Wimpole Hall Farm

It's lambing time! As we're here in England in the spring, checking out the new baby lambs seemed like a must. Wimpole Hall, about eight miles outside of Cambridge, has a special "Lambing Time" event this time of year. I pictured baby lambs frolicking out in the fields, like in the picture on the left. Most of them however, are just recently born. They're kept in a nice, heated barn while they're getting their first meals, first naps and taking their first wobbly steps.

The farm, being more of a tourist attraction than actual farm, is picture-perfect neat and clean. Besides the sheep, they had geese, ducks, pigs, bunnies, ponies, and horses.

We love seeing the random red telephone booth out in the middle of the countryside. This is the view from our tractor pull ride from the farm to the main hall.

Part of admission also includes a tour of the home and walled garden. There's also a gothic folly you can visit. We didn't reserve our car long enough to do all that, so we'll have to come back another day.

We were really impressed with the countryside around Wimpole Hall the short amount of time we were there. We've added it to our close-to-home places to walk list. I'm sure we'll be back again.

Saffron Walden

I'm beginning to feel just a wee bit limited by my reluctance of learning to drive here. I have a number of gardens I'd like to visit that are only open during the week. I checked out public transportation, but they all seem to be places that involve train transfers, waiting for buses and long walks, turning a one and a half hour drive into a six-plus hour expedition. I might have to break down and learn, although I'm going to wait until Mike is available to come with me. The problem with just getting behind the wheel and going for it is that we live in the central part of the city. I'm not excited about starting out my driving in city traffic, narrow roads, turning left against heavy traffic and entering busy, two-lane round-abouts. My plan is to have Mike do that part and start out in the country until I get more comfortable. So anyway, limiting myself to places I could get to and back by the time the girls got home from school by public transportation, I decided to visit Saffron Walden last week. 

Saffron Walden was a medieval market town, and it has preserved many of those buildings and homes. It makes it a cute place to walk around, shop, eat and take pictures. Which is exactly what I did. 

In Saffron Walden is the Bridge End Garden, which is free and open to the public. It's a pretty place, even a little off-season like the day I went. I wasn't able to visit its famous Victorian hedge maze, as they had a sign up saying it was closed.  

Just a little outing to tide me over until I widen my horizons by learning to drive.

Winter Fashion Cambridge

Now that the first day of spring is officially here, it's time to admit defeat. It looks like I'm never going to finish getting all the fashion pictures I wanted for this post. But as I did collect some, I'll share what I've observed about Cambridge winter fashion.

Coming from a year-round warm climate, I was amazed to see that the most common fashion for women in the winter is skirts and tights or nylons. Brrr! I must admit that I didn't quite adapt to the climate here enough to imitate that fashion (with the exception of going to church). This look is almost always worn with tall boots. 

 Black tights with tall black boots is a common look.

Black tights or leggings are also worn with brown boots.

 Shorts with black tights seems to be a year-round look here.

 I rarely see anything but neutrals for coats.

Scarves for both men and women are an absolute must.

Patterned tights, opaque tights with a pattern or suspender look on the top part of the leg, and nylons with socks or tights that give the appearance of socks worn over nylons were all part of the winter skirt look.

Patterned leggings have been quite popular. I wanted a picture of plaid leggings, because that is the pattern I see the most, except when I have my camera ready.

Leather pants, leather-looking pants and coated pants (is that what they're called, where they have a waxy kind of finish?) are often seen downtown.

I wouldn't exactly call these hairstyles common, but they're things I've noticed: hair dyed unnatural colors; big, messy buns (these are conservative - they get much bigger); and crazily enough, messy, maybe teased hair pulled back with a scrunchy. Did you ever think scrunchies would come back in fashion? I'm not up enough on fashion to know if this is a world-wide trend, or if it's inspired by Cressida, Prince Harry's girlfriend, who's often photographed with this look.

So that's my account of style here in England this winter. Is it similar to the US?

Nice Weekend

The weather has been nothing but sunny and unseasonably warm around here this past week. It was a perfect spring weekend, so here's what we did:
1. Camille went with her church group to tour the American Air Force Base. She had a great time checking out the equipment, seeing a military working dog demonstration and eating American snacks.
2. Anya came with us to the Cambridge's Science Festival. She's a curious girl who generally enjoys those kind of exhibits and demonstrations. We also got lunch. Anya's choice? McDonald's, of course.
3. Mike and I love walking to Grantchester. The walk is beautiful and the weather was perfect. We of course had to go to The Orchard for scones and lounging in the sun once we got there.

I hope your weekend was filled with loveliness too!

Feels Like Spring

Last Sunday it was in the high 60s, which might have felt a little bit chilly to me in San Diego, but here felt more summery than summer. It seemed like the whole city was out enjoying the weather - parading through the parks and along the Cam, rowing down the river and lounging in the sun.

I'm still planning on finding somewhere where I can "wander lonely as a cloud" and all that, but in the meantime, there's enough daffodils in Cambridge to feel very spring-like.

I'm just soaking in spring while I can.

Okay, I really can't resist quoting at least one line: "...And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils."

And then to top off our week of spring, the ice cream stand has opened for the season! There's a little treat stand that sells soft-serve my girls like, dangerously placed within sight of Anya's school. Boy were we sad to see that they close for the winter, but now it makes their opening that much more of an event. Welcome spring! It may be a week early, but we're ready!

A Walk in Shakespeare Country

We had the kind of week or two around here that warranted not just getting out of the house last weekend, but getting far, far away. As we just had the day on Saturday, we drove about two hours away to Lapworth to do a walk known as the Lapworth Circuit.

This fellow was out to greet us at the start of the walk. By starting early-ish (10 am?), we pretty much had the circuit to ourselves.

Leaving the Packwood House parking lot, we passed beautiful countryside walking along the road to the canal.

 

Soon we joined the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. We loved these series of narrow locks.

 

I'm not sure if this is the Stratford Canal again or the Union Canal. The walk follows part of both.

  

We passed many, many narrow houseboats moored along the canals.

 

Yes, another canal picture! But you'd be so impressed with my restraint if you saw how many pictures I'm NOT sharing.

 

As we left the canals and started through fields, this became quite the muddy walk. Wellies would have been in order. I kept wondering on our walk how Elizabeth Bennet managed to only get six inches of mud on her petticoats. 

 

After briefly passing through Lapworth and slogging through the muddy fields, we reached Baddesley Clinton. I have to say, if I were to live in Elizabethan times, I'd definitely want a home with a moat.

Isn't that sword on the wall ginormous? I'm not sure how anyone lifted that thing.

 

Lovely Baddesley Clinton

 

This walk is centered in the Forest of Arden, of As You Like It fame. The forest doesn't really exist anymore, but it's still pretty countryside.

 

We started and finished the circuit at Packwood House. The Tudor house completes the Shakespearean atmosphere of our day.

There's something rather charming about a walled garden.

 

This yew tree garden reminds me of a scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I really can't help comparing everything I see in England to scenes from books I've read.

We are at the very end of snowdrop season and right at the beginning of daffodil season. Very few are blooming here, but they're everywhere in Cambridge now.

Happy Pancake Day!

Did you know that today is Pancake Day? I first heard of it last fall at a PTA meeting where people brought up the necessity of doing something to celebrate it. I thought maybe it was something like one of the hundreds of official days that your kids will look up in an almanac and inform you of - It's Corndog Day! It's Paperclip Appreciation Day! - that Anya's school randomly latched onto to celebrate.

As it got closer and I got reminders from various articles and grocery store ads that it was coming up I realized it was bigger than that. Here in the UK it's used interchangeably with Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, etc.). Apparently the tradition began because people found making pancakes  a good way to use up things like butter, eggs and sugar which were often given up for Lent. The UK version of a pancake is closer to what we'd call a crepe. Crazy Anya doesn't like crepes, so I had to go with the traditional American version. Then the traditional way to serve them here is with a squeeze of fresh lemon and sprinkled with sugar. I really was going to get into the spirit of things and serve them that way, except I forgot to order a lemon with my grocery order and was too lazy to walk to the store last night. So we went with good ol' maple syrup. Slightly Americanized, but we did celebrate.

Are you having pancakes today? Have you ever had pancakes with fresh lemon and sugar? Do you prefer American pancakes or crepes?