Cambridge and Bletchley Park, UK

We left London on August 1 by rental car and drove first to Cambridge for a couple of days. As soon as we arrived we decided to go punting on the River Cam. This is a wonderful way to begin to see the city because you pass under many interesting bridges and along the backs of most of the best-known of the 31 colleges in Cambridge. Here are a few photos:

The wooden Mathematical Bridge

Calm and not raining - yet!

Beautiful willows all along the river

I think this was part of King's College

Sweeping under the willows

The Bridge of Sighs, modeled on the Venetian bridge of the same name

Cambridge draws both students and visitors from all parts of the world

The following day we walked a lot, visiting several colleges from Magdalene at the north end of the center of town to Peterhouse at the south end. Unfortunately in the summer there are no students about, save foreign students there for summer classes, so it doesn’t feel or look like it would when regular classes are in session.  Trinity College was probably the most impressive college that we visited; it is certainly the largest and best-endowed. Trinity College has produced 32 Nobel Prize winners, 6 Prime Ministers and numerous philosophers, scientists, poets and other famous graduates.  We saw lots of churches and chapels along the way too. This first church had stenciled walls and ceiling - a bit unusual.

The stenciled wooden ceiling

Cambridge was spared to a large extent during WWII, unlike many other cities. So churches, colleges and other buildings often have original or very old features.

This is a rare round church

I think this is part of Magdalene College

Trinity College

I must admit they all blurred together after a while, but if this is Trinity, it is the site of the Great Court Run. Students try to run around the perimeter of the Great Court (400 yards) before the clock strikes 12 (43 seconds). I don't recall it, but apparently this was made famous in the 1981 film "Chariots of Fire".

Another college...

I think this was part of Peterhouse College

A couple and their dog slowly crossing a park called Christ's Piece

One day we had lunch at The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick often met in the 1950s to discuss their theories about DNA over mugs of ale. One part of the pub is called the RAF Bar; its ceiling is covered with the names and squadron numbers of WWII RAF and USAF airmen.

Two cute little kids roaming about town

When we left Cambridge it was a very rainy day, so rather than walk in the rain in Oxford (our next Airbnb destination) we stopped at Bletchley Park, halfway between Cambridge and Oxford. If you’ve seen the film “Imitation Game” you know that it was at Bletchley Park that Alan Turing and scores of others developed the Bombe, the precursor of modern computers that eventually broke the Enigma-coded messages sent by Germans during WWII.  We spent several hours there – a fascinating place and well worth the stop. This is the mansion at Bletchley, with a large pond in front. People stationed at Bletchley skated on the frozen pond in the winter - one of the limited number of diversions available from their mentally grueling work.

 A beutiful glass ceiling in one of the rooms in the mansion

Note from a cryptanalyst working in one of the many "huts" constructed on the property to shelter workers. We had an audio tour which included fascinating interviews with people who had taken part in the top-secret work at Bletchley Park.

Important documents and messages were transported by Dispatch Riders on motorcycles, at all times of the day and night, all year round. This was difficult not just due to the weather, but to the fact that all directional signs had been removed to confuse the enemy if the country were invaded.  This guy recalls that he could read his closely-guarded map about 20 miles outside London by the reflected light of bombed, burning buildings.

Our next 3 days were in the Cotswolds. First, we decided to go to Stratford-upon-Avon to meet up with some dear cruising friends, Anne and Michael, who we met two years ago in Florida.  They have lived on their boat for at least 9 years now and have sailed so far from the UK to British Columbia in Canada. The intent is to complete a circumnavigation. They're back in the UK tending to some family issues right now, so we met them for lunch to catch up. It was such a treat to see them again! 

Our stop in Stratford was short but fun. Although there were no plays of interest to us at that moment at the Royal Shakespeare Theater, we would have liked to take a backstage tour of the building. No such luck – there were matinees and other events and the theater was closed for those types of tours.  But there were lots of other things to see and do there. The streets are full of tourists and the architecture is striking - what you've probably seen in lots of photos and films.

These rowboats were for hire on the Avon River near the Royal Stratford Theater. Each had a name like "Hamlet" or "Romeo"

We saw a couple of boats going through the small, manually-controlled lock, people feeding dozens of swans on the Avon, and kids playing in a fountain that had had soap dumped into it and was overflowing with bubbles.  This fellow was watching the world go by at the boat lock.

 Here is the lock mechanism at work as a boat goes through.

Our AIrbnb studio was a few miles south of Stratford and was lovely! Here is a photo of it. Nice to spend a bit of quiet time in the country after city life.  So far using Airbnb in England has worked out pretty well.

Right next door to our studio near Mickleton in the Cotswolds was this hotel and restaurant, famous for what it calls its "Pudding Club". On Friday evenings people come from far and wide for a light main course dinner followed by a 7-course pudding dessert contest. Essentially, 7 types of cake ("pudding") are served with a thin, warm, vanilla custard that you pour over the cake. Then you vote on which you like best and you get a certificate saying you have survived the pudding club experience. We didn't sign up for the dinner, but tried sharing samples of 3 puddings. We can say we did it but perhaps puddings are an acquired taste...

This fellow's response to our comment that he had a beautiful car was a little smile and "Yes, we're so lucky, aren't we?"

 There was a vintage sports car race nearby and we got to see a lot of impeccably kept vehicles

 This one had a wicker picnic basket buckled on the back. More of these to come in the next post...

London. Hmmm. I Sorta Miss Amsterdam :-(

We've been in England for almost a week. The first 5 days were in London and it was interesting, although not nearly as inviting and fun as I remember it from the several trips I made here in the 1970s while living in nearby Belgium. It's summer in London. It's completely mobbed with tourists - lots of queuing up and shuffling your way around others on the sidewalks, lots of noisy and polluting vehicles on the roads, lots of rain, wind, cool temperatures and grey skies. So just getting around was very different from Amsterdam. With walking being less pleasant much of the time, we used buses and the Tube to get around after nearly killing ourselves walking way, 'waaaaay too many miles the first day or two. Amsterdam, being more compact, allowed us to ramble around town all day without feeling worn out. Not so in London.

While we did some of the typical stuff one is meant to do in London (Westminster Abbey, Portobello Road, Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, etc), it was more fun and more interesting to get off the beaten track. We enjoyed spending time in beautiful London parks, of which there are many. And walking the smaller side streets where there's nothing much happening but the architecture is still stunning. And visiting popular sites at less crowded times of the day. But most importantly, we were totally amazed and impressed by a handful of exhibits at various venues, which I'll describe a bit below.

Our first day in London we stumbled upon the Saatchi Gallery where the work of 10 young British photographers demonstrated how the advances in smartphone cameras have made them a new artistic medium with diverse results. Here is one example - a self portrait using cut-outs.

Unfortunately my favorite parts of this exhibit were interactive and involved movement. The videos I made of them won't load properly into this blog. Rats. But if you want to see them, they're viewable on my Instagram account.

In the gallery shop Jim found this mug. So true!!

The next day we spent many hours at Churchill's War Room. What a brilliant and effective leader he was.

This is the enigma machine that coded German communications

A photo of an Italian worker lighting Churchill's cigar

The famous 1941 portrait by Yousuf Karsh, who snatched away Churchill's cigar, getting this annoyed expression as a result. It's a look we're familiar with today in US politics.

Jim at a phone box. They work!!

The following day we went to Tate Britain, where there was a wonderful exhibit of British photographers' work on the evolution of culture in black communities in Britain.

This is part of a beautiful staircase at Tate Britain.

It's possible to travel from Tate Britain to Tate Modern by boat, which is what we did. Unfortunately we were so exhausted and our heads were so full of art exhibits by the time we got to the Tate Modern that we crashed, wandered around like zombies, and finally packed it in for the day.

The next day we spent a long time at one gorgeous spot - the Design Museum which opened around 2012. Spectacular! Here is an example of items displayed there.

Changes in the Apple logo over time...

This is complicated to explain, but basically in the center of one wall was a smart phone and leading into it like spokes in a wheel were displayed devices as they had evolved through distinct stages of emerging technologies in typing, music, photography, accounting, etc - all finally rolled into the single little device we now all take for granted.

A display of leading examples of many types of design - bikes, jeans, backpacks, phones, etc, etc

The special exhibit at the Design Museum was "California: Designing Freedom".

Ostensibly the first light-weight bike, designed for riding in Marin. Probably my son Jake could confirm if that sounds about right.

The most "evolved" skateboard in a series....

...shown here from oldest to newest

A cardboard open-source surfboard that you can slot together and fill with epoxy resin to make it solid and waterproof.

A bike from the film "Easy Rider"

The iconic 1968 Whole Earth Catalog, a $5 guide to self-reliant living. A reference for cheaper, sustainable design for counter-culture communities. I had a copy and read it for hours on end. I'm sorry I don't still have it!!!

Our last day in London was the best. We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and saw a couple of wonderful exhibits there. But first, here is Jim are outside the V&A with an Italian guy we met who'd just bought a Polaroid camera - I asked him to pose for me.

The V&A had a great exhibit on the development and uses of plywood. I know that sounds a bit odd, but it was terrific - videos on making plywood from different types of wood and its many and varied uses through the decades. Formula One race cars, molded chairs, airplanes, housing materials, luggage, you name it.

But the best thing we saw in London was a V&A exhibit on Pink Floyd's 5-decade career. It was epic.

This hugely popular exhibit has been mobbed by fans of all ages, ethnicities, nationalities and walks of life.  It was hard to capture in photos because the impact was obviously mostly musical tracks, interviews with important personages as the group advanced through decades of evolving work, and so on. Here is a photo of David Gilmore, Roger Waters and Nick Mason (Rick Wright had died of cancer at this point). The second photo is of some of the lyrics from Dark Side of the Moon.  The exhibit made such an impression on Jim (normally not a big fan of music much beyond jazz and Motown) that he bought a t-shirt. Holy crap. 

  That's it for London - We're now in Cambridge, so more on a new post soon.