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  • Peterborough – Travelodge

    My last trip of 2018 was to Peterborough, primarily because there was a Travelodge offer of three nights for a total of less than £60. Given that I had wanted to see Peterborough Cathedral and Peterborough Museum, and also since I had been meaning to visit the city for some time, this seemed a suitable bargain.

    The hotel, known as Peterborough Central, is located around a five-minute walk from the city centre. It’s not a particularly large hotel and it seems to be in an area of Peterborough which hasn’t fared particularly well over the last couple of years, it’s opposite a former Liquid nightclub which is boarded up and also opposite a Jimmy’s restaurant which has suffered the same fate.

    The staff at reception seemed rather jovial and offered a really friendly welcome, so all seemed well there. The room was relatively large, although slightly spartan, and it felt a little bit grubby. I couldn’t work out why the hot water didn’t smell entirely right, I can only assume their hot water tank is perhaps in need of some, well, fixing. But, given the room price and the central location, it would feel wrong complaining too much about the situation.

    I’m not sure that much good can come from these signs, as do the cleaning staff really just ignore the rooms where guests don’t put these on the door?

    The staff were generous when I asked for milk and they seemed to take every opportunity that they could to engage. This Travelodge is one which doesn’t have its own restaurant, as there are sufficient local dining options to mean one isn’t needed, which also means that they don’t do the all you can eat breakfast. Not that that’s a great loss to me since I wouldn’t have had it anyway, but it may have been an option some guests would have preferred.

    I didn’t encounter any noise issues during my stay, although the rooms on one side of the hotel do overlook the road. Given the prices that were being charged for this room, which seemed rather low for the week before Christmas, I thought it represented decent value for money. Perhaps Peterborough isn’t seen by the general public as a go-to destination for mid-December…

  • Peterborough – Railway Station and LNER

    It’s not very high on the list of things to worry about in the UK, but I was just thinking what a poorly operated railway station Peterborough is in numerous ways. Although I don’t need to charge any devices, I’m not sure shoving power points up the wall and forcing customers to pay to use the charger is particularly good customer service.

    I was getting ready to write an e-mail of complaint to Greater Anglia but I’ve remembered that this isn’t one of their stations, it’s LNER. So not much point bothering to write to them. But it makes me wonder whether Greater Anglia should be given the railway station to manage, since they’ve been steadily improving facilities in tens of other stations in other parts of East Anglia. Including lots of new waiting rooms with power points included, and not stuck half way up the wall.

  • Peterborough – Great Northern Hotel

    The Great Northern hotel, located opposite the railway station, was constructed shortly after the station was finished in 1850 and was owned by the rail company from which it takes its name. It’s an impressive building and was one of five hotels which the company owned.

    There is apparently a bar inside the hotel called Sleepers (which CAMRA note relates to the station and not to the sleeping clientele), but I was unsure of the opening hours and assumed that it was closed at lunchtime. I did look to try and work out what was going on, but the only signage that I could see was for the coffee shop Circa 1852 which did seem to be open, but I’ve had enough of coffee shops for today….

    I liked the history that was posted by the entrance to the hotel, noting that the Prussian Crown Prince stayed there in 1863. It was run by British Transport Hotels until it was sold off in 1982 and has since been heavily modernised. I also read that the comedian Ernie Wise was married at the hotel, and I hadn’t previously realised that he was a resident of the city.

    And an advert published in the press in July 1852 when the hotel opened……

  • Peterborough – Lightbox Cafe

    Located nearby to Bewiched coffee shop, and Greggs, is this licensed bar and coffee shop.

    The friendly staff member asked if I would like the sausage roll cold or heated up, so I went for the heated up option. The problem with that is that they heated it up so that outside was hot and the inside was cold, which wasn’t an ideal combination of temperatures. The quality was average and could have been much better, but the taste wasn’t unpleasant. The coffee was decent and I appreciated the shortbread which went with it.

    The coffee shop was surprisingly quiet for a lunch-time this near to Christmas, especially given how busy the city itself was. However, there were a few customers who came in to order food and they all seemed content with what was served. The atmosphere was though warm and welcoming, with comfortable seating.

  • Peterborough – It’s Christmas

    Here’s one of my token efforts to acknowledge Christmas…. A rather blue tree in front of Peterborough Cathedral…..

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (1762 Sundial)

    And another in my series of posts about Peterborough Cathedral, this is the sundial on the western frontage of the building. It is dated 1762 and is painted onto the stonework, with a further three dates of 1914, 1968 and 2009 below it, which is when it was restored. This sundial can only be used to tell the time in the afternoon and early evening, although there are other sundials on other sides of the building.

    When it was repainted in 2009 it had become almost impossible to see because of pollution having faded it away, so I can only imagine that it was effectively impossible to notice during the entire nineteenth century. Unless that is there was some repainting, but they never noted on the wall the date of the restoration. The monks in the cathedral had been using sundials before the reformation, so perhaps this is even older than it appears.

  • Peterborough – Peterborough Cathedral (Boulder)

    I’m not sure many people will find this particularly interesting, although I did. It’s a huge lump of stone that was taken out of the north west pier of the cathedral tower when it was reconstructed in the 1880s. The central tower was falling down at that time and since great lumps of stone like this were thirty feet up in the pillar, that’s perhaps not entirely a surprise. Nearly of the stone frontage was put back, but they didn’t replace the inner core. Instead, this lump of stone is now located outside of the cathedral in the graveyard.

  • Peterborough – Bewiched

    On my voyage of discovery I thought that I’d visit a few of the coffee shops in Peterborough. This was especially challenging in this case, as look at the little piece of utopia to the right of this coffee shop. I did very well to resist accidentally going to Greggs……

    Not particularly busy, although the service was engaging and the team members seemed to know most of the customers who did come in. It was all quite homely and warm, with a Christmas tree adding a festive edge to the proceedings.

    The coffee was decent, with a pleasant and rich flavour, and there was an attempt at some coffee art. There didn’t seem to be any exciting cakes or sausage rolls at the counter though, so I managed to resist the temptation there. I was still slightly in shock that I wasn’t in Greggs to be honest though.

    The prices were reasonable and I was given a loyalty card, although I’m not sure that I’ll ever hit the twelve required drinks to get my free coffee. Twelve does seem rather high and not that I’m thinking about Greggs, but they only need you to get to six….

  • 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.