First Visit to Cambridge

Our first visit to the city of Cambridge was an overwhelming one!  It was the week before Christmas, and the weather was wintry, but I had been dying to see the historical Sunday Market, so away we went.

Only 20 miles to the south-east, we were surprised as we drove that the snow that had missed Huntingdon had apparently hit Cambridge full-force.  We’d quickly become proper lost (the Brits love to say ‘proper’) and found our Mazda stuck in several inches of snow on a dead-end road.  While Blake worked his magic to get us free, I snapped this shot:

Eventually we found a spot in a multi-story car park, bundled up in our hats, scarves, gloves and coats, and started exploring.  First we found ourselves in a huge shopping mall, which then unexpectedly led to open-air shopping on another street.  We passed several ornate gated areas, and finally I found one open into St. John’s College and snapped a quick photo of its courtyard before the gatekeeper could shoo me away.

We passed through several more shopping areas on streets that are closed off for pedestrians and cyclists.  Window-shopping was fun, even though we didn’t recognize any of the store names.

Soon, Blake’s good sense of direction led us to the market square.  This market has been in existence since the middle ages!  It runs all week, but on Sundays there is an additional farmer’s market component.  Blake bought me some locally-made lavender bubble bath soap as an early Christmas gift.  We were also serenaded by carolers while we wandered through the booths.

Finally, we made our way toward some of the large buildings we saw in the distance, and discovered St. Mary’s Church and King’s College Chapel.  Both buildings were impressive.

Eventually we were feeling a bit frozen, and headed home.  But we had fallen in love with Cambridge’s charm, and there would be many more visits to come.

~Lindsay

Thetford Forest

For those of you who don't know, the U.S. military community is quite small here in our little corner of East Anglia.  We'd grown accustomed to life in a military town back in San Diego, and in comparison the "Tribase Area" here is minuscule.  The base I work on, RAF Alconbury, has very limited services, including a small Base Exchange and a small Commissary, which stock the basics.  Blake's base, RAF Molesworth, doesn't even have that!  So we eventually made the trek that all new military families here make... to RAF Lakenheath.  Lakenheath has the coveted "big BX", which is practically a mall.  It's about an hour east via an assortment of motorways, dual carriageways, and single carriageways.  We quickly discovered that the trip is often encumbered with crippling traffic jams, which agitate Blake but give me the opportunity for window photography.  One of the nicest views of the Lakenheath area is the surrounding forest.  Our Tribase region is all farmland, and we don't see tall trees very often.  Here is one such shot of Thetford Forest.

~Lindsay

Winter Frost

England is a wet country, so naturally, with winter comes frost.  Mornings find us scraping our car windscreeens (that's windshields in British).  Of course it can also be quite photogenic :)

~Lindsay

Birding in Britain

As some of you may know, my purchase of a zoom lens a couple years ago sparked an interest in birding.  Just about the time I'd come to learn all the local San Diego birds, we moved 5,000 miles away!  So the learning process begins again.

Blake and I came upon the Fen Drayton Nature Reserve on accident one day while car shopping.  In it, we found plenty of lakes, trails, and waterfowl.  At the time, we were really excited to see a swan!  We have since grown accustomed to their commonplace appearance.

In late Autumn, we started noticing pheasants in the bare fields.  Apparently, they have been bred and released into the UK for centuries, where pheasant hunting is a popular sport.  We spotted at least a dozen flocks (or "nides" as they're called) before I managed to photograph this one from very far away.  Not surprisingly, they get quite skittish when you point something long and black at them!

There are also a lot of birds who like to hang out in our back yard ("rear garden" as the Brits say).  Cooper likes to run them off, so I shoot their photos from the kitchen windows.

Black and white seems fitting for the dreary, overcast nature of the winter here. Hopefully, Spring will bring bluer skies and more birds - though I doubt any less rain!!!

~Lindsay

Jolly ol' England

Before we left the airport in St. Louis, we needed to get an idea of where we were going, so...

We also got a good shot of our boarding passes...

We had a lay-over in Chicago where we stopped and had lunch at a Macaroni Grill Express in the airport.  After that, we waited for a couple more hours to board our flight to England.

After we were airborne for a few hours, we started hearing some commotion on the plane.  A few minutes later, the captain came over the intercom and asked if there was a doctor on the plane.  A retired doctor was on the flight and he took a look at the passenger.  An older man was having what seemed to be a heart attack.  So, we soon watched our nice straight line on the in-flight map take a hard turn south.  We then learned that we were landing in Boston to have EMS crews come onboard and help the man.  Of course, all the EMS guys had Red Sox hats and spoke a little funny, but they helped the man off the plane and after a few re-checks and fuel, we were back in the air.

We landed at Heathrow on a sunny London day, however, the ground still had puddles so they weren't fooling us, it had just rained.  Just after customs, and after the coffee shop I'd stopped at 9 years prior, we saw our driver holding a sign with a handwritten "BURNESON" on it.  Colin Beck was the trusted courier of American Military members traveling back to our base.  He had a nice minivan, large enough to carry all of our luggage.  He sped through the country side telling us about all sorts of things we should do in England, none of which I could remember and hour past.  We snapped this photo of the countryside whizzing by:

We arrived at RAF Alconbury at the Brittania Inn and checked it there.  Rooms were nearly full, so we got a small room, normally given to single members.  The room did have internet access and that's all we needed to survive our first three weeks in England.  Lindsay's fancy new UK cell phone took a 180-degree photo of our one-room home:

After searching a dozen houses or so, we found one that fit us nicely.  We had to talk down the price of rent, but the owner obliged and on a foggy Friday, we moved in:

We also found a car for sale, a 2000 MG-F.  My Dad had a 68 MG, and I wanted to follow the tradition and also, buy a car of the native land.  Around the same time, Lindsay's Mazda 3 arrived and passed through customs.  They arrived just in time for our first snow.

Along with the car and house hunting, Lindsay was also job hunting, and landed a job at the RAF Alconbury Fitness Center right away.

We now lived off base, both had cars, and were both working! We made it!

~Blake