Cambridge and Leicester
So the first thing you should know about getting from west London to Cambridge on a Friday evening is DON’T DO IT!
What the hell were we thinking? Not only did we have to get out of London, we had to get ACROSS London. OMFG! You’d think having lived in London for 3 years I’d have worked that out but we didn’t ever really drive when we lived here, and the when we did drive, it was straight out on the A4 towards the west country. Easy from Ealing. Not so much from Hammersmith to Cambridge. In fact, this slightly absurd route even had the internets in a tizz. We could almost hear Google Maps saying, “Well, if I was you, I wouldn’t start from here!”
So we proceeded to zig and zag and zig and zag our way towards Cambridge and I swear we drove down every back street in northern London. Google maps does have a pretty good idea on rat running though. Perhaps it should be renamed Google Rat Running, or in our case Google Rat Walking, because a trip I thought might take about 1 ½ hours, took 3 ½ hours.
The friend we were going to visit, Ingrid, did express incredulity that we would attempt such a feat on a Friday evening and expressed alarm when we told her the route Google Rat Walking was taking us. “You’re coming via Morocco?!?!?!?” Well, it felt like it. She wasn’t too concerned though as when we updated her on our travel, she updated us on how many gin and tonics she was having.
So the second thing you should know about going to Cambridge is, we didn’t go to Cambridge. Ingrid lives outside Cambridge in a place called Waterbeach, where curiously there is no water and no beach. That is where we eventually caught up with Ingrid and her gin and tonics. Ingrid and I used to teach at the same school in London and she during the course of our stay reminded me of some of the less than professional antics I got up to. Something about playing cricket in the corridors, using various scientific apparatus as bats, balls and stumps and making everyone speak like a pirate for the whole day, including students (I forgot there was National “Speak like a Pirate Day” which I now recall I embraced with great enthusiasm). This was at an Orthodox Jewish School mind you. You are probably not surprised that I am no longer a teacher. And given Ingrid willingly joined in the various shenanigans it’s no surprise she isn’t a teacher at that school any more either.
We had a good catch up about the various happenings in our lives in the 7 years since we last saw her. 2 young fellas, Will and Ted, similar in age to Finley and Maja were now running about the place but unfortunately Ingrid’s husband, Paul, was away for the weekend. There was the slightly unnerving prospect of having the number plates stolen on our hire car stolen which Ingrid informed me was the latest trick of some local dodgy geezers. Anyhoo we drank a wee bit too much and eventually got to bed and awoke at a relatively leisurely hour to say our farewells, not visit Cambridge at all, and head to Leicester but of course not actually visit Leicester. Instead we were on our way to visit some friends, Merrin, Tom, Toby and Henry who until recently lived in Seddon. Now they live in Woodhouse Eaves (how English is that?) just outside Leicester. Woodhouse Eaves is very picturesque in an English cottage gardeny kind of way.
We had an extremely pleasant stay in Woodhouse Eaves unfortunately punctuated by watching Germany beat Sweden in the World Cup group match in the last 10 secs at the Red Lion pub (had to be one). It was made all the more annoying when TGT2.5:2 (A SWEDE FFS!!!) said Germany deserved to win because they were the better side. If that’s the sort of absurdly sensible and fair behaviour clog wogs exhibit at football matches then I am extremely likely to be kicked out when we go to see a game in the Swedish Premier League (aka Allsvenskan).
We had an extremely lovely long walk (10km )through woodlands and avoided golf balls through the golf course to and the ancestral home of Lady Jane Grey (self-declared Queen for 9 days, didn’t end well). Not surprisingly it was in ruins. In fact this neck of the woods has seen a bit of action in terms of royalty coming a cropper. More on that in a minute
We continued the walk and it did really show the Midlands up in a very favourable light. Rolling hills, picturesque villages, twinkling streams, and then Leicester. Leicester we were informed was to be avoided at nearly all costs. So we did.
The following day we went to the Battle of Bosworth Visitors Centre where Tricky Dicky 3 and Henry Tudor in the decisive final battle of the War of the Roses. It was King Tricky Dicky who tried to stop someone’s axe with his head at the Battle of Bosworth and we went to the Visitors’ Centre conveniently located some kilometres away from the actual place where the battle took place. Apparently, someone drew a mark on a map a few centuries ago and cartographers had been copying each other’s mistakes ever since. Consequently, Heritage UK or whoever is the responsible body bought an old farmhouse on the spot on the map, only for some upstart historian to actually check the facts, do a bit of digging and metal detecting to find the proper site down in a field a few Kms away, not on a hill. Makes sense, when you think about King Tricky Dicky being stuck in a swamp yelling, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse”. Not many swamps on top of hills, they tend to be down in the valley. Our guide on the tour at the visitors’ centre told us the historians also had the temerity to talk the locals who said their oral history said the battle site was down in the plain, not on the hill. Not too shabby considering it was about 450 years ago. Our guide got us to play different roles in our re-enactment of the battle. I was Earl of Northumberland. Pretty chuffed about that till it turned out Northumberland was a bit of a nob and couldn’t be bothered getting his troops to join the battle leading directly to a few things:
1. Tricky Dicky was heard to yell “Treachery” aimed directly at me, ie Northumberland
2. Tricky Dicky was consequently outnumbered and had the unfortunate run in with the aforementioned axe, though a close run thing apparently as Henry’s standard bearer right beside Henry got it in the neck
3. Northumberland was soon killed by the locals from his home turf (ie Northumberland) because he did the dirty on Tricky Dicky
Poor choices.
Apparently hedging your bets was pretty common back then. Anyhoo, Henry Tudor won the day and Tricky Dicky’s body was left on display for 3 days (pee-eewww) in Leicester just to make sure everyone knew who lost. (Slightly more graphic than Match of the Day highlights.) Then he was buried in a car park. Well, it wasn’t a car park then. Pretty amazing they found his body recently though, especially when it meant they had to lose a few car park spaces.
On the way back we had to rush to a local village to watch the England v Panama in an English “country village on steroids”, as described by Merrin. It had the lot: Farmers market, cottage gardens, ye olde pubs, thatched roofs everywhere. Good result for the locals with the ball going in the back of the net 5 or 6 times. Then another lovely evening with Merrin, Tom, Toby and Henry and it was back to west London the following day via the Roman ruins of Veralumium in St Albans. Nice little amphitheatre. (St Albans in England is very different to the St Albans in Melbourne, not so many Roman ruins there.) Google Rat Running had regained its composure and no zig zags on the way home.
We had to get back to collect our belongings from Shepherds Bush for our trip to Scotland the following day. Now we had done another foolish thing which shows we really still haven’t got our travelling form back, we booked with Ryanair
OH GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!?!?!??!!?
What sort of madness made us do that?
We thought leaving 3 hours to get to the airport for an internal flight would give us plenty of time. What naïve fools we are.
So to get to Stansted Airport which frankly is effing miles away we were faced with:
· The 207 bus to Shepherds Bush station
· Central line tube to Liverpool St Station
· Stansted Express Removal of Money from your wallet (“Sorry, how much?”)
So it started out smoothly enough. Walk to the bus stop, bus comes every few minutes. Nice. Curious choice to go via Hammersmith and City line to Liverpool St Station as it was stinking hot (even for Orstrayans) and the Central line can be an oven. So we got to Liverpool St a bit behind time and the Catastrophist in me was beginning to stir but for the moment was mostly kept in check.
After selling on the kids to pay for the Standard Express train to the airport (bad paper scissors rock to lose) we hopped on the train and headed out only for it to continually stop to have a rest. Like Thomas the Bloody Tank engine. Mr Catastrophist was stirring. Especially as, if you miss a Ryanair flight, that’s it. You have to buy another one. The 45 minute train trip took about 1 hour and 15 minutes, and combined with the long tube ride we were now in the red zone.
When we arrived at Stansted we were faced with the fact that it is a F*CKING AWFUL airport. Now we’ve travelled a lot, even on Ryanair from Stansted but that was 15 years ago and we literally had no idea where we were supposed to check in, where our bags were supposed to go. No BLOODY signs anywhere. Eventually after queueing up in the wrong line a couple of times, we made our way to the security check like cattle being taken to the abattoir. We noticed a big pile of small plastic bags but thought little of it, until of course our bags went through the scanner and they pulled apart every bag and took our every little bottle of liquid (surprising how many we had) including the ones in our toiletry bag. Apparently you are supposed to put any bottle/tube of liquid of any size in the small plastic bags. 1 plastic bag per person.
With plastic gloves on, they held up each bottle/tube/container in front of our faces:
“What’s this?
“Toothpaste”
“What about this?”
“Sunscreen”
“And this?”
“Deodorant”
Etc etc etc
What the f*ck was wrong with these people?
TICK TICK TICK
Mr Catastrophist was now in full control and I was starting to convulse.
We got through security after losing all manner of things associated with personal hygiene as well as a pocket knife (Bloody Ryanair say they put your hand luggage in the hold underneath the plane but don’t say they do that after you’ve gone through security so the collection of pocket knives was impressive).
Then we had to snake our way through 1 km of shops in an IKEA you can’t short cut to the end kind of way.
Aaaaggghhhh
Eventually we got past the shops. By now the plane was due to take off in 5 mins.
A sign said “Gate 83 this way: 8 minute walk”
“KIDS!! RUN!!!”
Mr Catastrophist was a raging beast control now, pushing little old ladies out of the way, treading on small children, yelling at passers by.
Only when Gate 83 appeared around the corner with the line still stretching out from the gate that Mr Catastrophist finally went back into his hidey hole. Thank gawd for that. Not good for anyone.
The Ryanair staff were a bit over it too and practically waved us through and we were on the plane but only after walking out on to the tarmac in a Hobart kind of way.
So we caught our flight much to my astonishment and were heading for Bonnie Scotland.
More of that later.
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