Monthly Archive

Not much to say here. There was a Bank Holiday weekend, and the weather turned absolutely wonderful. We discovered that our garden is overgrown, our gardening tools are well-shaped to causing blisters, and our mower spews black smoke instead of revolving. On the plus side, we grilled out (Sainsburys has wonderful food) and visited the Botanical Gardens. Cambridge was chosen over Kew, partly because it was cheaper, partly because I’m more familiar with Cambridge, but mostly because it was closer and we left the decision til too late. (As an aside: parking in Cambridge is always difficult. Horrendous even. We had to park half a mile away).

While I’m not a botanist, and can hardly judge the quality of the plants, parts of the trip were breathtaking. Many of the plants in the newly refurbished Glasshouses were astonishing, verging on alien. The jade vines were one of my favourites. (Apparently, I am not alone in this feeling, since the Garden has a whole page of information on them). Many of the other parts of the park also have nice signposts, descibing the surrounding plants. I found these informative and interesting, though Becky enjoyed them less than I did. And finally, the most beautiful area of the Gardens is probably the central lake, surrounded by the limestone Rock Gardens, The Bog Garden and the Woodland Garden. This was well-staffed by mating ducks, who jealously guarded their territory and chased the top females (it was all quite cute). Many pictures were taken, and all are available on a set on flickr.

Addendum: Upon poking around the website for the gardens, I realized how much I wish that I’d seen it before visiting. They have many interesting exhibits, and the site has very interesting background information, which wouldn’t be available in the park. For example, the page on their famous trees is great, and I wish that I’d known to be on the lookout (for example, the Dawn Redwood or the Cambridge Oak).

This post is very late in the coming, sorry! But I just wanted to write a quick diddy about the trip to Dover we took a few weeks back. We bypassed the town (as it lacks anything of real interest) and drove straight to the White Cliffs where we were immediately offered gorgeous views.

We spent A LOT of time walking along the cliffs, and we made it all the way to South Foreland Lighthouse, where we had to turn around and walk back the way we came. I’m not sure how many miles we covered that day, but my feet were sure happy when we made it back to the car.

Unfortunately we did so much walking that we ran out of time to see Dover Castle - which is supposed to be quite impressive. On the grounds it has the remains of a Saxon church and Roman Lighthouse. Not to mention underground there’s a labyrinth of secret wartime tunnels. My family is coming over for a visit the end of this month, so I have a feeling we’ll be planning a day trip back to Dover.

Now I just have to kick David to write a post about the lovely time we had at the Camrbidge Botanical Gardens yesterday.