Last Sunday, as KT sped off on her bike to her 4th day at the Folk Festival, I made the decision to have my own solo adventure, a long bike ride to Anglesey Abbey, a former priory turned country house that had been donated to the National Trust a few decades ago. We had just got our National Trust membership cards so visiting was free and some exercise on a beautiful sunny day seemed just the prescription after all the food and drink at the festival the day before. It was a pleasant, largely traffic-free trip of slightly over an hour to the house thanks to one of the National Cycle Network trails. The house was impressive--I sped through it because I know KT will want to do a real tour--and well worth the 600 sheep it reportedly cost. But the 98 acre grounds were amazing, especially on such a nice day.
There was a working flour mill, several formal gardens (rose, dahlia and herbaceous--you gardeners know this better than I) and just tons of space to stroll or sit and have a picnic. I and KT will definitely return (Here's an album more pictures, including a placard showing all the flowers/herbs in one of the gardens. I was using my phone to take pictures but the text is still readable for the gardeners out there if you zoom in). On the way home, I dared to take a side road to a small village and paid for it by coming upon several steep (for Cambridge) hills that exhausted me--I also was going into the wind. So of course I had to stop at the riverside pub in the village to have a pint of beer and regain my strength before gliding home. All told, I think I covered just under 20 miles on the bike. That's not quite the London-Cambridge 50 mile trek but it's a start.
--JT
