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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).

Luke’s father came down from Manchester and being my first Easter away from family ever, I decided to cook a nice dinner for the house. Fortunately, my own father gave some wonderful advice on recipes and helped me along (First piece of advice: Leg of Lamb is great. Second piece of advice: English shoppers are determined and relentless. Have a second choice). At his suggestion, I tried a Pork Tenderloin with Apples and Potatoes (with beans and carrots as sides). The meal turned out wonderfully, and the new potatoes were marvelous.

Notes on the recipe: the pork seemed slightly overdone, maybe one should try slightly less than the 50-55 minutes in the oven. The potatoes were absolutely delicious and were perfectly cooked (and disappeared immediately). Lastly, although Luke was very ill and didn’t eat much (which is why he doesn’t show up in the photos), the recipe seemed more on the 6 people side. This may change on the amount of sides, but we certainly have loads of delicious leftovers. A all-around success, I would definitely try this recipe again.

A note for the photo-inclined (probably only Robert): unfortunately I can’t claim ownership of the good shots here. The blown out flashed shots were both mine (the shadows in the knife shot are quite bothering), while the perfect food shots were taken by Becky.

Not much to report, but we took a quick trip to Lincoln. Parts were fantastic, parts were difficult. The nice part was Lincoln itself. The difficult part was everything else. It rained very heavily most of the day, we couldn’t figure out the parking, and it was freezing cold (about 0C). Being Wisconsinites, the cold shouldn’t have presented much of an issue, but we dressed for English rain, leaving us shivering most of the day.

The highlight was the medieval Bishop’s Palace. Lincoln used to be a very rich and powerful diocese (reaching from the Thames to the Humber), and the church built a magnificent palace (mostly constructed by Bishop Robert de Chesney and Bishop St Hugh from 1155 - 1200). Unfortunately, war and crown intervened and ruined much of the structure. Henry VIII’s seizure of church lands removed the supply of money to pay for the site. Later, the Royalists in the English Civil War sacked the building, mainly by violently stripping the lead roof and plumbing fittings, which left the weather to do the rest. The site has since been picked up the English Heritage Foundation (since the church doesn’t want to pay for upkeep) who have done a magnificent job turning it into a topnotch tourist attraction. The admission includes an excellent audio tour of the site, and is well worth following. While marvelous, the only shortcoming was the lack of access to the the Victorian Bishop’s Chapel (built over the medieval service halls) because it is still in use by the current bishop.

A View of the Lower East Hall, with the well at the end.

A view of the ruined palace from Bishop Alnwick’s Tower and The Central Column in the Chapter House.

The rest of the day was screwy because of our adventure timing events. Being Sunday, the Cathedral was busy with service, but we snuck in during an intermission. Of note were the Lincoln Imp and the Chapter House (which was used as a double for Westminster Abbey’s Chapter House). It was beautiful, yet incredibly dark (so the photos came out slightly blurry from the handheld long exposure). To warm up, we had lunch and beers at two local pubs (The Strugglers Inn was the CAMRA recommended one*), but missed entrance to the Castle. To make us more upset, not only is the Castle an amazing building with a long and morbid history, but also houses one of the only four copies of the Magna Carta (owned by the Cathedral since 4 days after the signing in 1215).

* Note to selves: Pubs serve Sunday lunch generally until 2-2:30. Arrive early (since the pub had the most amazing sounding menu, that they refused to serve us).

I have become convinced that England is a beautiful country. Much better than Wisconsin. Every time that I drive somewhere, the rolling countryside looks marvelous, with its real green fields and historic non-striaght fences and walls. I wish that I could capture the look of the area better, but its hard. Recently, I managed to travel through the Lake District and County Durham, though the overcast skies prevented any nice photography (and the fog … there are massive amounts of fog, sometimes through the whole day blocking out all viewing of the sun).

Otherwise, I bumped into a fantastic article in Top Gear Magazine, that almost makes it onto the web version. Around the World in 80 Drives, theoretically 80 of the most beautiful/interesting roads to drive down. The web article is much more limited (cutting out some fo the descriptions and road names) but has some excellent photos.

We visited St Albans last week for a quick afternoon. My guess, is that its probably the nicest place in Hertfordshire, though we haven’t poked around enough. Regardless, St Albans at least has the most history of any location in Hertfordshire. Originally, it was called Verulamium and was the third largest city in Roman England. Later, around 250AD, a Roman citizen named Alban sheltered a refugee Christian priest, Saint Amphibalus and was executed for doing so. Supposedly, a shrine was built at the point of execution and Alban becamse St. Alban, England’s first martyr.

The local cathedral, built around the shrine, was only made a cathedral in 1877, prior to that it was one fo the largest abbeys in England (with much of the original building starting in Norman times, around 1100). However, the Dissolution of the Monastaries (blah, blah, blah, Henry VIII) act destroyed almost all of the abbey, and left only the church and a gatehouse. The church was purchased by the township, and became the parish church was upgraded to a cathedral in Victorian times.

Unfortunately, while we saw the cathedral, we missed the Roman History museum (called the Verulamium) and anything else of significance. The Good Beer Guide lists 8 marvelous pubs to visit, and we managed to miss all of them, though that will certainly change sooner or later. And finally, a couple of photos were taken:

St Albans Cathedral from the front.

The Nave; The Ceiling of the Tower

In a slightly spiteful note, I was driving down the A1 earlier this week, and I accidently cut off a rather large lorry. I felt bad, until I saw the sign on the side saying “Cambridge University Polo Team”. Heh, I cut off the Cambridge Polo Team.

Running behind, this is a week old, but we had a lovely afternoon last Sunday visiting Ely Cathedral. It’s really stunning. Driving up from Cambridge, the Cathedral can be seen rising above the fens 5 miles away (as seen on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Division Bell).

Most of the interesting history is available on wikipedia, but to highlight a couple of intersting points:
- The Lady Chapel was a 14th century addition and is the largest chapel attached to any British Cathedral, and is huge, bright and marvelous.

- Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monastaries combined with the zealous Bishop Thomas Goodrich led to a reasonable amount of damage to the interior of the Cathedral. Many of the faces on the historic sculptures were bashed/scratched off. Also all traces of the original shrine to Ethelreda (the 7th century founder of the site) were lost. (Note: I can’t find any online clarification that Bishop Goodrich was responsible for this, though I remember this from the information onsite, but take with a grain of salt)

- There is a bunch of wonderful stained glass in the cathedral. I particularly liked the RAF window, commemorating those who protected the skies above Ely during World War II.

One of many wonderful Gargoyles.

Heh. Keep off the Grass. Also, the Cathedral from the rear, Lady Chapel is on the right.

Finally, many of the other users of flickr have better pictures of the Cathedral. I particularly liked LawrenceOP’s photos. In particular, he has a wonderful collection of the stained glass photos, including an example of the RAF window.

We are a Pole, a Brit and an American all recently moved to Hertfordshire (from America). This blog is an attempt to document our activities in England, mostly related to the sense of wonder that being in England conjures. Some of this might be touristy or obvious, so in return, I hope any readers will suggest better activities or sights that we may have missed.