Catching Up--May's Wonderful Weekends

Cambridge, indeed most of England, is on roll--there's been weekend after weekend of nice weather, even two sunny and warm 3-day bank holiday weekends, which the locals were just amazed to see. We've been taking advantage. Several weekends ago, we went on a looooong walk from Waterbeach, a village just north of Cambridge (more on it below), to Ely. We were with the local Ramblers group and the walk along the river was around 12 miles--our blistered feet were very happy to reach the Ely riverfront and relax on a train ride home. Then on the Monday we went again on the bike ride to reach for its annual fair--more than 300 Cambridge residents made the 10 mile journey. The fair was marked by some rain, but it still had Morris dancers (top picture) and the exciting game of kicking a soccer ball into a tire to win a coconut!

Ely Walk/Reach Fair Photoalbum here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ktindc/EarlyMayHolidayWeekend?authkey=Gv1sRgCMDA0qDroZPKRA#

Then, it was my birthday weekend, in a delayed sort of way. In April,KT got me Eric Clapton tickets in May at Royal Albert Hall, and it just so happened Cambridge United was playing at Wembley the day after, in another play off final. So we decided to make a London weekend of it. We trained down to South Kensington neighborhood we like so much--tons of museums, shops and great food. We were starving so we quickly headed to La Cave A' Fromage, where we asked one of the sellers to select some cheeses,meats and wine for us. The 6 cheeses were amazing and we sampled French cooked ham, prosciutto, venison, bresaola (air-dried, salted beef), chorizo and some great bread. After checking in the hotel, we strolled to and through the flower-laden Kensington Gardens. After that, it was time for Clapton, who put on an amazing concert--2 hours of making his guitars sing. He barely talked at all the whole night, KT noted--shy? Royal Albert Hall was an amazing venue--we were up high, looking down steeply but the sound was great and we could see Clapton easily. Afterward, we raced around the neighborhood trying to find an open restaurant--London is no Barcelona, it shuts down earlier than you would guess--and lucked upon a pizzeria still open for a last meal.

Sunday started with sprinkles so KT indulged me with seeing the new Star Trek Movie--but we had some time to kill and there just so happened to be a nice little Sunday marker near the cinema. The sun poked out and we enjoyed a sausage and some tasty sandwiches before boldly going where 10 movies and 4 TV series had gone before--we both really liked the movie. And the the climax of the weekend--or, as it turned out, the anti-climax. I haven't bored you much with Cambridge United tales, in part because we've seen few games. But the U's just narrowly missed out first place,which would have automatically promoted them to the next league, and won the semi-final 2 game series with a thrilling 3-goal rally in the 2nd game. Again, more than 20,000 Cambridge fans traveled to London, versus 8,000 for the much more distant Torquay, and United started off playing really well, yet it just couldn't score. Yet Torquay didn't waste any chances, scoring twice, and sending the Cambridge masses home sad once again. Oh well, next year.

[[Clapton pictures tk]

Last weekend was a highly anticipated event: the 2009 Cambridge Beer Festival. Like last year, Katie made it over during the week for lunch, and we had a week-night work gathering--where I met an English postman who is a baseball nut, having played in the small nationwide league--but Saturday was the day I awaited. I was there not much after noon,when it opened, and we didn't leave til around 7pm. The weather was gorgeous and the beer tasty--what was left of it. The Festival sold a record 90,000 pints and was running out of so many beers by late afternoon that they stopped charging people admission. But we had more than enough as we read our newspapers and watched the happy crowds. Sunday was even prettier and after sending KT off to the airport, I packed up the Sunday papers, rode along the River Cam alongside racing crew boats, laid out a picnic blanket in a nearby park and read under a shady tree for hours.

So this weekend couldn't be any better, could it? Well, this Saturday put up a good battle. The weather was equally warm and sunny and just as I was pondering what to do, I was reminded that Waterbeach was having its own,much more modest beer festival. We've been here more than 2 years and I still hadn't explored Waterbeach--I take the river bike path out to its train station all the time,but then turn around and head back home. Well, the village is delightful--I saw 3 nice pubs, a butcher and baker, and the local Army barracks, which was having an open house. Regiments from Iraq and Afghanistan regiments had just returned and had a parade on Friday in the village--the town gave the soldiers free tokens to the beer festival for that night. After biking around the town, I made my way to the local recreation grounds where a kids soccer tournament was just over (trophies were being handed out) and the village cricket team was getting ready to start its match. Right next to this wholesome scene was the beer tent! Instead of 300+ beers, Waterbeach had just 16--but that was more than enough to keep me occupied for several hours. It was a decidedly family affair, as kids raced around and families stared up whenever the Army airplanes, including a massive Spitfire, buzzed the village as part of the barracks' open house. And in between, the fathers snuck off into the darkened nearby garage where a large-screen TV was showing the important FA Cup soccer final.--J.T.

Our Garden of Eden

We're just back from a long trip to the U.S. and as we recover from friend, family and food-overload, I'll borrow a post from a local Cambridge picture of the day blog. See this entry for a pretty picture of some houses near us and a nice explanation for the biblical themes of streets in our neighborhood (We live on Paradise St and a colleague used to live on Eden St).

In case you don't want to see the picture and just want the info, here's the main point:

Orchard Street is one of several in the my area that have either botanical or biblical names such as Elm Street, Adam and Eve Street, Eden Street and Paradise Street. This is because they are all in an area that used to be the Garden of Eden allotments - small vegetable gardens and orchards grown by locals.

--JT

Birthday cake, lambs, punting and more

My college friend Karlin, her two boys John and Thomas, and her husband Todd just paid us a visit during their long vacation in England and Wales. The three days went by fast but we crammed in a lot--walks through the city, fun on the local playgrounds, a fiercely contested soccer match in the park, a tour of King's College Chapel, a sunny punting trip on the river Cam, a double birthday celebration (amazingly Karlin and I were both 39--again!) complete with yummy toffee cake and a candle blowout, delicious visits to Hotel Chocolat, and a nice afternoon at the Wimpole Hall estate and farm, where we saw lots of newborn lambs and piglets. And did I mention the stroll through the cemetary to the pub and lots of SpongeBob Squarepants? Whew, I'm still tired. See what you all are missing? Come visit!--JT

Spring in Full Swing

We're having a fairly low-key spring, spending our weekends relaxing and staying in England rather than zipping off for weekends away on The Continent -- hence the lack of many updates. We went on another walk with the local Ramblers group in and around Grafham Water, a huge reservoir about 20 miles west of Cambridge.


We've been enjoying spring by visiting some old haunts, such as Milton Country Park, and some new ones, including the Darwin Farm Shop, which even has its own farm.


And we've discovered you can look at our house on Google Street View, which launched last week in the U.K. While I'm a bit creeped about by the fact that you can see my car parked in front of my house on my street, I don't consider it the privacy invasion that several others do, and today an organization issued a formal complaint against it. So, if you've got my address, enjoy looking around my neighborhood while you can. Or, better yet, come visit: Airfares are lower than they have been in years. The pound remains weak against the dollar and euro, so we're staying put. But it's a great time to spend your US dollars in Britain -- the exchange rate continues to hover under 1.5 (it was $2 to £1 for much of last year).

That's about it for today. I'm off to enjoy the spring sunshine.

A Nano-Break in the English Countryside

It did not escape our notice that we passed the two-year anniversary of our arrival in Cambridge last month. At the same time, it certainly wasn't as notable an occasion as last year's anniversary. We've become even more comfortable in our home on Paradise St and we continue to struggle to reconcile our desire to be home in America with friends and family and our gut that says "It's going too fast. We still have a lot to do here." How that war of emotions will play out remains a mystery to both of us, but it's one we'll have to figure out sooner rather than later.

The Stour River Valley

In the meantime, we're trying to make good on our vow to see more of England rather than gallivanting across Europe as we have in the past. To than end, we loaded up the car last weekend and drove...about 45 miles away. Whose bright idea was that? Well, before my wife throws something at me, let me quickly say it was a brilliant idea. KT and I were apart for Valentine's day so she plotted a weekend in the Suffolk countryside for us to escape our Cambridge metropolis (These one-night dashes from home are the trendy economical vacations dubbed nano-breaks, I'm told by the papers). The idea was to visit small villages, walk the countryside, see old churches, houses and castles, drink good beer in cute pubs, and have a nice dinner out. Our 30 hour adventure met all those goals. We had a great Saturday lunch at a pub that smokes its own cheese, fish, and meat, and ended the night at our hotel/restaurant that had great food and 30 wines by the glass--fortunately our room was a short walk away. KT has created a trip photoalbum with captions but above and below are a few of the pictures--she's getting good with her new camera!

Much of our trip was spent near the Stour River Valley, a place many call "Constable country" in honor of the famous British landscape painter John Constable. We started the day in Claire, where we found affectionate swans (top picture) and a bakery serving a caramel iced cake almost identical to my favorite cake from Sanders. Later that afternoon, just as the sun came out, we took a several mile walk along the river to Flatford mills (bridge in the middle picture above). Katie even snapped a picture (below left) from the same vantage point Constable used for his famous "Hay Wain" that is on view in the National Gallery in London. In another village, we found curiously sized doorways (below right)--hmm, perhaps where the hobbits live? Our final stop was in Lavenham, an adorable town best known for its many surviving half-timbered house (above right). We stopped at a local pub and read the Sunday papers as watched families finish their Sunday roasts--a very British afternoon and nice end to our nano-break.

A Ramblin'

The Ramblers are a national organization for walking. U.K. landowners by law have to provide walkers the right of passage across their land (there are a few exceptions), so there are a LOT of places to walk. There are local chapters all over that have organized walks every weekend.

Apparently, the Ramblers have gotten a reputation for being an organization for retirees (or pensioners, as the Brits say), so earlier this decade they started groups around the country for people in their 20s and 30s as a way to revitalize the organization. As it happens, there's one of these groups in Cambridge, called Walk Cambridge.

This weekend, we decided to try the group out by joining them for a walk about 45 minutes north of Cambridge. It was a 6-mile walk between the villages of Folksworth and Stilton, which is where Stilton cheese gets its name from but isn't where it's made. It was pleasant enough, but the real treat was the people -- everyone was *so* nice. I chatted with probably 8 different people along the way, none of them JT, because he was busy chatting, too. One of the original members of the group told us, "I'm not sure if we're a walking group that talks or a talking group that walks."

We walked through fields, mostly, saw the occasional cow, and only one flock of sheep. We stopped for lunch in a farmer's field next to a giant pile of manure. Fortunately the wind was (mostly) blowing the other way. We also came upon a couple of horses that came over and greeted us, and when I fed one of them my apple core, she decided she wanted to be a Rambler, too. She looked at us rather mournfully over the kissing gate when she realized we weren't going to stay and play with her.

The whole walk took us about 4 hours, plus we stopped at a pub for 20-30 minutes for a break. We walked through a lot of mud -- a LOT of mud. When we got back to the car we both took our boots off and put them in the trunk -- we didn't even want to get in the car with them on. My jeans were covered in mud, too -- I'm going to need a pair of gaiters if we keep this up.

We had a great time, and the walk served the dual purpose of providing a way for us to meet more people in the area that aren't work colleagues, and seeing more of the greater Cambridge area. I think we'll be back.

More photos here.

D-Day

Happy Belated 200th Mr. Darwin!

I've been debating whether to do this post. While Charles Darwin is one of the most influential scientists ever, he's also arguably one of the most controversial. His ideas on evolution, specifically that we descended from simpler creatures and that other primates trace their lineages back to a common ancestor with us, are well-accepted by the scientific community, but they are hard to embrace by those who believe in a largely literal reading of the Bible. This conflict makes me sad. The large majority of the world's religions, even most forms of Christianity, have come to terms with evolution, finding no conflict between it and faith in a God who created mankind. From my viewpoint, I find the idea that people trace back to single-cell creatures one of the greatest miracles of all.

Despite the divisiveness of the topic, I felt the need to write this entry, primarily because we can't escape Darwin-mania here in Cambridge,where the man was a student. Just this week Prince Philip came to town to unveil a new Darwin statue and a few weeks ago Cambridge University had an amazing light show that featured Darwin (see the picture above of Darwin and the tree of life). My intern on Monday also visited the newly restored Down House, Darwin's home that some want to be a World Heritage site.

But the real reason for this post is I wanted to share the amazing evening I had Monday night listening to Baba Brinkman, a Canadian hip-hop artist who is doing rap songs about evolution.I went in skeptical but left his show hugely impressed. If you follow the link, you can read my review of the show and can also see lyrics, listen to,or watch videos of songs with titles such as Natural Selection. Even if you don't like rap, take a look--he's worth it. But if you don't like evolution, be warned that Baba doesn't take it easy on creationism or intelligent design.

--JT