2013-06-21 Cambridge

June 21, 2013 - Friday

After a leisurely breakfast, with a quick chat with the 2 restoration workers also staying there, and a lengthier chat with Judy, we went out to the backyard for a look around.  Judy’s husband has a shed in the back that he uses as his office and for bonding sessions with his rugby friends.  Judy has a beautiful garden with all kinds of plants in brilliant bloom.  A stream ran along the bottom of the garden.  Judy has 2 dogs and I can’t remember their names.  One was more outgoing than the other.  There were cattle and horses grazing in the pasture across from the river.  It was all rather idyllic.

We set out for Cambridge and along the way, we passed sheep grazing in fields, some cottages with thatched roofs and riverboats on the river.  It was a short, pleasant drive and Cambridge kind of crept up on us.  I was kind of dozing off in the back seat and woke up just in time to catch Fitzwilliam College as we drove by.  We turned on to Queen’s Road and found street parking near The Backs.  The Backs is a picturesque area and refers to the backs of some of the colleges with grounds covering both banks of the River Cam.  We crossed the river at the Garret Hostel Lane bridge beside the punts on the grounds of Trinity College.  We went down the lane to try and find a proper entrance to the area where the punts were moored but were not able to do so.  We went back to a lane that we had seen and walked from there over to the punts.  We wanted to have a trip down the river but no one was available to punt for us. We decided to walk around the grounds of Trinity College and admire the buildings.  We stopped to talk to the porter, who told us that the Library was not open until noon and that we could walk over to St. John’s.  He told us how to get into St. John’s from the back (to save us the admission fee).  We walked out of Trinity along The Avenue of lime and cherry trees, through the wrought iron gate towards Queen’s Road and then followed a footpath to the back gates of St. John’s.  We could see the Bridge of Sighs from the Kitchen Bridge as we went from the New Court to the Third Court. It started to rain on us while we were at St. John’s.  We went into one of the buildings of St. John’s to find out way out to the street.  Once out on the street, we wandered past King’s College, St. Catharine’s College and Corpus Christi College. We then went into Auntie’s Tea Shop to have a light lunch.  The tea shop was very busy.

After lunch, we walked along King’s Parade to the Senate House Passage, by Trinity Hall and back on to Garret Hostel Lane and bridge.  We shared the road with many cyclists, cycling being a very common mode of transportation for locals and students.  Many of the streets are closed to traffic so Cambridge is a great place to walk around in.  We got back into our car, figured our way out of Cambridge and we were on our way to Fui Ling’s house in West Byfleet.

 It was overcast and drizzly as we made our way to the M25.  Traffic on the M25 was very slow, but apparently, that is fairly normal.  We passed a truck on fire by the side of the motorway.  No emergency vehicles were in sight so I assumed that it was a fairly recent problem.  We were lucky to pass by when we did as it was highly likely that emergency vehicles, when they do finally arrive at the scene, would have created a major bottleneck.

We passed by The Anchor, a pub on the river not too far from Fui Ling’s house.  We unpacked the car when we got the Mutiara.  Fui Ling then went with us to return the car in Guildford.  Irene went with her while Petros, Florine and I followed in the Benz.  We had given ourselves a lot of time to get to the car rental place and the plan was for Fui Ling to drop us off at Wisley Garden while she went to pick up Tristram from school by 4:30 pm.  Traffic was slow but we got there just before 4:00 pm.  However, it took a long time for the rental place to sort out my bill.  I had been assured that the discrepancy in the insurance rate would be sorted out by the time I was to return the car, but no adjustment had been made to the rate.  The difference was about 40GBP so it was worth fighting for.  Eventually, the agency where I was returning the car worked something out with the agency where I picked up the car and the correct charges were applied to my credit card.  Fortunately, Stephen was home and was able to pick Tristram up as it was pouring down by then and we would not have been able to visit the garden.  Once the problem was resolved and the bill paid, Fui Ling drove us over to the garden.  While it had stopped raining, it was closing time at the garden.  So, we had to postpone our visit for another day.

Fui Ling drove us back to Mutiara.  We freshened up and then chatted with her while she got dinner together.  There was not much to do as she had prepared everything during the day.  We had a very nice dinner with ham, vegetables, rice and mashed potatoes.  She made a very tasty tart with mascarpone cheese and berries.  We spent a lot of time chatting and catching up on 45 years of family history. We also did some laundry. Time flew by and it was almost midnight by the time we got to bed.
Where we stayed:  Mutiara, West Byfleet