Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Author: admin

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Lady Chapel)

    The ghostly traces of the Lady Chapel, which was once attached to Peterborough Cathedral, can still be seen in the stonework where the former roof-line was. It was built in the late thirteenth century and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Abbot William Parys oversaw the construction of the chapel which would later contain numerous tombs.

    Unfortunately the chapel was demolished in 1650 and the money raised was used to pay for repairs to the cathedral following the destruction caused by the Parliamentary troops during the Civil War.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Museum

    I tried to go to the city’s museum earlier in the year but there was a special event and it all looked a bit busy so I decided to come back. Today, on my return, I was the only visitor in the museum, which doesn’t bode entirely well for their finances.

    I hadn’t realised that the building was for a long period used as a hospital and there were useful signs throughout the museum showing what used to take place in many of the rooms. This was the entrance hall where patients would come in and wait to be seen.

    A little piece of history on the stairs, these are the original wooden steps which are designed to be anti-slip.

    This is a Roman milestone which was located on Ermine Street, dating to around 271AD.

    A heavy oak door which come from the abbot’s prison, with the power of imprisonment given to the abbey in the thirteenth century.

    The Upton lead coffin which dates to around the third century and was used to bury a nine-year old boy. It isn’t known who the boy is, but it’s clear that the family had some significant wealth.

    When Peterborough’s guildhall opened in 1671 there was a large meal provided for the dignitaries, which shows how little has changed over the centuries. They killed a turtle to make soup and in honour of the now dead animal, they served the soup in its shell and then painted it with the coat of arms of the MP, Sir Humphrey Orme. Orme died soon after, so I hope it wasn’t the turtle.

    A fox for visitors to stroke should they so wish.

    In the early twentieth century an “evil disposed person” stole some flowers from the cemetery. This certainly seemed to cause a lot of anger and the reward of £2 would have been a very tempting sum of money for anyone who could identify the culprit.

    I appear to have reached the stage in life where toys I remember as a child are now in a museum.

    This is the only remaining late-Victorian operating theatre which is still in place in the UK. It was laid out in 1897 and at the time was cutting edge (excuse the pun) and even now it looks rather terrifying.

    This was a much bigger museum than I had expected and there was also a special exhibition on the ground floor entitled “Treasures”. This sadly runs only until 9 January 2019 and one of the highlights of the display is the Becket Casket dating to 1180. However, my highlight was the Peterborough Chronicle, a document written on vellum between 1120 and 1154, which also contains the first recorded mention of the word ‘she’. No photos could be taken in this exhibition and it was a little unfortunate that this had three staff, I assume for security reasons, and no visitors.

    Overall, this is definitely a museum which is worth visiting and I spent around an hour here. The museum is laid out in an interesting manner, although there’s quite a wide coverage of different subjects and not much depth, but space is inevitably limited. I do appreciate how the museum has marked out how the building was used as a hospital, such as the former nurses’ rooms, the main ward and the surgeon’s room.

  • Peterborough – Draper’s Arms

     

    I’ve visited this Wetherspoons before as it’s near the railway station and I’ve sometimes had enough time to visit. One thing that I hadn’t previously realised is that it wasn’t Wetherspoons who transformed the interior from a draper’s shop into a pub, it had been the “Old Monk” for a few years before they took it over. It was though a drapery for over 100 years and it today has the honour of having made it into the Good Beer Guide.

    Another thing I hadn’t really noticed is that the exterior doesn’t have any Wetherspoons branding. And there’s a reason for this, which Wetherspoons said in a statement over a decade ago, saying:

    “We have decided not to not put the Wetherspoon logo on this pub and just stick with its name, which is a first for the company. We want the new pub to be a little bit different from other Wetherspoons, to cater for a slightly different, perhaps slightly more up market or professional crowd. For example, there will be 14 world beers to choose from and there will be no smoking or music”.

    It seems that it was the first pub in the city to go entirely smoke free, although I’m not sure it can any longer claim to have a more upmarket clientele as it just seems like any Wetherspoons outlet.

    The interior of the pub, which is long and relatively spacious. The pub is in need of a renovation though, there are some maintenance issues and it has some of the worst toilets I’ve seen in a Wetherspoons. They’re clean, but they’re not well maintained and they’re rather small for the outlet.

    A random photo of some of the interior glass dividers between the booths. I only had a coffee (well, five) in the pub as another customer was busy complaining their breakfast was cold, and that was sufficient reason for me not to bother ordering food.

    The staff didn’t really engage, but they were also perfectly polite. There were around eight real ales available, but I was visiting too early in the day to start on those.

  • Peterborough – Ostrich Inn

    Nearly knocked down a few years ago, this pub was saved only by city councillors who ignore the council planners. They were right to do so in my opinion, this pub was once frequented by Charlie Chaplin when he was performing nearby and Peterborough should be respectful of its heritage.

    For a while the pub lost its historic name of the Ostrich, but fortunately it has been restored. It was a little ridiculous to have changed the name since it had been known as the Ostrich since at least the 1840s, and during the Victorian period it also appears to have been used as a hotel.

    This is a brave piece of lighting to be located in the middle of a pub, but it does strangely fit in, I like it.

    I hadn’t seen the blackboard with the beers on when I went to order, but seeing this pump-clip was enough to know that I wanted it. The beer was sweeter than I expected, but there was a flavour of rum and chocolate, an intriguing combination. Reading some reviews on-line this beer isn’t quite as popular as I think it should be though….

    And the beer list which I noticed after having ordered… The clear division between craft beer and cask beer is helpful, it’s often not obvious in pubs. Although I’m becoming more and more interested in craft beer, so I’m more than happy with both.

    The service was efficient and although there were no staff members visible when I entered, a customer helpfully went off to find her for me. All friendly and helpful, the atmosphere was clean and comfortable as well.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Haydn Keeton)

    This memorial tablet is a little different with its musical score, marking the burial of Haydn Keeton, the cathedral’s former organist. He was born on 26 October 1847 in Sheffield and served as the cathedral’s organist from 1870 until 1921. He died at the age of 73 and during his time in Peterborough he lived at 4 Park Road and on Thorpe Road, doing well enough to have three servants during his time at the latter address.

  • Index of Places Long Since Visited

    Locations visited in the past…..

     

    2018

    Peterborough, UK

    Poznan, Poland and Gniezno, Poland

    Hayes, London, Hounslow, London and Harlington, London

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Poltava, Ukraine

    Lviv, Ukraine

    Brighton, East Sussex

    Bristol

    Aldershot, Hampshire

    Oxford, Oxfordshire

    Vilnius, Lithuania

    Lewes and Newhaven, East Sussex

    Riga, Latvia

    Szczytno, Poland

    Mragowo, Poland

    Olsztyn, Poland

    Lake District

    Whitby

    Smuggler’s Trod Challenge Walk, UK

    Ely, UK

    Wisbech, UK

    Madrid, Spain

    Seville, Spain

    Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

    Heathrow T3 BA Lounge, UK

    London, UK (just briefly)

    Limoges, France

    Trier, Germany

    Gdansk, Poland

    Grudziądz, Poland

    Ridgeway, UK

    Canterbury, UK

    Luxembourg City and Thionville, Luxembourg and France

    Bremen, Germany

    Aarhus, Denmark

    Coast to Coast Two  [ Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 6+1 ]

    The below trips I’ve bored people with on Facebook over the years. I might go back at some stage and copy the photos over, with added commentary. I’ve gone back five years from the time I wrote this (June 2018). However, writing these up might take some time….

    April 2018 – Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff and Bournemouth (UK)

    February 2018 – Szczecin, Warsaw and Lodz (Poland)

    January 2018 – Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville and Las Vegas (United States)

    January 2018 – Dublin (Ireland)

    November 2017 – Bydgoszcz and Katowice (Poland)

    October 2017 – Oradea (Romania), Wroclaw (Poland) and Bedford (UK)

    September 2017 – Budapest and Visegrad (Hungary)

    August 2017 – Bath and Nottingham (UK)

    June 2017 – Hadrian’s Wall 2017

    May 2017 – Carcassonne and Narbonne (France)

    April 2017 – Southampton and Huntingdon (UK)

    March 2017 – Budapest (Hungary) and Lublin (Poland)

    January 2017 – Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City (US) and Dublin (Ireland)

    November 2016 – Bartoszyce, Gdansk, Sopot and Gydnia (Poland) and Sofia (Bulgaria)

    October 2016 – Porto (Portugal) and Zagreb (Croatia)

    June 2016 – Krakow (Poland)

    May 2016 – Coast to Coast 2016 (Morecambe to Scarborough)

    March 2016 – Geneva (Switzerland)

    February 2016 – Durham (UK)

    December 2015 – Milan (Italy) and Edinburgh (UK)

    October 2015 – Chennai and Bangalore (India) and Atlanta (United States)

    September 2015 – Amsterdam (Netherlands), Dubai (UAE) and Tampa (United States)

    August 2015 – Baltimore and New York (United States)

    July 2015 – Austin and Las Vegas (United States) and Frankfurt (Germany)

    June 2015 – Denver (United States) and Toronto (Canada)

    May 2015 – Prague (Czech Republic), Luxembourg City (Luxembourg) and Dusseldorf (Germany)

    April 2015 – Chicago (United States) and Zurich (Switzerland)

    March 2015 – San Francisco (United States) and Friedrichshafen (Germany)

    February 2015 – Houston and Las Vegas (United States) and Darmstadt (Germany)

    January 2015 – Toulouse (France), San Diego (United States) and Montreal (Canada)

    November 2014 – Belfast (UK) and Fort Lauderdale (United States)

    October 2014 – Seattle and Washington DC (United States)

    September 2014 – Lake District (UK), Singapore (Singapore), Boston (United States) and Beijing (China)

    August 2014 – Luxembourg City (Luxembourg) and Chengdu (China)

    July 2014 – Amsterdam (Netherlands), Bergen and Stavanger (Norway) and San Diego (United States)

    June 2014 – Phoenix, Dallas and Fort Worth (United States)

    May 2014 – Sydney (Australia) and Beijing (China)

    April 2014 – Dubrovnik (Croatia), Sydney (Australia) and Shanghai (China)

    March 2014 – Hong Kong (China), Brussels (Belgium) and Moscow (Russia)

    February 2014 – Los Angeles (United States) and St. Petersburg (Russia)

    January 2014 – New York (United States)

    December 2013 – London (UK)

    November 2013 – Copenhagen (Denmark), Chennai (India) and Berlin (Germany)

    October 2013 – Rome (Italy), Baltimore (United States), Doha (Qatar) and Barcelona (Spain)

    September 2013 – Hyderabad and Mumbai (India) and Kissimmee (United States)

    August 2013 – Bangalore and New Delhi (India)

    July 2013 – Manchester (UK), Mexico City (Mexico) and Canterbury (Kent)