Dan is becoming a real teenager; a chilled-out, cool dude. At half term and on recent weekends we have taken him out and about and it has been really good fun. This weekend we went to Oundle on Saturday and Cambridge on Sunday.
Oundle is a small stone-built (mostly 18th C.) town which centres around its famous public (meaning very expensive, private) school. It's very like a "Harry Potter" set and so we were not surprised to find Prof. Snape's laboratory for Defence Against the Dark Arts there, complete with skulls in the window and a gryphon hanging from the ceiling. In fact, it turned out to be the art department of the school.
There is a good bookshop and a stationers and quite a few interesting local shops as well as several cafes. We always have tea and cakes, then visit the country park nearby. This time we had Bridget (see the picture above) along to help so the trip went especially well and the time flew.
Our plan on Sunday was to go to the country and get a lot of exercise, but the weather (wintry showers) let us down so we went into Cambridge instead. We gave Dan the choice of a film, or the museum, and he firmly chose the latter, so we went to the Fizwilliam Museum, which has a great art collection, some mummies and a smashing cafe. All Dan wanted to do was play on their computers which you can use to browse the collection. We took in in turns to accompany Dan, so both Hanna and I were able to see a bit of the museum. I went for the Impressionists while Hanna went for the fans and the Japanese prints.
After coffee and cakes we decided to take a walk through the lanes and alleys around the colleges and the markets. The University is celebrating its 800th birthday and the Charles Darwin centenary this year. It's amazing to think that Darwin, Isaak Newton, John Bunyan, Oliver Cromwell, Prince Charles, David Frost, Stephen Fry and many others all went through Cambridge. Dan missed all this of course, but still enjoyed window shopping and mooching around the market. The sun came out and I took a few pictures of the side streets, rather than the famous college arches and spires.
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