Winter's Here

We are now in winter mode. As soon as it gets dark our homemade window insulation panels go up. They don't stop the condensation but it is reduced and we think that the temperature inside the Airstream is improved by a degree or two. Every little helps when we are experiencing the earliest widespread freeze for seventeen years. We also make sure that the internal water tank is full before we settle in for the evening. The external one often freezes overnight and you could end up witthout any water for your morning cup of tea. A bad start by anyone's standards.

Yesterday evening we braved the zero temperature and some mist and made the mile-long walk in the pitch dark to our very pleasant local pub where we enjoyed a few pints of Piddle In The Glass. I'm not trying to insult the brewer, or the pub, it's the name of one of the ales from the local brewery in the village of Wyre Piddle. Naturally, each of their brews is named with a pun on the word 'piddle'. Well you would wouldn't you? And, because when you stand at the bar ordering a drink whose name is almost a complete sentence you tend to abbreviate it to one word, Pete found himself ordering "A pint and a half of Piddle please." Nobody batted an eyelid, except for us two gigglers. The beer itself was lovely, quite fruity and golden, well balanced and entirely quaffable.

Today we awoke to a light dusting of the white stuff so perhaps another of their ales would be appropriate, Piddle In The Snow.

T

Snowflakes and Warm Cakes

When the snow finally melted in Cherry Hinton we left Cambridge and headed for Norfolk. First stop Sandringham, on the estate of the Queen’s country retreat no less.

En route we stopped at one of the many mobile roadside 'caffs' for a fried egg buttie. I have never seen so many trailers procuring fried food on one ‘A’ road. Usually you miss one and you’ve blown it till the next county. We are often peckish on the journey and we always seem to be on the road at lunchtime. Those caravanners who turn up at the site at one minute past the permissible noon arrival time are as sensible as they are predictable. But they are missing out on a great British tradition; eating in your car in a lay-by.
Note to self though, next time I’m offered broken eggs, just say “No”. It’s like eating a semi dried-out bath sponge. They break them while they’re frying! Eggs are meant to be runny, and dripping yolk is surely one of the attractions of an egg sarnie.
Anyway, lesson learnt. We usually have a nice little chat with these spatula-wielding heroes of the road. They like the look of the Airstream and often identify with our enjoyment of the nomadic life. This one was no exception. Our chef was a young woman who had quit the rat race for a simpler life, being her own boss and providing food for the peckish traveller.

The site at Sandringham had just opened its gates that morning, after the winter break. There were a couple of other vans when we arrived, but since it can accommodate over two hundred we could choose our ideal pitch. The warden guided us to a little copse and we set ourselves up between the trees as snow began to fall.
Within minutes snowflakes the size of fifty pence coins were floating down and gently covering the ground and clinging to the trees. Ever looked straight up at the sky while snow is falling? It's a kind of slow motion tumbling effect and seems to come from infinity.

Once inside, all set up and watching the darkening sky cast a bluish light over the snow it became obvious that what was needed was some freshly baked madeleines and a pot of tea. You know how it is? The wintry weather had recently brought out the baker in Pete, which was then passed on to me. I hadn't baked since compulsory cookery classes at school. Now I've made chocolate chip cup cakes and madeleines in the space of a week. I think we should put these newfound compulsions on hold until our friend Helen visits again though. These confections are so heavenly while still warm. You try having just one, or two. We need help with the eating. Well we don't but we ought to.

That night was one of those disturbed sleeps peculiar to trailers and vans. It had nothing to do with eating too much cake, actually. It sounded like it was raining with added intermittent sounds of objects thudding on the roof. Reluctant to wake fully and make sense of it all I felt very disoriented. I expected to find dents in the trailer roof the next day. Obviously it was lumps of snow losing their grip and plopping on top of us from the branches above. It is so obvious when you are awake.


A couple of days later Pete entered a postcode into the sat nav and took me on a mystery journey. We arrived at Thetford Forest park and I started to guess what he had planned. For some time now he has been suggesting that I could put aside my fear of heights and thoroughly enjoy a session at Go Ape. He was absolutely right!
Go Ape is a series of obstacles constructed from wood and rope and arranged around trees about thirty feet above ground. You are instructed in the safe use of your harness so that from the moment you leave the ground until you complete the course you are always attached safely. You start on a low level platform, practise using a zip slide and before you know it you are shimmying across wires, ropes and wobbly swinging contraptions, or hurtling through the trees till you bash into a giant rope net.
Not only did I enjoy myself too much to be scared, but I was picked by our instructor to go first. A couple of hours of challenging fun felt more like thirty minutes and the whole thing finished with the longest zip slide ever, Weeeee!!!
Blooming marvellous. Naturally, we ached everywhere for the next two days.

T

Spying on Cambridge

We’ve recently spent some time in Cambridge. We originally intended to stay for ten days or so – just enough time to check out the town, meet up with some old friends and watch the Superbowl. The ten days were turned by bad weather and a bad cold into three weeks.

We were at the Cherry Hinton Caravan Club site – a quirky little spot carved out of an old chalk quarry, with small areas of half-a-dozen pitches or so, set on different levels and joined together by short but steep ramps. The ramps are what kept us there so long. Having spent a year in the trailer and having only seen a paltry sprinkling of snow in all that time, the Snow Fairy decided to visit the UK in general, and Cambridgeshire in particular, big-time. Three inches of snow followed by several days and nights of thaw-freeze-thaw-freeze meant that even with the Landover, we were never going to make it up that steep ramp towing the trailer. And just when we thought it was over, it snowed again. So we stayed longer.

The snow meant that the local birdlife was struggling to eat, so we picked up a bird feeder. I never realized what fun can be had from watching birds! It all started when (before the snow) we had a green woodpecker drinking from a puddle right in front of the trailer. Never seen one up close. Brilliant. Since we began watching, we’ve seen blue tits, coal tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, chaffinches, greenfinches, goldcrest and treecreepers. Get one! I’ve even seen (though not, I hasten to add, at the feeder) three barn owls!

The trailer, by the way, despite it getting down to –7 at night (sorry – I don’t know what that is in old money) was toasty warm, though we did have to run the heating on gas – the 2kW electric heater just couldn’t keep the internal temperature high enough for comfort. And an Airstream looks just as good on a grey, snowy day as it does in the sun.



Cambridge is, of course, dripping with old stuff.
















There’s more twiddly architecture than you can shake a punting pole at.
There are the colleges (this is the gatehouse and chapel of King’s).



There is the site of the oldest bookshop in England (not the original building, but they’ve been selling books here since 1581).



There are at least half-a-dozen bridges and loads of churches...



The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of only four round churches in England.
Museums abound, and here is Tracey standing in for one of them while it took a lunch break.


Cambridge is also a Cycling Demonstration Town. This doesn’t mean, sadly, that there are helpful chaps wandering around showing people how not to fall off a bike. It means that the local planners have spent a lot of money and even more time devising every possible way of interfacing cars, bikes and pedestrians. There are cycle paths four and a half feet long. There are cycle paths going the wrong way around roundabouts. There are cycle paths on pavements EVERYWHERE. My personal favourite was at a pelican crossing where the cycle path (which was happily running along by the side of the road) is diverted up onto the pavement and through the spot where pedestrians would be waiting to cross. To improve things more, the design includes barriers to prevent pedestrians from jumping out of the way of the bikes. What could possibly go wrong? To be honest it was good to see the effort being made to integrate bikes into the transport system, though it was terrifying to see so many cyclists going around at night, wearing black and not having any lights. It reminded me that Darwin’s (an old Cambridge scholar) 200th birthday was celebrated while we were there – natural selection weeding out the dumbest cyclists.

As soon as the snow cleared, we were off. It wasn’t a long journey North to Sandringham. The moment we arrived, however, it started snowing again and we had to set up camp in a blizzard…



P