Comical lions and the Other Place
A few weeks ago, we had a long weekend in Cambridge for our wedding anniversary, going there by way of Hatfield House and returning via Audley End. Typically, most of my pictures ended up being comical lions.
Hatfield House is a palatial Jacobean mansion built by Robert Cecil, and still owned by the Gascoygne-Cecils, the Marquises of Salisbury. You approach it by walking past the "old house," built in 1497, which, being made of solid red brick, really doesn't look old at all. A wedding was being held in it, though, so we couldn't explore it. Instead, we headed into the stableyard, where there's a cafe and an amusing array of retailers, all chosen to scream "WE ARE POSH!" to all comers: guns, riding apparel, designer jewellery, bespoke hound accessories etc.
The house was packed to the brim with comical lions.
On the panelling:
On staircases:
As sporrans on strange armless armoured women, with gallleries on their heads:
In heraldry:
On chairs, and scaly:
And, saving the best till last, on tapestries:
"You're all my besht friendss, even you, you shilly comical lion, you!" slurs drunken Bacchus:
Not a comical lion! (Although, if you could zoom right in, you'd see several. Also comical bats.)
We spent a long time in a dark corner near the foot of this staircase, trying to work out a riddle on a 16th century picture, which showed a woman pointing to three men, and saying that one was her brother on her father's side, one her brother on her mother's side, the other her son. All three were sons of her husband, and no bastardy is involved. So we asked a guide at the top of the stairs, who said nobody ever asked that and had to refer to her book. It turned out it was about Lord Burghley, and required "brother" to include brothers-in-law. (Google "kinship riddle Burghley" if you want to know a vast amount more about it.)
Anyway... when then said that she was baffled by another riddle in another room - the mysterious writing on a portrait of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. So off Pellinor scooted to look at it, and returned within half a minute, able to confidently inform her that it was the date of her death written Roman style. He went on to explain the Roman dating system, while she listened avidly and took notes. "Is this your academic field of study?" she asked him. (It isn't.) He was very pleased with himself!
Here is the outside of the house:
I think you can JUST see at the top right one of the robot lawnmakers that pottered around in the vaguely menacing fashion. The flattened topiary made us wonder if they'd got a bit carried away and had started levelling anything to hand.
Anyway... After Hatfield House, on to Cambridge, where we were staying in an apartment just north of the city centre. By the looks of it, this was a very poorly reviewed B&B until last year, but has now been taken over, done up and turned into self-service apartments. Ours promised "a kitchen, so you can make your own meals," but fortunately I'd peered closely at the pictures on the website, enough to realise that said "kitchen" meant "a sink, a fridge and a microwave." There wasn't even a toaster! So we knew not to turn up armed with ingredients and things to cook.
We didn't want anything fancy for dinner, so went to the nearest pub - The Bridge - where we could sit outside and look at the river. However, said river at this point was a fairly dull thing with a few moored-up boats, and a very noisy funfair just across the river. So after dinner, we wandered around town and ended up having another drink outside at The Granta, which was a MUCH nicer river - so nice that we resolved to return the following day for lunch and people-watching on the river.
So we did. However, before that we did most of the Cambridge Mystery City guide. I keep meaning to post about these, since we've done quite a few now. It's a booklet with a trail around a city, each one based around a fictional mystery. The trail takes you past lots of historical monuments, where you have to solve puzzles based on the text or images on the monument. Each puzzle helps you eliminate a suspect until you're left with the answer. I think the company is based in Portsmouth, so initially they were centred on south coast cities, but they seem to be branching out. They're aimed at adults, take a couple of hours, and a really quite fun.
A college to break up the text. Sadly, King's College was rather shrounded in scaffolding, but I was amused by the little punters in their ha-ha
Anyway... We did most of it, then paused to ensure that we got to the Granta in good enough time to secure a river-side seat. Which we did! :-) We ate lunch there, but it was SUCH fun watching all the punts coming and going from the adjacent punt-hire place, that we just stayed. For hours. For, like, almost the entire afternoon. There were swans and ducks. There was the cast of professional punters, with their shorts and waistcoasts. (Each punt hire company has a different colour waistcoat.) After four hours of it, we'd come up with nicknames for half of them. I especially enjoyed the one who was showing off and lost his pole, and had to paddle back to it using a floorboard. (Public who hired their own punt were given a paddle, just in case. Professionals were deemed not to need one.)
This chap came to rest on a punt just a few feet away from me, down on the river below our table:
When we FINALLY could drag ourselves away, we finished the trail, popped back for some tea, then came back into town for some open air Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was fun, with an energetic young cast who took every possible opportunity to hurl themselves down banks, off tree stumps and onto the floor.
I say it was fun. It was fun... when we found it. It took us AGES to find it. It was Trinity College Garden, which we assumed was near Trinity College. It turned out to be in the Trinity Fellows' Garden, quite a way away, accessed from a completely different place, and not signed. I think we walked several miles trying to find it, and were late arriving.
On Sunday we headed for the Fitzwilliam Museum, not realising that it didn't open until 12. So while waiting for it to open, we went to Cafe Foy for brunch, which was lovely. It, too, was near the river, with nice views of punters. I had Turkish eggs, which I've never had before, and liked very much indeed.
No comical lions in the museum, but a few other comical figures:
St Augustine, with a very alarmed church:
Cherub on the right REALLY doesn't want to be here!
After the museum closed, we'd planned to go up the church tower for a panoramic view, but it closed early on Sundays, so instead we took a ride on this London Eye style wheel. It was a little too far from the centre colleges for a wonderful view, but was still fun. Very very black clouds were gathering while we were up there, but we escaped before the Dark Lord struck:
We had intended to go back to the apartment before dinner, before heading out again, but in the end decided just to eat right away. It was our wedding anniversary, but we both prefer casual places to posh, so opted for Pizza Express. I very much like Pizza Express, but the branch on the island closed a few years ago, so I've been robbed of their stuff for a while, so I often choose it as a place to eat on holiday. And very nice it was, too.
We had another wander after dinner. Here is a tower of Cambridge going "whee!"
On the Monday, we went to Audley End House, another palatial Jacobean mansion. It, too, had some wonderful comical lions and other wonders inside, but they didn't allow photography, so they will have to go forever unrecorded.
And then home! A very nice weekend, even though I ended up taking hardly any pictures at all of our actual destination, and millions of comical lions in a place we stopped at for a few hours en route.
Hatfield House is a palatial Jacobean mansion built by Robert Cecil, and still owned by the Gascoygne-Cecils, the Marquises of Salisbury. You approach it by walking past the "old house," built in 1497, which, being made of solid red brick, really doesn't look old at all. A wedding was being held in it, though, so we couldn't explore it. Instead, we headed into the stableyard, where there's a cafe and an amusing array of retailers, all chosen to scream "WE ARE POSH!" to all comers: guns, riding apparel, designer jewellery, bespoke hound accessories etc.
The house was packed to the brim with comical lions.
On the panelling:
On staircases:
As sporrans on strange armless armoured women, with gallleries on their heads:
In heraldry:
On chairs, and scaly:
And, saving the best till last, on tapestries:
"You're all my besht friendss, even you, you shilly comical lion, you!" slurs drunken Bacchus:
Not a comical lion! (Although, if you could zoom right in, you'd see several. Also comical bats.)
We spent a long time in a dark corner near the foot of this staircase, trying to work out a riddle on a 16th century picture, which showed a woman pointing to three men, and saying that one was her brother on her father's side, one her brother on her mother's side, the other her son. All three were sons of her husband, and no bastardy is involved. So we asked a guide at the top of the stairs, who said nobody ever asked that and had to refer to her book. It turned out it was about Lord Burghley, and required "brother" to include brothers-in-law. (Google "kinship riddle Burghley" if you want to know a vast amount more about it.)
Anyway... when then said that she was baffled by another riddle in another room - the mysterious writing on a portrait of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. So off Pellinor scooted to look at it, and returned within half a minute, able to confidently inform her that it was the date of her death written Roman style. He went on to explain the Roman dating system, while she listened avidly and took notes. "Is this your academic field of study?" she asked him. (It isn't.) He was very pleased with himself!
Here is the outside of the house:
I think you can JUST see at the top right one of the robot lawnmakers that pottered around in the vaguely menacing fashion. The flattened topiary made us wonder if they'd got a bit carried away and had started levelling anything to hand.
Anyway... After Hatfield House, on to Cambridge, where we were staying in an apartment just north of the city centre. By the looks of it, this was a very poorly reviewed B&B until last year, but has now been taken over, done up and turned into self-service apartments. Ours promised "a kitchen, so you can make your own meals," but fortunately I'd peered closely at the pictures on the website, enough to realise that said "kitchen" meant "a sink, a fridge and a microwave." There wasn't even a toaster! So we knew not to turn up armed with ingredients and things to cook.
We didn't want anything fancy for dinner, so went to the nearest pub - The Bridge - where we could sit outside and look at the river. However, said river at this point was a fairly dull thing with a few moored-up boats, and a very noisy funfair just across the river. So after dinner, we wandered around town and ended up having another drink outside at The Granta, which was a MUCH nicer river - so nice that we resolved to return the following day for lunch and people-watching on the river.
So we did. However, before that we did most of the Cambridge Mystery City guide. I keep meaning to post about these, since we've done quite a few now. It's a booklet with a trail around a city, each one based around a fictional mystery. The trail takes you past lots of historical monuments, where you have to solve puzzles based on the text or images on the monument. Each puzzle helps you eliminate a suspect until you're left with the answer. I think the company is based in Portsmouth, so initially they were centred on south coast cities, but they seem to be branching out. They're aimed at adults, take a couple of hours, and a really quite fun.
A college to break up the text. Sadly, King's College was rather shrounded in scaffolding, but I was amused by the little punters in their ha-ha
Anyway... We did most of it, then paused to ensure that we got to the Granta in good enough time to secure a river-side seat. Which we did! :-) We ate lunch there, but it was SUCH fun watching all the punts coming and going from the adjacent punt-hire place, that we just stayed. For hours. For, like, almost the entire afternoon. There were swans and ducks. There was the cast of professional punters, with their shorts and waistcoasts. (Each punt hire company has a different colour waistcoat.) After four hours of it, we'd come up with nicknames for half of them. I especially enjoyed the one who was showing off and lost his pole, and had to paddle back to it using a floorboard. (Public who hired their own punt were given a paddle, just in case. Professionals were deemed not to need one.)
This chap came to rest on a punt just a few feet away from me, down on the river below our table:
When we FINALLY could drag ourselves away, we finished the trail, popped back for some tea, then came back into town for some open air Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was fun, with an energetic young cast who took every possible opportunity to hurl themselves down banks, off tree stumps and onto the floor.
I say it was fun. It was fun... when we found it. It took us AGES to find it. It was Trinity College Garden, which we assumed was near Trinity College. It turned out to be in the Trinity Fellows' Garden, quite a way away, accessed from a completely different place, and not signed. I think we walked several miles trying to find it, and were late arriving.
On Sunday we headed for the Fitzwilliam Museum, not realising that it didn't open until 12. So while waiting for it to open, we went to Cafe Foy for brunch, which was lovely. It, too, was near the river, with nice views of punters. I had Turkish eggs, which I've never had before, and liked very much indeed.
No comical lions in the museum, but a few other comical figures:
St Augustine, with a very alarmed church:
Cherub on the right REALLY doesn't want to be here!
After the museum closed, we'd planned to go up the church tower for a panoramic view, but it closed early on Sundays, so instead we took a ride on this London Eye style wheel. It was a little too far from the centre colleges for a wonderful view, but was still fun. Very very black clouds were gathering while we were up there, but we escaped before the Dark Lord struck:
We had intended to go back to the apartment before dinner, before heading out again, but in the end decided just to eat right away. It was our wedding anniversary, but we both prefer casual places to posh, so opted for Pizza Express. I very much like Pizza Express, but the branch on the island closed a few years ago, so I've been robbed of their stuff for a while, so I often choose it as a place to eat on holiday. And very nice it was, too.
We had another wander after dinner. Here is a tower of Cambridge going "whee!"
On the Monday, we went to Audley End House, another palatial Jacobean mansion. It, too, had some wonderful comical lions and other wonders inside, but they didn't allow photography, so they will have to go forever unrecorded.
And then home! A very nice weekend, even though I ended up taking hardly any pictures at all of our actual destination, and millions of comical lions in a place we stopped at for a few hours en route.