We began our day travelling south, with a beautiful clear sky, and a crisp Yorkshire frost. It was stunning!
Our first destination for the day was Sherwood Forest to follow up on the famous legend [?] of Robin Hood and his merry men [Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, Much the Miller’s son, Allan-a-Dale and Maid Marion]. It was a beautiful day to just wander round a small part of the forest and especially to see The Major Oak, thought to be over 1,000 years old, and if you are inclined to believe it, was the place where the band of outlaws hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham. However to learn that an oak tree 1,000 yrs old was probably only a sapling when Robin Hood was reputedly robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, you simply admire it as a remarkable work of God in nature. They say that oak trees take 300 years to grow, have 300 years of life, and take 300 years to die. The fact that this one still has leaves growing and changing is quite amazing, even though it is being held up by braces and supports.
We then journeyed south east to East Anglia for a couple of nights in the south of Norfolk in a lovely little cottage B&B. From there, we had a gorgeous drive the next day through quaint historic Suffolk villages, travelling through several huge pig farms, where the saying, ‘as happy as a pig in mud’ took on great life. The old villages of Lavenham, Long Melford and Clare were among the ones we visited and we were able to just soak in the atmosphere and joyful beauty of the houses, cottages and pubs with leaning walls, caved in exteriors, uneven floors and roofs which lean on the building beside.
We finished the day with dinner at a pub in Ipswich before getting back to our B&B.
The next day was to be our return to London and we spent several hours at Cambridge on the way through, another historic university town, similar and yet very different to Oxford.
We visited Queens’ College and King’s College and were quite taken with the history as well as the incredible architecture and grounds. These two colleges are quite a contrast to each other, with Queens’ being relatively small and humble, compared to King’s, which is grand, vast and huge – the Chapel particularly being very imposing.
With my background, in what is now a long time ago, of involvement in choral music, King’s College Cambridge has always ‘topped the charts’ in quality and reputation. It was a great treat to actually stand in this vast Chapel that I had seen on TV and in photos so many times.
But it was also wonderful to see the theological stories told in the huge stained glass windows, with the Old Testament figuring in the top windows, and the connected New Testament story and theological outworking figured below. It would have been wonderful to have stayed longer and studied the connections represented, but unfortunately, we could only do that for a couple of the windows.
As a city area, Cambridge appeared much larger than Oxford, but the complete integration between university and city was similar. The colleges are the city; the city is the colleges. Shops, commerce, tourism, river, residential, business, colleges, chapels, university, is the city of Cambridge. This is so different to Australia where universities occupy their own precinct, totally separate from the rest of their city context.
Our return to London was very heavily delayed due to a terrible accident on the motorway, and what should have been a reasonably easy drive ended up taking well over three hours, but we did return safely back to The Highbury Centre where we stayed for our first two weeks in London.
Our time in the UK was coming to a swift end with our flight to Canada looming the next day. We have loved every minute and our learning and reflections have been massive.
England is a land of huge contrasts. The size of London was overwhelming, the tiny villages with country lanes and hedges were endearing. The roads were a whole story in themselves. The speed limits didn’t seem to make any sense with a narrow lane closely lined with hedges having a speed limit which in Australian terms would be reserved for a freeway [60mph \\ 100km/hr].
The history sits right beside the completely contemporary, and the global multiculturalism sits right beside the innately English tradition and pomp.
We saw great sense in London with clear descriptions for pedestrians of which way to look when crossing the roads. At every corner or crossing it is clearly displayed on the road – LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT – a wonderful help especially for international travellers who may be used to traffic on the opposite side of the road. We would certainly have appreciated similar signage across Europe where it is so easy to forget to look in the opposite direction for oncoming traffic when crossing the road. We were frequently caught out with that little issue.
But outside of London, don’t expect the same help on the road. Even with a GPS, it was easy to go the wrong way as the tiny country lanes frequently had no names visible and virtually nowhere in England runs on a grid system. So even in the villages finding the right road in the maze of lanes is difficult. Add to that, no reflectors and no street lights, with the sun setting before 4pm, we often had a struggle to find our accommodation.
But would we go back? Would we do it again? A resounding YES, with no hesitation!
Chris and Lynda Johnson 