Yes, yes, I’m fully aware that it’s been over 8 months since the few days away. As I mentioned, things have not been great, and I just haven’t had the motivation to put the final touches of this together. As it seems a bit of a waste to type it, take photos and not actually publish anything, I’m doing it now. You’ll just have to imagine this was back in April. Or something. It’s probably not up to my usual quality of writing (so even more crap than usual then? – Ed). Shut up. anyhoo, “enjoy”
The second of our two full days began in pretty much the same way Day 1 started, with me wandering around King’s Lynn for a bit. I had intentions of going back and visiting that record shop I mentioned, but I discovered that King’s Lynn actually had a port, and a few fishing boats too. Turns out it’s a nice little walk along the riverside. At some point, someone in a car went past blasting “21st Century” by Weekend Players. I haven’t heard that song for years, and now it’s going to be my lasting memory of this song. Probably.
Sadly, the afore-mentioned record shop totally slipped my mind, and I never went back. A shame, as I’m sure I’d have got some good stuff in there. I did, of course, have a look around the charity shops again. I truly can’t believe I took a photo of this and didn’t buy it… a board game based on the 1980s quiz show, ‘Connections’ hosted by Sue Robbie.
I headed back to the hotel, and met up with Chris again. After nipping out and getting some breakfast, I popped today’s location into the “satnav”, a.k.a. Google Maps on my phone. We jumped into the car, drove off and watched in horror as the damn “Satnav” took us through pretty much every council estate that King’s Lynn would have to offer. Eventually, we found our way back onto the main roads, and off we went to our first destination
Ely would be our first stop of the day. An interesting fact about Ely is that it’s England’s smallest city, and yep, it feels much more like a small market town than a city.
Of course, there’s a cathedral so we went in. Very pretty it is too.
Charity shop-wise, they’re pretty much all on the one long street down the side of the cathedral. It goes without saying that I picked a few CDs up.
Considering this was early April, the weather was glorious. I was the only person walking around in a t-shirt. I think all of the locals could tell I was from “up north”.
We left Ely and headed off to the 2nd stop of the day… Cambridge. This was probably going to be the biggest city on our stop and oh boy, did we have fun with the one-way system. Sadly, by the time I published this, the Google Maps app has purged the history from this day so I can’t provide a screenshot as I originally intended!
Our first stop was to a shopping complex. At the time of typing, I can’t remember the name of it, but it appeared to be the “low end” shopping precinct. An abandoned shopping centre lay at the heart of this development, and a long L-shaped road housed the rest of the low-end shops. Normally, I’d be excited at the thought of two entire rows on charity shops in a day, but these were, to say the least, terrible. No other way to put it. We were both left with a slight sense of shock. That can’t be all there was to Cambridge surely?
We jumped back in the car, and after getting lost around the one-way system, we found a car park disguised as an office block. I think the signposts might need to be improved for that one. Mind you, it had just been built, and we saw a bit of Cambridge we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, so that was nice. I don’t think Chris saw it like that.
It reminded me very much of York, but much bigger. There were even parts of it I’d only seen in photos, and I never thought I’d get to see in the flesh.
Yup, Richardson Candles! Back in the day these would have ran several fluorescent tubes, but I assume these will have been retrofitted to run LED by now.
I did like Cambridge. It’s a pretty place, plenty to see.
It’s definitely one of those places where you need more than a couple of hours there. Chris bought some weird sweets while we were there. The name escapes me, seeing as it’s been a few months now, but I think they were called ‘School Chalks’ or something? A chalky substance on the outside, and a bit of liquorice in the middle. Interesting. Apparently, there are only certain places you can get them. They were like those torpedo sweets you can get everywhere, but the outer was nicer, and it didn’t appear to be that awful synthetic licorice that’s everywhere.
Oh yes. One other thing about Cambridge, every railing has a poster tied to it. Whether it’s a work of art, or whether it’s advertising something, they’are absolutely everywhere. Maybe it’s a student thing, but not a single one was of any relevance to me. I didn’t see a single record fair mentioned
One thing that was of absolute relevance to me, was the sight of a Popeyes.
My absolute favourite fast food place. As we had already planned to have our final Indian on the night, we hgave it a miss, but it was nice to see another one in the wild, they’re extremely rare here in the UK.
Our all-too-short itme in Cambridge ws over, and we headed back along the 50-mile journey back to King’s Lynn. A quick nip into the hotel for a change of clothes, ard we were back out. One last beer-me-do in the Nip + Growler ALe House… well, actually, it was two, because our exit was blocked by a duck.
It was time for one last curry. Off we went back to Rajasthan, this time I got a Jalfrezi, and just like the previous night, it ws excellent.
I was really going to miss this place.
There was a day four, the journey home, but it never got written. It was the journey hope, which involved a trip to Boston (that was great, except for the traffic), S;eaford (it was shut), and the Lidl in Norton)
