Day 47: August 6th

It was a lovely morning in Ely on Sunday. No rain in sight (of course). We had breakfast at the hotel and then went for a walk to see the sights of Ely. The most notable sight is Ely Cathedral which occupies about a quarter of the area of the town (not much of an exaggeration). It is the site of a church first built in about 600AD and then added over the centuries. It is an enormous gothic building with very nice gardens. The front is getting some work done so there is the inevitable scaffolding and it was Sunday and a service was underway so we didn’t go inside but had a good look around.

This is the end opposite the front entrance. It’s truly enormous.

From the back. Not the most attractive view but it gives a feel as to scale.

The front entrance. There is a real collection of architectural styles as the cathedral has been added to over the centuries.

These gardens are right behind the cathedral walls and are open to the public which is nice.

This is the former bishop’s palace which is now a coeducational school for the children of the wealthy aged between 2 years and 18 years.

Oliver Cromwell lived here for over 10 years. It’s right next door to the Bishop’s Palace/King’s School and is now the local information centre.

The town is very pretty with a river going past on one side and the Cathedral at the top of a hill beside the High Street.

Evidently this is a thing in the UK. Decorating post boxes and other utilities. These were the lead characters from Lion King.

These are the floral decorations of choice for Ely. These flowers were everywhere.

From Ely we drove to Cambridge to do some sightseeing. Pauline was surprised that Google was saying 40 minutes to the city’s Atrium car park as Cambridge is not far from Ely. It turned out to be closer to 90 minutes as the world was visiting Cambridge and some bright spark designing a mall thought it would be a good idea to have the car park entrance (not the one we were going to) close to a light controlled intersection. The net result was that when the car park got full, no one could get past the cars queued. That was not helped by the traffic island and pedestrian crossing immediately before the entrance. Cars and buses were backed up 2 miles. Eventually we got past and found where we were going with only a short wait as it was also full.
Pauline had suggested we go punting down the Cam as that’s the best way to get views of the main colleges. We booked tickets to have our own boat and guide and then headed for lunch at a nearby pub with good reviews – which of course was full, but we did get into another one. The smell of roast Sunday lunch was too much for JenY, Mike and I and all thoughts of a sandwich or salad went out the door!
We finished about 20 minutes before our boat was booked so we stood on the bridge watching the comings and goings. At that spot there are 2 punting outfits renting boats. Luckily JenY and Pauline did a search as the prices differed by £70 for the same activity. Unbeknown to us, middle to late afternoon in the weekends is the prime time for self steerers to rent boats. Complete chaos. Thank goodness we had a guide that knew what he was doing.

Try and imagine this lot all moving and going in different directions with about 10 other boats just outside the photo. Most were trying to head under a bridge just to the left of this photo.

How some of the boats got through that bridge without anyone going in the water is a miracle. The Anchor is the pub where we had lunch.

The Mathematical Bridge. It was called Newtons Bridge for a while but was actually built quite a bit after he died!

The library at Trinity College that was built by Sir Christopher Wren. All of the books are upstairs in case of flood and evidently the windows were designed with some early version of tinting to protect them from light!

St John’s College. Trinity and St John’s are across the river from each other and are great rivals at all things.

This is the back of St John’s College that faces away from Trinity. They evidently ran out of money so finished it with red brick rather than stone – and then of course had to cover the red bricks with this Boston Ivy which turns bright red in autumn.

The Bridge of Sighs. Evidently Queen Victoria liked the one in Venice so they named this one the same despite any real resemblance!

The boat trip was very enjoyable and interesting so we were glad we did it. Afterwards we went for a walk hoping to see the King’s College chapel and the Trinity College gardens. The walk was great and we got good views but both the chapel and gardens were closed!