Tuesday 23 September 2014

Micro travels day 2

Micro travels day 2

Tuesday


Another day, another micro journey and once again another list, this list


having been to Cambridge yesterday I obviously had to change the fifth choice on the dice, that done I once again rolled the dice and this time it came up 6, so it was off to Bury St Edmunds in the morning for me, 
I arrived in Bury just before midday and set off into the town centre, the Abbey Gardens were the first place I went to and spent quite a while wandering around the ruins, an interesting thing I didn`t know was that it was in the now ruined abbey where the Barons of the land swore an oath in 1214 to make King John sign Magna Carta, the basis of democracy in England,


with the Abbey Gardens explored I made my way into the town centre, during my wanderings I came across possibly one of the best discoveries, The Nutshell, the smallest pub in Britain, a mere 15ft by 7ft and just about enough room for ten or so people, so I decided to call in for quick pint because it would rude not to,
after I had my pint, I spent the next few hours wandering around seeing what else Bury had to offer until sadly it was time to make my back to the station and once again make my way home ready for the next days journey




Monday 22 September 2014

Micro travels day 1

Micro travels

A couple of weeks ago a picked up a book called micro adventures by Alistair Humphreys, its a book that I would highly recommend to anyone, the basis of the book is that adventure is a state of mind and that it doesn`t take a huge amount of time, money or effort to go on one, with this in mind and not having much money I decided to go a few one day adventures to different places around the local area, this will be the first in a series of short blogs about these travels, to make this a true adventure I chose to randomise where I was going each day, to do this I chose six places with train stations and then rolled a dice to see where I would be going.

Monday

  

The Sunday night before I set off on my first journey I made a list of six places I haven`t been before the six choices were Woodbridge, Sudbury, Norwich, Lowestoft, Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds, if I`m honest I was secretly hoping for Woodbridge or Sudbury but that wasn`t my choice as I was leaving it in the hands of fate and fate would have to choose the furthest destination, namely Cambridge,


as I was in no great hurry I looked at the departing times from my local station and decided to catch the 9.50 train, which would get me to Cambridge around 12.15, however due to delays I didn`t actually get there until nearer 12.45, as I said though I wasn`t hurrying anywhere and the only time factor was the departure time of the train back, knowing I had about four hours before my train was due to depart I set off into the city to try and see as much as I could.
Originally being from the other major university city in the UK, I was surprised at how much the architecture of Cambridge reminded me of that place, the other thing that reminded me of Oxford was the amount of bicycles and university shops there were and how it seemed impossible to turn a corner without seeing one of these shops somewhere along that street, my wanderings finally inevitably brought me Kings College where a very famous picture, perhaps the most famous picture of Cambridge is taken and I thought as I was there, I might as well try and replicate it, however they wanted to charge me to enter so that put pay to that, until I wandered down another street and crossed the river Cam, where I got the idea to try and walk back up the other side, that was easy and Kings College soon came back into view with its famous church , however I couldn`t get as close as I liked as the Uni had cut off access to the side of the river I was on and wanted to charge entry, they don`t go to uni for nothing these guys! below is the best I could do,


some of you might be thinking there`s something missing in this picture and you`d be right, the river Cam, its actually in the middle of the picture and from this angle looks like it concealed in a little   ha-ha, with that done I walked a little further to look for a way back across the Cam and another picture opportunity arose 

with time running out I made my way back to the station to catch the train back home fired up and ready for the next days adventure.