Walking. Gossip. Travel.

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  • Cambridge – Reality Checkpoint

    Cambridge – Reality Checkpoint

    This is from my visit to Cambridge with Nathan a couple of weekends ago and it’s a lamp post. But not just any lamp post, this is Reality Checkpoint which has managed to acquire its own Wikipedia page. And not many lamp posts have managed to gain that sort of accolade, so I felt the need to take a photo of it. It’s located at Parker’s Piece, which has its own heritage as being one of the places which can claim to be the home of the rules of football. But that didn’t happen when the lamp post was hanging around, as this iron centrepiece of the park dates from the last few years of the nineteenth century.

    The reason for the name is unclear, with Wikipedia quoting three different options:

    (i) It may mark the boundary between the central university area of Cambridge (referred to as the “reality bubble”) and the “real world” of townspeople living beyond. One is warned to check one’s notions of reality before passing. For students at Cambridge, who walk out to Mill Road across Parker’s piece for an evening in the “real world”, usually including a visit to one of Mill Road’s selection of pubs, the lamppost marks the end of the “reality holiday” as they walk back to central Cambridge – back into “the bubble”.

    (ii) The name arose because the lamppost forms a useful landmark for people crossing the park at night – perhaps inebriated or in the fog – since it is the only light for over a hundred metres.

    (iii) When drunk, students and the general public are reminded to check they are able to walk like a sober person before passing the police station at the edge of Parker’s Piece, hence a “reality check”.

    I have no idea which it is, but the middle one rings true to me and alcohol or drugs was likely involved in the whole arrangement. The reality (if we can excuse my use of that word here) is that one student wrote it on the post in the 1960s and future generations of students kept up that tradition.

    The lamp post was listed in August 1996 to further cement its reputation in the history of Cambridge and here’s the official text:

    Lamp standard erected in 1894, renovated in 1946, and refurbished in 1999.

    “Cast iron. Square-section plinth and base with inscription panels to each side. South west side with access hatch. Top edges with waterleaf decoration. Base of shaft with four intertwined dolphins. Plain shaft of circular section carries four candelabra lamp holders by means of scrolled wrought-iron stays. Glazed cages of inverted conical section.”

    At the bottom of the lamp post is one of the little artworks from Dinky Doors that are in numerous places around Cambridge.

  • Greater Anglia : Norwich to London Liverpool Street

    Greater Anglia : Norwich to London Liverpool Street

    I’m used to the journey from Norwich to London Liverpool Street, but it’s rare for me to be getting the 07:00 train as that’s normally an expensive commuter service. Today though, it was £12.50 which I thought was reasonable all things considered (namely how expensive some other Greater Anglia services are which are of a much shorter destination).

    Norwich railway station wasn’t packed with people, but there were a few services about to leave, including the service to Liverpool Lime Street, so it wasn’t entirely quiet.

    Here’s the London thunderbolt that would hopefully get me into the city at 08:51. I boarded and had a carriage to myself, which was rather lovely. I then had a woman come up to me and she said that I looked strong (can’t fault her logic there) and could I open her bottle of water for her. This sort of scenario isn’t ideal, as if I can’t open it then I look ridiculous. Fortunately, I gave the impression of huge strength since I opened the bottle immediately. That’s a decent start to a journey.

    What wasn’t a decent start was seeing that the train was marked as delayed, with no announcements made about it. I’m not sure what caused this, as the signs soon lost their delayed status and the train was ready to rock and roll at 07:00 as expected. The announcements made by the staff were all friendly and informative, with a guard checking tickets. This process didn’t exactly take him long and to my slight disappointment (as I like watching drama unfold) everyone seemed to have a valid ticket.

    Here’s the packed carriage. I also managed to sit at the only block of seats on the train that didn’t have working power, so had to move to the seats opposite. This wasn’t the only technical problem on board, as the shutter at the cafe had broken and jammed, so the staff had to walk up and down the train with the trolley. The service though arrived into London on time, so no complaints there. It didn’t get much busier either, just a handful of people on the entire train.

    This is London Liverpool Street at commuter time, but on a morning between Christmas and New Year’s Day, which is perhaps never going to be packed with hordes of travellers. Nonetheless, it was still quieter than I expected.

    And outside London Liverpool Street station, with a calmness in the air.

  • Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jacob Hinchley)

    Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jacob Hinchley)

    When my friend Richard and I went to visit some churches last week, we visited St Michael and All Angels in Bunwell. We spent some time looking for the war graves that are located here, and found two of the three that are located at the church.

    Anyway, for absolutely no reason at all that I can explain, I was interested in this grave and it’s the only non war related one that I took a photo of. Given that, I thought I should investigate a little why the grave of Jacob Hinchley who died at the age of 59 on 10 March 1897 seemed so intriguing to me.

    Jacob was born in Bunwell in 1837, the son of John and Rebecca Hinchley. At the 1841 census, he had three older brothers, Charles, Henry and Robert, as well as a younger sister, Rebecca, and they all lived at Burnt House in the village. This quite substantial house still stands, today worth half a million pounds and having six bedrooms. Despite residing at a large property, I can’t imagine that the family were particularly wealthy as John worked as a road labourer and the male children worked as farm labourers and the daughter as a worsted weaver.

    Jacob is listed on the 1871 census as living with his wife Sophia and his father John, who was now aged 73, with their address listed as “by the turnpike in Bunwell”. Jacob had married Sophia Parish at Bunwell church in 1866, but something clearly goes wrong after this and there is a burial record for Sophia Hinchley at the church in 1875. There wasn’t a great delay before Jacob married Ellen Blake in 1876, when he was 39 years old, although his wife was aged just 21 years old. Jacob appears in the local press a few times as a bell ringer at the church and he travelled the county performing his hobby.

    The last census that took place during Jacob’s lifetime was in 1891, when he lived in North Bunwell and was still working as a farm labourer. He lived with his wife Ellen, their daughter Alice and their sons Oliver and Percy, which is the same arrangement as the 1881 census, other than he had a new child. Percy was just two years old, which meant that Jacob became a father at the age of 52, which is relatively old for the period, but a reality given that he married twice and I’m not sure whether he had any children with his first wife.

    Jacob died in 1897, with Ellen living until 1916. I’m not sure that I uncovered much about Jacob, other than he married twice, he liked bell ringing and he lived in Bunwell all of his life. It is though a case of just how important the church likely was to Jacob, as he was baptised there, married there twice, buried there and was a bell ringer. And maybe one day I’ll find out something else about Jacob to add to this little story….

  • Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Warsaw – National Museum in Warsaw (Bed from Saint John of God Hospital)

    Fortunately, this isn’t the start of one of my little hotel reviews (I would be annoyed if that was the bed), but from when Richard and I meandered along to the National Museum in Warsaw a few weeks ago. I admit that a photo of a bed might not appear to be riveting blog content, but this oak and birch construction has some charm to it I think. It’s from the Saint John of God Hospital in Warsaw and it dates to between 1757 and 1760. It was donated to the museum in 1931 by the hospital itself, when I assume that it ceased to be needed.

    How on earth this bed survived is a mystery to me, given that nearly everything else in Warsaw was destroyed during the Second World War. And there were likely many more items in the collection that the museum would have focused on saving rather than traipsing a bed around the place during the traumatic war years. I’m going with the answer, as I feel I need a supposition here, that they moved it to the cellars of the museum where it avoided damage and didn’t attract the interest of any Nazi plunderers.

    Back to the hospital itself though, which was first built in 1728 next to the church of Saint John on Bonifraterska Street (which is still named after the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God) in Warsaw. It had eight beds, but it was clear that the church could help more patients, so they constructed a new building in 1760 which would support 34 patients. And that’s why they know when this bed was made, as it was made specifically for the new hospital building, all funded by the wealthy August Aleksander Czartoryski.

    The church today, courtesy of Google Street View.

    Like most places in Warsaw, the hospital and church buildings were badly damaged during the Second World War, not least because they were used by the Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 when they were fighting back against the German occupiers. It was decided that the hospital wouldn’t be reconstructed following the end of the conflict, although the church was rebuilt.

    And I think there’s some magic here, that a bed constructed for patients in 1760 has managed to survive and is now tucked away in a corner of the country’s national museum. Although, and not wanting to be negative about the arrangements, it does look like quite a small bed which might not have entirely suited any tall patients. It is though perhaps one of the very few objects that remain of a hospital that helped so many people given that even the building itself has now gone.

  • Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    Warsaw – Royal Castle (Canaletto Hall)

    I’ve just realised that another thing I never got around to doing was writing about the Royal Castle in Warsaw (on the left in the above photo), which I’ve visited a few times before on free admission days. Very thrifty…. I visited with Richard when we were in the city a few weeks ago and we had a meander around, although the downside of visiting on free admission days is that it’s very busy. But more on the building in another post.

    This post is mostly just photos from one particular room that I’ve managed to misunderstand the importance of before. The paintings are all by Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780) who was the nephew of Canaletto and he also used his name which confuses things a little. These artworks have had a busy time of it since they were painted between the late 1760s and the early 1780s. They were placed in the castle following their commission by King Stanislaus Augustus, a collection of 22 different street scenes of Warsaw and a canvas showing the King’s election.

    The paintings weren’t here for that long, as Napoleon pinched four of them in 1807, made worse by Tsar Nicholas I stealing the whole lot in 1832. They were recovered and put back in the Royal Castle, but then the Germans pinched the whole collection again in 1939. The Nazis then destroyed the entire castle building in 1945, before it was carefully reconstructed between 1971 and 1984. And then the collection of paintings was put back once again in this recreated room in 1984, an amazing tale of survival. And the paintings have also played a crucial part in the rebuilding of Warsaw, as they were used by the post-war architects to restore the Old Town area back to as it looked in the late eighteenth century.

  • Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    Warsaw – Witold Pilecki

    I wrote about the Polish hero Witold Pilecki a couple of weeks ago, as he was part of the story of the Municipal Tourist House in Warsaw.

    I was pleased and interested to see that the BBC have published this week an episode about his bravery at volunteering to go to Auschwitz and then managing to escape from it.

  • Norwich – Orford Plaice

    Norwich – Orford Plaice

    This was the final Christmas lunch of 2021 for James and I, at Orford Plaice which is a chip shop we’ve managed to walk by several hundred times and never quite gone in.

    It’s larger inside than I expected, there’s a downstairs eating area and there are a number of tables on the ground floor. The service was friendly and helpful, although we got their last pot of gravy (not something that we really ever buy, although it’s a personal favourite of mine with chips).

    Having chips on a proper plate is a bit decadent for us, or “it’s like being in a Wimpy” as James put it. The food was brought over after a few minutes, at which point they remembered they hadn’t prepared the gravy, but that didn’t take much longer. Our meal was chips alongside battered pigs in blankets. The chips were fine, complemented nicely by the gravy, although I thought that the pigs in blankets were a little generic and not really very interesting. Having written that though, I did like the battering of them, primarily as I like nearly anything that has been battered, it just adds taste and texture. The portion size was also reasonable, with everything at the appropriate hot temperature, although the plate itself was cold.

    Price-wise, this is somewhere between Grosvenor and Lucy’s, with the surroundings being reasonably comfortable. There’s meant to be a masks-on inside policy, but it was ignored by some and not questioned, but I’m not going to burden myself with getting concerned about that. I think I still prefer Lucy’s, their butchers sausages are a nice little treat. This venue has won some awards, which I’m slightly surprised about, but we’ve decided to revisit in the new year to test some more of their menu out. No point coming to any snap verdicts about the food quality….

  • Cambridge – Regal Pub

    Cambridge – Regal Pub

    I wasn’t going to write about the first pub that my friend Nathan and I visited in Cambridge last weekend, primarily as I thought that I already droned on about it before in another post. But I hadn’t so will now instead. It’s one of the largest pubs in the JD Wetherspoon estate, although it has since been surpassed with some even more substantial venues, not least the Royal Victoria Pavilion in Ramsgate. It’s also the only outlet that the chain have in the city since their other one, the Tivoli, burnt down in 2015 and they decided not to re-open it.

    We popped in for a quick bargain breakfast and I can’t really complain about the value. All to brand standard and to my expectations, as well as being brought out quickly. I’d quite like them to bring the half a tomato back, but I won’t lose any sleep over its disappearance.

    We had a couple of half pints as lunch-time approached, perfectly well kept and very keenly priced. They were the Fat Turkey from J Buckley Brewing in Wales and Citramas IPA from Hanlons Brewery in Devon, nothing exceptional, but something different as I don’t think I’ve had anything from those breweries before.

     

    These are photos I took a few years ago which show the size of the venue, which has the one big area that was once the main screen of the Regal Cinema from which the pub takes its name. There’s another area down a few steps, an outdoor terrace and there are also some quieter areas upstairs. The pub doesn’t take up the entirety of the building, as they share it with Picturehouse Cinemas who have some screens upstairs.

    The pub closed for four days in September 2021 for a refurbishment, but I’m not sure what they did during that relatively short time, but perhaps it was a replacement of the carpet or similar. A refurbishment a few years ago did put in a number of extra power points which was quite useful.

    Like most JD Wetherspoon outlets, the reviews are broadly positive with a heap of angry people complaining that their bacon was cold or similar. Usual small number of people who think it’s fine to insult bar staff, namely this:

    “Ordered our meal via the app. It turned up with no drinks. The waiter told us that drinks hadn’t been on the order and he was too busy to deal with it. He advised us to go to the bar and speak to them and they can add it to the the order. Spoke to bar person who was as thick as a brick who advised me that I hadn’t used the app correctly for the alcoholic drink and was told me that I entitled to a soft drink to which she didn’t even offer to get it. I know it is a Wetherspoons and not the savoy but it has Really poor service. Won’t be back”

    In short, a customer has just not selected a drink on the app and they go to the bar and call the staff member “as thick as a brick”. Nice….

    The environment in the pub is perhaps a little sterile and anonymous, but it’s a huge venue and it’s not going to be particularly easy to offer an attentive and engaging service to everyone. Anyway, for a quick and reliable breakfast, I’m entirely happy with the Regal as it was clean, the staff were friendly and the prices were very agreeable.

  • Cambridge – Calverley’s Brewery (2nd Visit)

    Cambridge – Calverley’s Brewery (2nd Visit)

    This was the final pub of the day when my friend Nathan and I had our little pub crawl around nine venues in Cambridge last weekend. It’s the slightly hard to find Calverley’s Brewery taproom, a location that I’ve visited before in 2019.

    Things have changed substantially since when I last visited, with the opening of this much larger taproom on site, all of which was stables until Calverley’s took over here in 2013. When I visited before, the arrangement was a little more parochial, with a much smaller space available for customers. There was something really rather lovely about feeling part of the brewing process back then as it’s a bit more detached in this larger room, but it’s great to see what progress has been made. There’s also a larger open-air section as well for the warmer months when sitting outside is a bit more viable.

    The beer menu. We did debate also ordering in one (well, more likely two) of the pizzas from Scott’s All Day who are located nearby, but we opted for a slightly cheaper option of a Sainsburys Meal Deal for the train journey home. The reviews on-line of the taproom are very positive and there are some ciders and soft drinks for the non-beer drinkers.

    I went for the Big Dawg, a very decent Double New England IPA, as well as the Big Porter, which was a little less decadent and rich tasting as I’d hoped. I liked the surroundings of this set-up though, with the service being friendly and attentive. The location was clean and organised, with a relaxed ambience. It’s not necessarily the easiest of venues to find, but the signage is improved from my last visit and I’m pleased that they’re doing well. For anyone needing a drink before catching a train from Cambridge railway station, this isn’t too far of a walk to make. Pleasingly, this is also still listed in the Good Beer Guide.

  • Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jack Montague Smith)

    Bunwell – St. Michael and All Angels Church (Grave of Jack Montague Smith)

    This is the churchyard of St. Michael and All Angels Church in Bunwell.

    Just before my friend Richard and I meandered out to look at some historic churches, I was watching a documentary on tunnelling under the German lines during the First World War. This was a successful tactic deployed primarily by the British military and the Royal Engineers, although they were helped by numerous other companies which included those from Canada, Australia and New Zealand amongst others.

    Which is why I thought that the grave of Jack Montague Smith looked interesting, he’s one of the three war dead who is buried in the churchyard. He was born in Bunwell on 2 November 1892 and was the son of George William Gates Smith and Mary Alice Smith, of The Laburnums, Bunwell. His father was a watchmaker and Jack had three brothers and two sisters at the time of the 1901 census.

    Jack was a member of the 1st Canadian Tunnelling Company, part of the Canadian Engineers. They were sent to France in early 1916 and worked on the Bluff area, in Flanders, until early 1917 when the Australians took over. Their role was primarily in tunnelling under enemy lines, a dangerous and difficult occupation.

    Jack was a sapper with service number 501337 and he signed up in Ontario in December 1915. There’s an obvious question of what Jack was doing in Canada, but it wasn’t uncommon for younger men to go and find employment there, so that’s my best guess. Unfortunately, as Jack’s surname is Smith, I can’t identify which of the many Jack Smiths it might have been on the passenger lists.

    After being sent to fight on the front line he was injured on 26 April 1916. He was admitted to the 51st Field Ambulance, which was a front line medical unit which treated those with injuries. He was evacuated back to the United Kingdom, being sent to the Yarrow Hospital in Broadstairs where Canadian troops were cared for. Sadly, Jack died of his injuries at the hospital on 1 June 1916 at the age of 23 years old. His body was then returned to Norfolk for burial at Bunwell on 2 June 1916.