| More beautiful coast. |
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| Low tide near Cullercoats. |
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| Low tide at Cullercoats beach. In the distance to the left at the Tynemouth abbey ruins. |
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| Our house is the grey one. |
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| In Tynemouth. |
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| Tynemouth beach with cool stairs. The tide is coming in. |
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| Tynemouth beach selfie. |
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| View of high tide as we are coming back into Whitley Bay. The sun is coming out too. |
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| This cutie pie is our grandson Quinn, 2 years and 8 months old. Love that smile! |
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| Quinn describing something to us. |
Friday. 5. I took a morning walk along the coast to the next town Cullercoats. It was low tide and foggy. Later we both took the Metro to North Shields, went to a Wilco to shop for some kids Bible class notebooks, and we had lunch. We walked back to Whitley Bay along the coast. What's another 3 1/2 miles! lol. We had a sweet call with grandson Owen and son Jeremy. I slipped and fell in our apartment and got bruised, but that seems to be it. Darrell made soup for our dinner.
Nomad Notes.
Some of our time we spend planning for our future travels. This is an activity that is difficult to track for how much time we spend doing this forward planning. I know that the amount of effort we put into our plan has some to do with how familiar we are with where we are going. So before we came to England (July-Oct 2022 and again April-May 2023) we did a lot of reading, researching and planning about where we would be, and how we would be there traveling about and what we are putting our attention on. As we are currently in England we have come to a level of understanding with how we live here.
While we are here and having days at our apartment, we take time to think about our forward planning. This thinking and planning is always in the background of our minds. Darrell has used some of his time to research visitor vehicles and our variety of options for how we will travel for our time in New Zealand coming up Mid-October 2023-February 2024.
He has also been getting notifications that track house sitting opportunities from two companies that he has joined.
While he’s learning and sharing these details with me, I have looked at stay opportunities through airbnb, booking.com, and more. Many times I find thread conversations about how to travel in New Zealand and that leads me to understand better what I am going to be seeing while I’m there and what it is like in general.
We also are looking for churches of Christ familiar to us that are independent, study the Bible together and worship on Sundays. We enjoy meeting with and having local connections.
Our interest for New Zealand is because it has been on Darrell’s bucket list! This is his dream come true to be able to do this trip with a leisurely timeline. Basically I wanted to do all this England travel and Darrell wants New Zealand. Beyond these two locations through April 2024, our planned US return from NZ, we haven’t got a clear plan yet.
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