Snap and Scribble

I went to Cambridge on Tuesday, to meet up with a couple of friends from Australia. Jon and Danielle and their 15 month old daughter Kael are living in Spalding, in Lincolnshire and i’d suggested meeting up in Cambridge, as it’s about halfway between there and here and the roads are good from both places.

But Cambridge turned out to be a stupid place to meet – because it’s a fair sized city and none of us knew the place!

Anyway, i left home at nine o’clock and had a pleasant hour and a half drive there. On the way, i got a text from Jon, saying they’d be a bit late, so i wasn’t in a hurry. Of course, when i got into Cambridge, i had no idea where to go or where to park the car. I found a multi-storey carpark, which seemed reasonably close to the city centre, and parked the car there.

Jon and Danielle ended up in a carpark on the opposite side of the city – of course – so we had to work out where we were going to meet up. That wasn’t too hard, as it’s not really that big a place, and i only had to walk for a few minutes to get to the meeting spot.

The weather wasn’t great, but at least it wasn’t raining, so we went to a park, where there was a kids play area to keep Kael amused for a while.

Jon’s English and Danielle’s Australian, and me and Jon both have the same sort of views on this country. So, of course, we compared notes on what a miserable, narrow minded bunch of in-bred racists the English are!
We sounded like a pair of typical whingeing Aussies!

It was getting towards lunch time, though, so we wanted to find somewhere to eat. As our carparks were costing lots of money and none of us could even guess where to find decent food in Cambridge, we decided to do what we should have done in the first place and get out of there and find a small country town to hang out in.

First, though, we had to get our cars from their respective carparks and drive out of town together. We walked to their car and they drove to where mine was. Luckily there was somewhere they could stop while i went and got the car. But it wasn’t at all obvious where the exit from the carpark was, so i said i’d drive round and come to where they were.

I ended up coming out of the carpark just twenty or thirty metres ahead of where they were parked – but there were bushes between them and me, so they couldn’t see me. It didn’t occur to me at the time to use my mobile, so i drove all the way round the block, through a maze of narrow streets and one-way systems, until i came up behind them. On the way i passed through an area, just round the back of the car park, that had loads of pleasant looking little cafes and restaurants – but both cars were out of the carparks now and i wasn’t going to suggest we parked them again and stayed in Cambridge.

We didn’t have too far to drive, though, before we found a pub in a small town called Great Shelford. It was a pleasant little country pub with very friendly staff – who even managed to find a high chair for Kael to sit in.

After lunch, we hung out in the local park for a while, so Kael could play and Danielle could eat sweet things from the bakery. Then we headed back home in opposite directions.

It was good to catch up again and to finally meet Kael – who’s a pleasant little kid – as i hadn’t seen them since before she was born. Last time i saw Jon and Danielle, they were living on the Gold Coast in Queensland, but that must be at least a couple of years ago, now, i reckon, because i think i was living at either Suffolk Park or Lennox Head, although it could have been when i was in Lismore… They’ve been living in Adelaide since then.

My drive home wasn’t quite as straightforward as the drive there – as i went the wrong way a couple of times. I’d decided to go back a different way to the way i’d gone there, for a bit of variety and to see different places. But, despite getting a bit lost, it took the same time to get home as it had taken to get there.

Both ways were a pleasant enough drive – as i decided to take country roads and avoid the motorway. And i drove through places that i’ve either never seen before, or it was so long ago i don’t remember them. One particularly attractive little town, on my route home, was Finchingfield. Here’s a couple of photos of it (note the moon at the top of the first picture!)…

Finchingfield, Essex – complete with a church on a hill and ducks on the village green.

An old windmill at Finchingfield – it’s seems to be in very good condition.

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