June 29. 2008: Colchester and Cambridge

On the weekend we were spoiled with by Krusty and Jason right from breakfast - on Saturday morning it was home-cooked French toast with berries and maple syrup, while on Sunday we were fed muesli, fruit and warm croissants. Delicious!

Sunday morning provided us with only a few more hours in Colchester, and we took a walk through town and visited the Colchester Castle Museum.

The Rose and Crown Hotel was built in the 14th century. You'd be hard pressed to find a single 90 degree angle in its construction!

The Colchester Castle Museum is situated inside the Norman Keep, which Michael mentioned in yesterday's post. Its exhibits are an interesting study of the Romans' and Normans' daily lives as much as they of historic moments. And, unexpectedly, there are numerous costumes to try throughout the museum.

THOROUGHLY EMBARRASSING FOOTAGE MISSING

In the early afternoon we bid Krusty and Jason farewell and embarked on a train to Cambridge.

Having heard of but never seen Jaffa Cakes before, I bought some to snack on, on the way. They were gross.

But Cambridge wasn't. With undergraduates on summer holiday, this cute and historic town was awash with tourists like us. The first thing I noticed from the train station was an enormous section of parked bikes, perhaps 500 of them.

It's lovely to see a town with more cyclists and pedestrians than cars.

Everything in Cambridge radiates out from the ornate college buildings.

We ate dinner at the Eagle, the pub where Crick and Watson supposedly announced their Nobel-winning discovery of the double helical structure of DNA. Though we dabbled in some scientific conversation, I doubt our visit will leave such a mark.

Michael ate the Eagle's vegetarian sausages and mash. The sausages were made from the same vegetables as were served on the side, only mashed and formed into fritters.

I was most impressed by the Mushroom Wellington, even though the crust was a little burnt. Inside was a delectable mix of wild mushrooms, spinach and blue cheese. However there was no chance of me finishing the cairn of potatoes served alongside - probably a larger serving than Michael and I would eat between us when cooking at home.

We'd been promised some good vegetarian pub grub in the UK and this was a most promising beginning!

June 28, 2008: Colchester

Our luxurious dinner at The Gate ran later than we planned, and the four of us endured a tense tube ride back to Liverpool Street trying to beat the 11pm closing time of the place we'd left our luggage. We made it, with minutes to spare and all piled onto the Colchester train for a weekend at Kirsten and Jason's place. Appropriately, we'd somehow picked the weekend of the Colchester Food and Drink Festival, so we started our weekend wandering the festival in Lower Castle Park.

Despite our hosts' skepticism, the festival was pumping - the first couple of tents were filled with dozens of stalls filled with delectable goodies. Not quite The Borough Market, but a pretty impressive effort.



We made it out of the tent and into the open spaces of the park, only to stumble onto the bafflingly irrelevant salsa dancing drum band. I still haven't quite figured out how Brazilian drumming is related to Colchester food, but it was an entertaining distraction regardless.

The UK has been very kind to us weather-wise, and this was another gorgeous summer day, with plenty of sun and a temperature somewhere in the low 20s. Perfect weather to sit around outside drinking Pimms. Luckily, someone was on hand to sell us a delightfully summery jug-full.

After some mid-morning boozing, it seemed appropriate to chase down something for lunch. Cindy was intrigued by the idea of 'Masala Chips' at the little Indian stall, but there was some sort of delay in preparation. Luckily, the lady running the stall plied us with delicious bhajis while we waited.

When the chips were ready, they turned out to be nothing more than hot chips with some sort of Indian spice mix shaken through them. Quite tasty, but not as interesting as we'd hoped. Also: for all the British enthusiasm for chips, we've yet to have a really excellent serve of them on our journey. These were a bit undercooked (possibly because we were eating the stall out of bhajis while we waited).

Next up were some goat milk icecreams: honeymoon pie for Cindy (butterscotch pieces in vanilla) and forest fruits for me. They were much more impressive than the chips, and we left the food festival pretty happy with our morning.

We wandered briefly through Colchester, checking out the Dutch Quarter and getting our first look at Colchester's most famous attraction: the ancient Norman Keep, Britain's largest intact Norman castle, built on the site of the oldest Roman settlement in the UK.


After a brief stop off back at home, Kirsten and Jason had us on a bus to Wivenhoe, on the estuary of the river Coln. It's a cute little town, a few nice old pubs and lots of pretty houses along the river's edge.

We went for a stroll along the river up until we were level with Rowhedge, an even prettier town across the river - alas the lack of bridges meant we looked wistfully at it for a while and then headed back to Wivenhoe via a quick stroll through a local nature reserve.

We settled in at a pub with heaps of outdoor tables overlooking the water and sat back for a quiet drink. This seemed as good a time as any to pull out our bounty from the food festival: more olives for me, and a coffee-flavoured brownie for Cindy.

Eventually we dragged ourselves off to the bus stop and headed back to Colchester, in search of adventure. First stop: a mute swan's nest that Jason has been observing waiting for the first sign of cygnets - still no luck when we wandered by.

Finally, we headed off to the home of disco-lights and pounding music: the Colchester Megapin Bowling! The main aim of the trip was air-hockey - after some trouble with a dodgy table, we settled in to a great round-robin contest, leaving only one undefeated competitor. Just look at that technique!

Rather than venture out into the terrifying late night streets of Colchester (apparently more than half the nightclubs have stripper poles, and the locals aren't afraid to use them), we took our tired air-hockey arms back to Kirsten and Jason's house and fell into a well-deserved sleep.