We got up to have breakfast in the restaurant at 5:30am UK time, and the Stena Hollandica berthed at Harwich at 6:30am UK Time. The passengers soon started disembarking. We went out through UK border control, which was very relaxed compared with some of the others we had been through.
We came out to the railway station attached to the terminal — Stena has a tie-in to East Anglia Rail, and our crossing ticketing included rail transit to any other of their stations. We had opted for Cambridge, and had arranged to pick up an Avis rental car there. The train wasn't going to leave platform 1 until 7:50am, so we spent a little time upstairs in the Stena terminal, indulging in a little coffee.
Finally we were on our way, passing through Ipswich at 8:20 and reaching Cambridge 9:15am. There were quite a few stops along the way, and we shared our travel with the early morning commuters.
Leaving the station, we took a taxi to the Avis/Budget depot at 245 Mill Road. We went through lots of very narrow streets. This will be the norm while we are in the UK — we had forgotten how compact everything is over here! Even the Avis office would have fitted into the corner of one back home!
Now mobile, we drove to the Premier Inn in Newmarket Road, hoping to find accommodation there. Totally booked out, but they referred us to the Travelodge next door, which had the vacancies we needed for the next two nights. We made a booking, but would not be able to check in until after 3pm. What to do? Then we remembered that Ely, with its magnificent cathedral — and plenty of parking! — was only 17 miles (27km) away. What a wonderful place to while away a few hours!
The drive up to Ely was easy, and we found the long-term car park, the Barton Road Car Park that we had used last time we were there. We walked the short way to the Visitor Information Centre in Oliver Cromwell's House in St Mary's St, mainly to pick up a city map to help us get around. Then we went to the cathedral.
Ely Abbey, founded in 672 by Æthelthryth (St Etheldreda), daughter of the East Anglian King Anna. had a pre-Norman history spanning 400 years and a re-foundation in 970. Over then next century, Ely became one of England's most successful Benedictine abbeys. In 1071, Ely became a focus of English resistance against the Normans, through such people as Hereward the Wake, culminating in the Siege of Ely, for which the abbey was substanitally penalised.
The Normans had almost every English cathedral and major abbey rebuilt from the 1070s onwards. For Ely to maintain its status, it had to initiate its own building work. The task fell to Abbot Simeon, an 90-year-old Norman outsider who, with the Ely monks, reversed the decline in the abbey's fortunes, and successfully began a mighty new building, begun in 1083, and granted cathedral status in 1109.
The interior of the cathedral is stunning. Looking up at the ceiling, you can see 12 painted panels. A timber boarded ceiling was installed in the nave in 1858 and painted with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, first by Henry Styleman Le Strange and then, after Le Strange’s death in 1862, completed by Thomas Gambier Parry, finishing the work in 1865.
Another major feature of the cathedral, above the crossing (where the transept crosses the nave), is the "Octagon", an octagonal tower which takes the place of an earlier Norman spire, which collapsed in 1322. This is larger than the original tower, and irs large glazed timber lantern provides a beautiful light into the heart of the cathedral. Thomas Parry, on completing the cathedral's ceiling, turned his hand to the 32 panels within the Octagon showing pictures of musical angels.
An unexpected bonus of this visit was that a specialist collector has just loaned to the cathedral a specimen of Banksy's "Grappling Hook", created in 2017 as a "powerful statement on the political and religious struggles in the West Bank". It is a crucifix, with three steel grapples, attached to a 14ft 5in long (4.4m) piece of knotted rope. Followers of Banksy are particularly excited!
We left the cathedral and wandered down behind it to the River Great Ouse, where we found a number of narrow boats, and a little cafe where we indulged in our usual coffees. Then we strolled back to our car through the quaint streets of Ely. We then drove the 17 miles back to the hotel to check in and settle in for the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment