Cambridge Sabbatical

  There is a chain of gentle chalk hills stretching from the sea across England. People have used these hills to walk safely above dense forest and tricky marshes for over 4000 years. The braid of tracks that resulted is the Icknield Way - more of an idea than one well-defined trail. To learn more about this idea, I spent two days walking along the Way last week. My plan was to take a morning train to Baldock - a propitious place where the Icknield Way crosses the Northern Road (another ancient track) - and just walk back home to Cambridge. Baldock is now a sleepy bedroom community for London with a conspicuously oversized church giving away its former importance. The first day (28 miles) took me from Baldock via Therfield to a nice lunch in Royston. The churches along the way were great, all open for visitors to check out, some grander than others. Overall, I was surprise by how deserted this countryside is. The few pubs that exist are mostly closed on weekdays (when I was there),...

 Last Saturday we all went to London for the day. It's a 10 minute walk to the station, then 1 hour on the train to King's Cross which is one of the major terminals in London connecting British rail to the tube.  First we went to Regent's Park for some playground time, the rose gardens, and a picnic on the lawn. Then we went to the Science Museum. Eliza was fascinated by the exhibit on flight. She plans to fly a plane when she grows up.  After everyone was thoroughly exhausted by science, we hopped on a bus to Chinatown for dinner, walking by 221B Baker St on the way (aka Sherlock Holmes' house). Robert, Hanna and Eliza headed home while Lenny and I went to see Les Miserables at the Sondheim Theater.  The musical went until after 10pm so we got the train from King's Cross just after 11 and home after midnight.  Lenny thought that walking through Soho on a Saturday night was super cool.  But despite his grown-up aspirations, Lenny found staying up past 9pm q...

Lenny has a dream of becoming a blacksmith and forging magnificent items of art and utility out of pounded steel.  Why?  I have no idea.  Maybe it's the pyro attraction. Maybe it's the thrill of being allowed to hit things really hard with a hammer.  Anyway, I was able to find him a morning class teaching the basic of forging, so on May 15th, Lenny and Robert drove to a nearby forge for their instruction. 3 hours of sweat and hammering later (and no significant burns), each of them produced a beautiful and useful sausage fork.   I was sure this was the culmination of Lenny's dream, but unfortunately the next day, after much quiet typing in his room, he presented me with a 3 page manifesto explaining why he should be allowed to build a forge in our garden.  I'm pretty sure it's not legal, but I guess we will see.  

An hour east of Cambridge is Ipswich, a medium sized city where my aunt Prema lives in a fabulous house with gardens and a guest apartment. She welcomed us there for 2 nights over the weekend and we played in her garden, visited the local exotic zoo, and then went to the beach for sand play and a walk along the coast.