Cambridge

After taking in Cambridge by water on my punting tour, I took it in by land on my walking tour. The oldest building in the city is St Bene't's (short for Benedict's) Church, dating from about 1025. The university wasn't founded until 1209.



Our guide easily kept our attention for over 2 hours with her stories of people and places connected with Cambridge. Because it is exam time, most of the colleges are closed to the public until the middle of June. We were still able to visit King's College Chapel (but not the rest of the grounds), and we peeked into Trinity College from Trinity Lane.



The rest of the day I spent on my own. I climbed Great St Mary's Tower for wonderful views of the city in all directions. Here we have King's College - again. Can you find the River Cam?



Of the few colleges that were open to the public, I chose to visit St John's because it had looked so pretty from the water. This is New Court, which was completed in 1831, and was the first major building to be placed by any college on the west side of the river.



I finished my day by attending Evensong at King's College Chapel, and staying after the service for a recital by resident organist Stephen Cleobury. If Dave had come along, we would have popped into The Eagle for a drink before heading home. This was the local pub for scientists from the nearby Cavendish Laboratory, and it was there that Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA on 28th February 1953.

Punting on the River Cam

Dave went to Durham for 3 days and took 12 pictures. I went to Cambridge for 1 day and took 166 pictures. Somewhere in between us there's a happy medium!

I arrived at Scudamore's Punting Station around 9:30, and purchased a ticket for the first College Backs Tour of the day at 10:00. With time to kill, I wandered over to the Silver Street Bridge (right).



From there, I took my first picture of the Mathematical Bridge.



The view was very different about an hour later!



We almost had the Cam to ourselves at the beginning of the trip, but that didn't last very long. Here we are passing through St John's College, with the Bridge of Sighs in the foreground, and the Kitchen Bridge in the background.



I visited St John's College that afternoon, and once again, got a very different view of the river. It would be fun to rent a punt with a group of friends, but since I was on my own, a chauffeured public ride was my best option.



I enjoyed the commentary from our guide as we traveled by 7 of the 31 colleges at Cambridge. In addition, I had been looking forward to seeing this classic view of King's College Chapel from the water, and I wasn't disappointed.

why my wife does not let me take the camera

i went to durham and got to take the camera! (a first!!) here is one of the fields of yellow flowers we passed on the way up.



i arrived at the durham station where keith and lucas (a loyola graduate just finishing his phd) picked me up.



and the good news (well the other good news) is that they had a cathedral!



while there i talked shop with keith, went to quiz night ('we' came in third and won 10 quid!), and went to buskers' night where keith played guitar and sang. he does a great version of amazing grace finishing with "come to Jesus" - a line that was echoed the rest of the night. here are some pictures:



yea, i know .... so, .... ah, .... now we get to the the title of the message. see, i forgot to take the camera to quiz night or buskers' night. somehow the elp pictures at an exhibition cover seemed appropriate. i did take a picture of the train i took home after it arrived safely at king's cross,



and the tube i took back south.

Feng shui

Or maybe not. But we did rearrange the lounge at the start of the month. We pushed the couches into an "L" shape when we first moved here in December, with 1 couch blocking the entrance to the balcony. Now the couches are in a line, and the other one is blocking a radiator. (Turns out that the flat is well sealed, plus it was a mild winter, so we only turned the heat on a handful of times.) Having easy access to the balcony is wonderful.



From May 3rd (when we visited the Thames Barrier) through May 13th (when I went to Leonardslee), we had a glorious run of 11 days - temperatures in the 70s, abundant sunshine, and almost no rain. Surely this couldn't be England! The balcony became a great place to enjoy tea in the morning, and London Pride or Pimm's in the evening.



As we relaxed, we finally noticed the hills in the distance. We also watched enough trains to determine that the white ones come in multiples of 3 or 5 coaches, whereas the red and blue ones are always in multiples of 4.



I'm going to miss the peaceful clickity clack of those trains passing through Woking. But I definitely won't miss the loud people walking to and from the station on Friday and Saturday nights....

Exterminate!

That's the battle cry of the Daleks in Doctor Who.



A new Doctor Who Exhibition just opened in March at Earl's Court in London, so Dave and I went there on Monday. On display are props, costumes, monsters, and creatures from the past few seasons. The TARDIS may look like an ordinary police box...



...but it is much larger on the inside than it appears from the outside.



We saw Cybermen...



...K-9...



...and Daleks of various colours.



Our next stop that afternoon was the Science Museum in South Kensington, and we finished off our evening with The Phantom of the Opera in the West End.

Cricket

Local football is finally coming to an end. Portsmouth beat Cardiff on Saturday in the FA Cup at Wembley, and Manchester United beat Chelsea tonight in Moscow to win the Champions League. Euro 2008 takes place throughout June; however, England failed to qualify this year. But never fear - cricket has begun!

For those of us who don't know much about the game - yet - it can be watched for free at Woking Park on weekend afternoons. (Higher quality options exist elsewhere for a fee.) Last Saturday was cool and breezy, so I hung around for about 30 minutes, and then gave up when a light rain began to fall.



Having now observed the real thing, I started to do my homework. Cricket is a team sport for 2 teams of 11 players each, and a formal game can last anywhere from an afternoon to several days. Although the game play and rules are very different from baseball, the basic concept is similar. Teams bat in successive innings and attempt to score runs, while the opposing team fields and attempts to bring an end to the batting team's innings. After each team has batted an equal number of innings (either 1 or 2, depending on conditions chosen before the game), the team with the most runs wins.



At any given time, all 11 players from 1 team are on the field, but only 2 batters from the other team are on the field. In the above picture, each of these batters is standing close to a wicket. The player who is running is the bowler ("pitcher"), and the player who is crouching is the wicket-keeper ("catcher"). There are several ways of scoring runs, and 10 ways of getting out. Armed with this basic information (and a bit more that I haven't tried to explain), I'm ready to find another match and see if I can follow any of it....

Leonardslee Lakes and Gardens

Marianne and Jen are in charge of the Toddler Group that meets at Woking URC on Wednesday mornings during term time. It is a wonderful outreach program for the community, and I have been one of the assistants for much of the year. Several weeks ago the topic of Leonardslee came up, and when Marianne discovered that neither Jen nor I had been there, we scheduled an outing for last Tuesday. According to the website, "Leonardslee is one of England's most spectacular gardens and is world-famous for its rhododendrons and azaleas." In addition, it "is said to be one of the most spectacular gardens in Europe in the month of May." And that's when we were there.

We first visited the rock garden.



We then walked along endless colourful paths.



Only recently had I discovered the "flower" button on my camera for close-ups!



Leonardslee is also home to swans, ducks, geese, deer, and wallabies. Go figure....



The bluebell fields stretched as far as the eye could see.



And our final beautiful view that afternoon was of the waterfall lake.



This property is currently on the market. If you would like a 6 bedroom main house, 4 cottages, an exhibition centre, a coach house with stable block, and 225 acres of famous gardens, it can all be yours for the guide price of 5 million pounds. That's only 10 million dollars!

One week down...

The exam period at Woking College goes from May 12 through June 12, with the final week in May off for half term. You would think that the tests would be spread out somewhat evenly, but Chris took about half of his in the first week. There are multiple exams in each course. On Monday, he took a computer exam. On Wednesday, he wrote about Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller). On Thursday, he took exams in physics and statistics. And on Friday, he wrote about King Lear (William Shakespeare), Welsh Retrospective (Dannie Abse), and Emma (Jane Austen) in the morning, and then took another computer exam in the afternoon. I know he's glad to be done with English! But he still has more to come in physics, statistics, mechanics, maths, and finance. Fortunately, the rest of the exams won't be quite so close together.

Frequent Dublin Sights

There is only 1 Spire in Dublin, and for that, many people are grateful. (Lorcan, our 1916 guide on Saturday, shared some of its rhyming nicknames with us, but most of them are not fit to print.) Other sights seemed to be everywhere we turned.

Traditional Irish Music - We ate dinner at The Porterhouse on Saturday night, and listened to Sliotar perform. I enjoyed it most when the musician in the middle was playing the pipes or a whistle.



Green Post Boxes - Note the British symbol of Queen Victoria (VR) still on this one.



Georgian Doors - Much of Dublin was built during that era.



Ornate Lampposts - This was the most common design.



Guinness Logos - Here in the Guinness Storehouse, there were even more than usual!



Pubs - Our last stop on Monday was at The Brazen Head, established in 1198, and reputed to be Ireland's oldest pub.



Dave and I had a great weekend in Dublin, and as we were flying back to London, I realized that my next plane ride will be to Baltimore....

Libraries and Gardens and Cathedrals - Oh My!

As I've mentioned before, our family visited Ireland a few years ago, but we stayed in and around Shannon, and didn't stray far from the west coast. The 2 "biggies" on my list that were out of reach then were the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, and the Book of Kells in Dublin. I finally got to see the former on 7th April, and the latter on 11th May.

The Book of Kells dates back to about 800, and is a lavishly decorated copy, in Latin, of the 4 Gospels. Before we saw the real thing, there was a very interesting exhibition on the production of illuminated manuscripts. Afterwards, we climbed the stairs and walked through the Long Room, which is also part of the Old Library at Trinity College. And, as is usually the case, the exit was through...the gift shop.



In the afternoon it was time to divide and conquer. Dave headed off for a pub where he could do some work and then watch a Premier League football match on the last day of the season. I spent several hours in the Sacred Traditions Gallery at the Chester Beatty Library. Included among its treasures are beautiful illuminated copies of the Qur'an, scrolls and artwork from eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, and fragments of biblical manuscripts that date all the way back to between 150 and 250. That's old!



After a rainy morning and a cloudy afternoon on Saturday, our next 2 days in Dublin were gorgeous. On Sunday, we walked back to our hotel via St. Stephen's Green.



And on Monday, we walked back to our hotel via Merrion Square. I'd like to think that I'll return home a much more inspired gardener, but I'm not holding my breath....



If Sunday was Library Day, then Monday was Cathedral Day. I usually don't pay much attention to the monuments, but one in St. Patrick's Cathedral was rather appropriate. The Boyle monument is for Richard Boyle and his wife. Along the bottom are statues of their children, and this figure in the middle is their son Robert, a chemist and physicist. (Remember Boyle's Law? Of course you do! For a fixed amount of gas at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional. Mathematically, that's PV = k.) Dave's grandfather, father, and mother are all chemists. This monument reminded us that Dave was jokingly told that if he didn't want to be a chemist, he at least had to marry one. So he did.



Every cathedral has a baptismal font. Some are rather plain and attract very little attention, while others are very ornate and/or of great historical importance. (At Norwich Cathedral, the font is made from 2 large copper bowls that came from the local chocolate factory when it closed down!) Dave and I were really impressed with this one in Christ Church Cathedral. It is made out of marbles from all over Ireland, and each different colour is a different piece of marble.



So there you have it - 2 libraries, 2 gardens, 2 cathedrals, 2 days.

Easter Guinness?

Dave and I visited Dublin last weekend. We started our Saturday with the 1916 Rebellion Walking Tour. Lorcan Collins (below), co-author of The Easter Rising: A Guide to Dublin in 1916, was our guide. As we strolled to various sites around the city, we learned about the history of Ireland's struggle for independence.



Lorcan passionately brought numerous places and people to life over a period of 2 hours. Our tour ended at the GPO (General Post Office) in O'Connell Street, where Padraic Pearse first read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic to the public on Easter Monday (24th April) 1916.



From there we walked along the River Liffey, passing the Ha'penny Bridge and taking the obligatory photo of this much loved symbol of Dublin.



We next stopped at Dublin's most popular international tourist attraction.



This building was a working fermentation plant from 1904 to 1988, and reopened as a "visitor experience" in 2000. We learned about the brewing process (again), but more interesting to us was the actual footage of coopers making wooden casks. It was a fine art that has now been lost.



We finally reached the Gravity Bar on level 7 to enjoy our complimentary pint. There we also took in a panoramic view of Dublin that included the rest of the St. James's Gate Brewery, where Guinness has been produced since 1759.